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Posted 12:00 (GMT) 27th August 2007 by David J. Bishop Okay, stop me if you've heard this one. A short bald man walks into a bank and says "Excuse me, you have a checking account that's free. Really?" "Yep, the WaMu free checking account," says the pretty red-headed woman behind the till. As names for free checking accounts go, this one is pretty imaginative. She goes on: "Comes with free cheques for life and free ATM cash withdrawals." But by this point, the man isn't listening. He's lost in his own little world where he's driving down a highway in the sun, the wind in his hair (yes, he suddenly sprouts long hair out of his bald head) and Twisted Sister blaring on the radio, not a care in the world. He pounds his fist in the air triumphantly and as the car speeds away we see the licence plate reads 'WH00-H00'. "You also get free ID theft services," the girl adds, breaking him from his reverie. But this guy's already sold. All he can say in response is, "Nice." Then we cut to a plain green field and a voiceover which says: "WaMu free checking: we don't nickel and dime you." The words on the screen read 'Whoo hoo!TM' (Really? TM?) and some other voice-over says "Whoo-hoo" in a sort of half-hearted way. It's lack-lustre. Like he's found a free paper clip. I'll go over why that's one of the stupidest commercials I've ever seen in a second - and yes I did see it, I'm not just telling you a story about a bald man opening a WaMu account. It's a real commercial, I swear to God. Yeah, so, I'm watching a lot of American TV online these days and so that means I'm being exposed to a lot of American ads. And they're completely different to European advertisements, catering as they do to a completely different set of expectations. Over here adverts are all sizzle, no sausage - they're not selling you sausages, they're selling a lifestyle. They want you to want to be the kind of person that buys this brand of sausage. All the American adverts I've seen, on the other hand, set their expectations a lot lower. They just want you to buy the sausage and if they can get to the end of the advert without convincing you it's poisonous their work here is done. American advertisers seem to think that the best way to sell whatever it is they're selling is to just show you other people using the product and finding it satisfactory. Perfect example, some guys in uniforms go on the streets, in some sort of lorry, taking a cereal on tour like it's a rock band. They accost passers-by and urge them to try new 'Honey Bunches of Oats'. The people in the advert try it and seem to like it - Fin. These aren't even real people doing this taste test, they're actors. You can tell from the way they behave and from the quality of the film - these are people pretending to be members of the public trying a cereal. The message we get is: "Look at these people pretending to like this product. You might actually like it. Still, regardless of how it really tastes, none of them are dead." They have demonstrated, at least, that Honey Bunches of Oats are not in fact poison. Obviously when this idea was first storyboarded and pitched on the space station orbiting Earth in which all adverts are made they had the idea of actually taking the cereal on tour and filming real people eating it. Why they didn't just go with that idea, why they instead chose to fake it, is lost on me. Perhaps they were looking for a more genuine response than Americans' genuine response. Perhaps some people didn't like the oat bunches, honeyed as they were, and they thought editing out those negative comments would be dishonest - and so instead decided to stage the whole thing. It makes me think that maybe they couldn't find anyone who liked it. But this much we know: it won't kill you to try the freaking cereal. Try it, why not? Like I said, lower expectations. The WaMu advert has taken this a step further, although WaMu is not the only offender, just the worst - this advert has the highest bullshit:product ratio. It's always the same formula - customer walks up to guy selling product, buys product and then something awesome but jarringly unrelated happens to make you think that, even though everything about this scenario is a fiction, even though the guy is an actor just pretending to have a good time, maybe this could happen to you if you booked a flight with American Express or bought a Double Whopper or donated blood. The difference with WaMu is how low the bar is set. So very low. Our bald man is sent into a fevered dream state of rock music and open-top cars and over what? A free checking account? With free ATM withdrawals? Now, I'm English. Very English. I am right now drinking tea with three sugars, wearing a tweed jacket and a monocle. And one of those is actually true. Right, so over here we call checking accounts current accounts (and we drive on the left-hand side of the road!) but the principle is pretty much the same. Except that I have never heard of a current account where they charge you for the privilege of borrowing all your money. What else? Free ATM withdrawals? You mean, they don't charge for taking your own money out of a cash machine? That's what gets the bald guy creaming his pants? Here would be the radio version of that advert: "It's that exhilarating feeling you get when all your hair grows back and you're driving down a highway in the sun in a sports car listening to 'I Wanna Rock'. WaMu: We don't sell you your own money back to you for a small price." Shit, that's a boast? The alternative is "I would like twenty dollars of my own money back please." "Okay, that'll be a dollar fifty." I know you guys don't have free healthcare over there but is this the standard? Selling people their own money to them? That's just insane! Why don't I just wander the streets of Wakefield selling people five pound notes for ten quid each? That's 200% profit! This is blasphemy, this is madness! This is... WaMu. It gets better, free cheques for life. That means they don't charge you for spending your money either! How generous! Wahoo! Fuck me, if they penalise you for using a cash machine and writing cheques, what's the point in putting all your money in a bank anyway? You might as well just keep it at home in a jar. At least that way you can reach into the jar without being charged for it. So yeah, not doing these things ain't exactly a big deal. Oh, and let's not forget our good friend 'Free ID theft services'. Which means in the unlikely event of someone stealing your identity and committing fraud in your name, your bank won't charge you money! Aren't they amazing? I can feel my hair growing back already! Advert number two in the WaMu circus of horror: woman sits down next to friend in a coffee house which is in terms of decor half-way between a Starbuck's and a primary school classroom. She asks her friend what he's doing on his computer. And he isn't reading Penny Arcade, he's "signing up for WaMu free checking online. It takes less than seven minutes. Pretty fast, huh?" "Yeah," she replies, wistfully, "really fast." No, that's not really fast. There's a lot you can do in seven minutes. You can save a life in seven minutes, you can bump into the love of your life and get to first base within seven minutes. Hell, you can read through about 10 comics in my archives in seven minutes. If I'm in a coffee house I'm only going to be there for half an hour tops, I don't want to spend a whole seven of those thirty precious minutes signing up for a bank account, not with people looking over my shoulder. Considering how long tedious bureaucracy usually takes to wade through, I suppose seven minutes to set up an account is pretty fast. But it's not really fast. It's not breaking the sound barrier across salt flats in a pink jet-propelled car fast. Because that's the fantasy coffee lady indulges in. For some reason she's wearing a pink fluffy jump suit while this is going on, too - I suppose that is the female equivalent of reversing male pattern baldness, huh? Wearing a lot of pink shit? We come back to the real world and the dream of a seven minute account sign-up has been so visceral that she has crushed her pastry using it as a steering wheel. The only good way for the advert to end at this point is for a glob of foam to escape from her mouth and it turns out she's having some kind of seizure. Alas, this is not the case. WaMu, what you're offering is mediocre at best, and the visual illustrations you are using to emphasise these 'perks' of not wasting our time and not cheating us only emphasise their mediocrity. I don't know if you're being ironic at this point or if you're just trying to add so many bells and whistles that all people remember is the bald man's hair growing back and they don't remember any of that other stuff (i.e. your shitty offer). All I know is that if the most exciting thing you can imagine is a checking account sans unnecessary charges you need to seriously rethink your life. Go sky-diving, eat a peach, get laid - whatever it takes. There's a third advert which is based around the first one, which opens with a guy walking up to the till saying: "So you're the guys with all the free stuff." No! No they're not! Not screwing people over is not free stuff. Now, if the account really did cure baldness at no extra cost that would be something special, but not being charged for no good reason is not. Special, I mean. Not special. (By the way, I'm not going to describe this guy's fantasy because it is too stupid for words. Okay, he tucks himself into a tight ball, rolls down a bowling alley, gets a strike with himself and then does a funky little dance. Happy now?) Again, we get the tag line: "We don't nickel and dime you." Well, get this shitheads - you're not supposed to nickel and dime people! Stop trying to take credit for something you're not even supposed to do in the first place! In the words of Chris Rock: what do you want, a cookie? I thought about asking this girl out and I was tempted to go with the Honey Bunches of Oats approach and tell her "If you're willing to lower your standards, I'm willing to buy you dinner." Simple, no-nonsense. But now I'm thinking maybe I should go with the WaMu approach, keep it simpler: "If you date me I won't try to rape you." Sounds like a winner to me! Guys with all the free stuff my ass. I'm actually making a comic strip for free twice a week and I can't give this thing away. These twats are making mercy a selling point and it actually seems to be working! No APR, no interest rates, no overdraft details, we know nothing about this account. It must really suck if their biggest selling point is a seven minute sign-up. Okay, I'm going to make a TV ad for Life on the Fourth Floor. A guy walks up to me and says "You're the guy that makes the free comic?" And I say, "That's right. The Life on the Fourth Floor free comic is a digital image you can see with your eyes, you can respire whilst reading it with free oxygen and at no extra charge I won't come round to your house and kick you in the testicles." "Wow," the guy mutters to himself before drifting into a fantasy world where he rides around on a kick-ass bike, grows two inches, does a flip off a giant ramp made out of pizza, sails over a swimming pool filled with ice-cold beer and lands on the other side between Angelina Jolie's breasts. Then my snarky Gordon-Ramsay-sounding voice comes on over the footage and says: "Life on the Fourth Floor: we don't kick you in the balls. Wahoo!"
Posted 14:27 (GMT) 23rd August 2007 by David J. Bishop I'm trying to be less angry these days. There's nothing wrong with being a bitter husk wallowing in cynicism and despair but there's such a thing with being too bitter. But maybe it's time I shelved the positive outlook and found something to get angry about, since the alternative is me eating and describing sandwiches. So, House Bunny. Anna Faris. Forgive me for explaining something which for some of you will be old news but over here films usually get released about two months after they're shown in the states so many of you Floorians won't know what the hell I'm talking about. They're all like, House... Bunny? Is this a furry adaptation of a successful medical drama? No, no it is not. The plot, as I gathered from the trailer, concerns a Playboy Bunny called Shelley who gets kicked out of the Playboy Mansion and somehow becomes a 'House Mother' (I originally typed that as 'Mouse Hother', illegal in 47 states) of a sorority house. No, I didn't know there were such things as House Mothers either - it doesn't help that the premise and title all assume a fairly detailed knowledge of the American college fraternity and sorority system. We don't have that over here and I don't understand why these organisations exist or what purpose they serve. All I know is they all have names made out of letters in the Greek alphabet and you can be kicked out for not being pretty enough. Jeez, why do I have to know the ins and outs of a system utterly alien to me just to figure out what the title of a film means? It's interesting how you can't say "torch" in an English film because American audiences don't know it means "flashlight" but American releases can be as insular and confusing as they like. Anyway, Shelley becomes the 'house bunny' of Zeta House, populated by very intelligent but 'unattractive' girls. They are all top of their class but none of them can get any boys. In steps the bunny to help! A make-over montage later (and this is the part of the trailer where 'U + Ur Hand' by Pink blares somewhat ironically over the footage) and the girls discover their inner 'ho-bags! Yay! What am I saying, 'somewhat ironically'? There are at least three levels of irony in that choice of song. The line "I'm not here for your entertainment" playing over footage of a Playboy Bunny? The implication that doing a girl's hair and dressing her up like a stripper somehow constitutes female empowerment? How about the phrase 'you and your hand' itself, what it refers to, and how you know there will be some guy doing that whilst watching this film? It's like a perfect storm. Now, I'm not going to deny that I'm a pretty geeky guy. The combination of 'cartoonist' and 'runs his own website' practically says all there is to say about how nebbish I am. But my nerd levels are not over nine thousand. I don't keep pens in my shirt pocket, I don't choreograph my own lightsabre duels and I don't cosplay. But I'm geeky enough that I find the girls in the House Bunny trailer really attractive pre-makeover. I think girl geeks are sexy, just as wrench monkeys find girls who are into cars sexy or gun nuts find girls with semi-automatics sexy. Shit, if I met a girl who could quote Firefly I would marry her. I would propose on the spot. What I'm saying is that whoever you are there is someone out there who thinks what you do is hot. There is even someone out there who will think this way about you who you will also find attractive too. If you make yourself over to become someone you're not you're denying yourself and this hypothetical dream partner the chance at true happiness. You've heard that confidence is the sexiest thing you can possess? Well have the confidence to just be yourself. Those that conform, those that care about being popular or who change their behaviour to match everyone else in the room, are the boring ones. Those same geeky girls in the House Bunny trailer after their make-over just look uninteresting. Sort of plain and homogenised, like extras in a film. Not ugly by any means but unremarkable, lacking in personality, generic. I'm pretty sure that's what House Bunny is trying to turn every girl in the Western world into. Pussycat Dolls. The second half of the trailer has a HIL-ARIOUS subversion of this tired make-over trope, when Shelley meets a guy and tries to seduce him using her air-head Playboy charms but discovers he's attracted to intelligent girls! Or, as it's worded in the trailer, "What if Oliver doesn't mind a smart girl?" Doesn't mind? What the fuck is this, 1532? Are people still worried about education melting women's brains? That's the most appalling sentence I've heard uttered all week, and I watched an Anne Coulter interview the other day. Yeah, so when Shelley realises that Oliver doesn't mind smart girls, we see her hefting books around comically and wearing huge glasses made out of the bottoms of coke bottles and wearing frumpy clothing, all in attempt to look smart. Ha. ha. ha. Now, I know there's going to be a nice moral at the end about being yourself, that the girl-geek-in-slap who says "Now we can be the best versions of ourselves" in the trailer is going to be proven wrong, that the whole conformity and beautification process is going to spiral into self-destructive bitchiness, that everyone's going to learn how to give a care and that Oliver is going to tell Shelley that he doesn't mind that she is a superficial idiot. But that's not going to negate the effect of the rest of the film, the core message of which can be summarised thus: 1. Smart women are ugly geeks. 2. If you want to look smart, dress up like an ugly geek. Why are all the brainiacs in house Zeta also geeks? There is such a thing as a smart glamorous person and such a thing as a stupid geek - I myself am living proof. In fact, I get by mostly by pretending to be smart, by people assuming I'm smarter than I am just because I'm a total dork. But that's hurting my case for being yourself so enough about my pseudointellectualism. Look, even after we get the nice moral ending about being yourself those girl geeks aren't going to go back to exactly how they looked at the start of the trailer - there's going to be some sort of compromise in which the girls find their own semi-'ho style and the house bunny accidentally picks up some quantum physics or some stupid bullshit. How do I know this? Because in a Hollywood film everything can't just go back to how it was at the start - all the characters will have changed by end, albeit in terribly shallow ways. So the film won't get around this reinforcement of the bespectacled smart girl stereotype - reinforcing the belief that education and intelligence turns girls into cardigan-wearing socially-stunted losers who cannot get boys (that all-important goal). Not only is it not true, it's encouraging girls to be less smart or to pretend to be stupid - and not college girls, because college girls aren't the target audience for this film about girls in college. It works like this - girls in college want to watch films about women living in New York, girls in high school want to watch the films about college and small children want to watch films about high school - hence High School Musical and (shudder) Bratz. So the target audience for House Bunny is actually younger and more impressionable ladies, ones who I fear will be more affected by its message. And, as a single guy who is genuinely looking for intelligent women with big sexy brains, that can only be a bad thing. Let's put it this way, I'm doing a course in English Literature at a University with one of the largest research libraries in the UK in a class with a roughly 2/3 female population and even I am struggling to find women who read. Conclusion: House Bunny is sexist shit, ruining it for everybody. But then what else can we expect from Anna Faris who, outside of her work in the Scary Movie franchise (I could just stop typing now), was last seen setting women's lib back by a good ten years in My Super Ex-Girlfriend, the message of which was "power and self-confidence makes women scary and unattractive, and their insecure boyfriends feel threatened by that". Well, now intelligence makes women unattractive too! Hooray! Next up: boobs make women unattractive. Anna Faris plays a flat-chested girl who helps a load of women get breast reductions. High fives all round. In other news you may have noticed I used the word 'thus' back there. Yeah, thus. Not 'thusly'. Thus. Most adverbs end in '-ly' - most. But some do not. 'Thus' is one of those. Please don't stick a '-ly' on the end just for the sake of it. You're destroying the English language. 'Thusly' isn't a word, so stop it. Just stop. If you can't figure out how to use 'thus' correctly just don't use it at all, just say "like so". Finally I want to give a big shout out to Anne in Spain, who posted a link to my strip in her Spanish language blog. As far as webcomics are concerned, for Anne it's just Fourth Floor and Wapsi Square, which is most flattering. I assume Anne speaks English because she's not going to get a lot out of this site if she does not but just out of politeness I'm going to draw upon the only Spanish I can remember from high school. Muchísimas gracias, Anne. Tengo un perrito caliente, me llamo David. No lo se. Se puede. Hacías. Como estas. There, that's all I got. Alcohol, you have a way of emptying one's mental recycling bin of all unnecessary files. Peace out.
Posted 08:45 (GMT) 20th August 2007 by David J. Bishop Hello one and all, hope August is treating you as well as it is treating me - I am having a terrific month. Yesterday for lunch I had a cheese steak sandwich from Subway and it was twelve inches of deliciousness. The bread they used for my sub was fresh from the oven and you could taste it. It was to my liking. But enough about my lunch there is a new comic to read! I really like the way this one turned out on both an artistic and a script level, and that's rarely the case. I don't know what's changed in the past few weeks but since I finished the finger storyline I've been bringing my A-game. Or rather, I thought I was already bringing it but then found secret reserves of unalloyed A which were then put to good use. Understand that whilst I may be blowing my own trumpet just a little bit, my default position is usually self-doubted and failure. So high fives all round! I have more comics to recommend but I don't know if I should. I am always in two minds about recommending anything, just because I worry about how it reflects on me and my own comic. Like if I told you I'm huge fan of Celine Dion. I'm not by the way, but you would draw conclusions if I said I was, which I am not. Also, my recommendation seems to be the touch of death for any strip. For example, I recommended Marry Me to you all just for that comic to end - turns out they were just turning the script for a movie into a comic to better its chances of being optioned, which was disappointing. The kind of story they were telling would have fit better with a webcomic format, and would have benefited from a more prolonged and detailed exploration of the characters and story possibilities. I recommended it in the first place because the excellent opening made made me excited about where they were going with it - turns out the answer was nowhere. Three cheers for wasted potential! I also recommended you check out a comic called Draw Write Play which on paper looked like Penny Arcade but with girls. However, the writing was competent, the art was excellent and, you know, like with Marry Me I wanted to know where Miss Caroline Dy was going with this. Then practically the day I post the link she stops updating the comic and then Draw Write Play transforms itself into a blog. Where's the comic? I'm damned if I know. It's all rather bewildering, to be honest. I'm not saying you shouldn't check out the blog, I'm not saying Caroline Dy isn't still a very talented artist. But it's rather like recommending a restaurant to a friend only for the friend to find a furniture warehouse in its place, a warehouse unaccountably still called Joe's Diner. So, allow me to recommend some more comics! Here's hoping these ones won't disappear without a trace as soon as I post this: The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: There are comics with an axe to grind, there are comics trying to tell an epic story, there are comics centred around a single hobby like playing video games or collecting toys and there are comics copying the comics about video games. And then there are comics that are just trying to be funny. The Non-Adventures of Wonderella is just such a comic, and I declare its noble efforts a success. A tremendous success. Dude, I laughed my ass off. My Stupid Life: This strip is simple, endearing, witty, stupid, true, heart-warming and funny. Sometimes it is all those things at once, sometimes it is just four or five of those at once. But it's always funny. Kind of makes me want to get married, though. That isn't a bad thing in its own right except that I'm alone in the world. Hey, at least I've got My Stupid Life. Chainsawsuit: Okay, this one definitely isn't going down the tubes because it's drawn by the always-professional Kris Straub. Listeners of the now-dead Daily Affirmation podcast Scott and Kris used to do will know that Kris is an exceptionally funny man who can take ideas down bizarre and entertaining tangents. This comic is that part of his brain condensed into a comic and it warrants a read. Check it out. In other news, barbecue sauce is the new ketchup. I've been putting it on everything lately - I think I'm addicted. To deliciousness!
Posted 04:45 (GMT) 16th August 2007 by David J. Bishop Just a few parish notices this time round, I'm going to be mercifully brief after Wednesday's info dump. Still, it's fascinating stuff if you're into that sort of thing. My brother was on hand to remind me that for people who don't really care about webcomics as a species aren't going to glean a lot of entertainment out of a hyper-detailed explanation for why cartoonists should listen to criticism. He also said that I came over as quite egotistical, since the core message is 'Ooh look at me, I'm growing as an artist'. Whilst I do agree with him I make no apology for my ego. To be a good cartoonist you need to convince yourself that you are awesome in order to have the confidence to bear your soul before an audience that could potentially include.... well, everyone. Which is not to say I am a good cartoonist. No, the fact is that all cartoonists think they rule - that's only a bad thing if they suck. First notice, there is a new strip up. The plot thickens and we finally find out what Charlotte is up to. I dare you to guess what's going to happen next because you will be wrong. Second thing you should be aware of is something I haven't done a very good job of promoting. Do you remember this strip, written by contest-winner James? Well, the competition is being held once again. Basically, whoever sends in the best Fourth Floor script gets to have their entry made into a comic. There are no real rules besides that. If you looked at contest-winner James' entry and thought you could do better (or even if you didn't) e-mail me a script. It's not that hard really, I do it every week. Fans (all seven of you), now is your chance to become part of the comic's history. And since there have been no entries so far it's safe to say that the one person who participates will win by default. So get scribbling! I'll post a reminder about the contest once a month until it's over. Thirdly, I've gotten some feedback about the incentive art not loading. I'm aware of this problem but I don't really know what to do about it. Buzzcomix is a fickle mistress. If the pencils don't load properly today they will almost definitely be there tomorrow. Once you vote you can check back as many times after that as you like. All right!
Posted 08:40 (GMT) 13th August 2007 by David J. Bishop First of all there is a new strip up! I'm awesome. Secondly, I've written a new rant. This has to be my longest yet. It details (amongst other things) what I think of people who hate Scott Kurtz, the philosophical nature of truth and knowledge, transgenderism, what I really think of Misfile and its fanbase and the epic story behind the changes in the character designs. It's mostly about whether or not a cartoonist should listen to criticism. In retrospect, it would have been a lot quicker just to point at Tim Buckley and say "There! There's a cartoonist who doesn't listen to criticism!" Anyway, you know how I said before the majority of what I do around here is motivated by guilt? Well it turns out the rest is motivated by revenge. Interesting self-revelation there. Gather round, children, and I will tell you the tale. A very long, unedited, confusingly-structured tale. I call it 'Hitler Was a Vegetarian'. I've made a couple of posts in the forum as well, one about the rant and one about what I was thinking about in the shower today. If you want to chime in with your opinion or just get the kind of extra detail into my life that there's no room for here in new posts then by all means drop in - as with e-mails I am always on hand to deliver a personal response. In other news, I told you before about my recipe for Super Coffee. Well, I went on a fun-filled trip to Alton Towers with my siblings and brother-in-law. A fun time was had by all, a day of fast food and fast roller-coasters. A day of intense joy and over-excited high fives. In all the excitement I impulse-bought a gigantic souvenir mug from the gift shop. And I mean this mug is massive. It's about the size of three and a half mugs (I measured) and it stores an entire teapot full of tea. I have to stir this thing with a tablespoon instead of teaspoon - and it's to scale, that's how big this frigging mug is. I can only lift it with both hands. Anyway, imagine me taking my recipe for Super Coffee and tripling the quantities in this big-ass mug. And then drinking it all really fast. Does it come as any surprise that I'm writing this at 3:30 in the morning and I really need to pee?
Posted 09:34 (GMT) 11th August 2007 by David J. Bishop I'm always finding excuses to do nice things for you and now I have two. The nice thing this time round is a new wallpaper in the wallpaper section. It's based on the X-men parody I did back in May, which I've got a relatively large amount of feedback about from people telling me it was their favourite strip. So that was all the excuse I needed to make you all a nice wallpaper. Now, some cartoonists might charge for such an ass wallpaper but not me - it's completely free. My gift to you. I said there were two excuses for rewarding you with free stuff. The second is this: we broke all records for readership this weekend. The stats aren't final yet (they never are) but there are roughly twice as many of you this month than there have ever been before. On Friday 650 people came to the website at once. That's more people than I've ever met, more than I can count. I don't know what I did, if anything, but suddenly visitors are on my comic like white on rice. So, a huge welcome to all you new readers - please be patient wading through the archives. I was 16 when I drew the early strips, they get much better after about 20 minutes. Enjoy the new wallpaper! By the way, if you vote for us you should be able to see the pencils for the latest strip. I think I've finally managed to get it working. Anyway, even if it's still broken you should vote anyway because you want to see the strip succeed. Right?
Posted 18:15 (GMT) 9th August 2007 by David J. Bishop First things first - new strip. It is our 150th strip! Back in December I decided we wouldn't mark this milestone with a celebratory comic because that just isn't done. Your first 50 are noteworthy. 100 strips is double that. So then you have to wait until you double it again and bring out the paper hats when you hit 200. After that it gets tricky. I mean, does 300 strips demand fanfare? Do you just have to wait until you hit 500 then after 1000 leave it at that? So, no 150 comic. Still, 150 strips in just over three years is pretty ass. That's about 50 strips a year, which is not too shabby. It almost feels like I've redeemed myself for that lengthy hiatus I made you all endure way back in the early years. Almost. I know I'll probably look back on this day in five years' time and chuckle that I thought '150' was such an important number but in some ways it is. The rule of thumb with most webcomics is that the first chunk of the archives sucks, or at least is a lot worse than what follows. And part of that is relative inexperience on the part of the artist but another part is that characterisation takes time. You need to establish who the people in your story are, you need to establish the relationships they have with each other. In order for character-based comedy to work the readers need to know how the characters will react - Hell, in order for the writing to work the author needs to know. It's round about the 150 mark that the strip begins to blossom, that the characters and setting come into their own. Getting to this point has been like passing a kidney stone. Trying to write a comic well is frustrating, it's like writing a novel one postcard at a time and posting them to the reader - and you're only allowed to write two postcards a week. You need to choose very carefully what's going to happen next, which dynamic to spotlight. The temptation is to cut corners, to rely on well-trodden character archetypes and instantly-recognisable visual cues to do lay your groundwork for you. But then you end up with flat cookie-cutter characters. So you sit and you wait, and decide that this Wednesday you will show this new sliver of that character when they talk to this character. But now the groundwork is finally down. I mean, it's not like my work here is done. It's not like you all know everything there is to know about Michael, Jack, Charlotte et al. But now, at 150 strips, I think we've got to a stage where someone can read through the archives, get to this point and have a pretty good idea of what Life on the Fourth Floor is about, you know? And that's a pretty good feeling. This strip is becoming, at long last, what I always wanted it to be. What it's always been deep down. There just wasn't enough for you too see. Anyway, as my thank you to the die-hard fans out there (all eight of you) I've decided to put up a donation incentive. Now if you vote for the site on Buzzcomix you can see the pencils for the latest strip. Just click the link below or the vote button to the right and see the original art for today's comic, complete with absent-minded spelling errors!
Posted 17:24 (GMT) 7th August 2007 by David J. Bishop Yo, new comic. Read it already. Why come it is late? Well, for one the raw awesomeness of today's strip could not be contained in the four days I had in which to make it. Also it was my mother's birthday this week. Life, you see, is about choices. I had the choice of getting the strip up on time and disappointing my own mother on her birthday and being a day late. I chose the latter. I'm not one of those brooding cartoonists with a tragic past, drawing strips in an attempt to avenge my parents' death. I have a family and sometimes family comes first. But not often. I could always fall back on the 'free entertainment' argument. Perhaps when I'm making a hundred quid in donations each week I'll neglect my mother. Is that a good excuse? If it is, why do I still feel guilty? Maybe I'm just obsessive. Speaking of obsession, I've invented a new drink! Because I'm that bat-shit crazy. It's called Super Coffee. If you have ever wondered what gives me my edge, what makes Fourth Floor so God-damn awesome, then the answer is I am fuelled by Super Coffee! Here is the recipe. Ingredients: One Mug Boiling Water (Two thirds of a mugful) Fairtrade Instant Coffee (Five heaped teaspoons) Sugar (Ten heaped teaspoons) Milk Directions: Mix ingredients in a mug. Stir with a spoon, making sure as much of the coffee dissolves as possible (not all of it will). Always make sure you only fill the kettle with as much water as you need at the time to save energy. Drink. If you feel your heart is about to explode, it's working. I have pulled my share of all-nighters working on the strip and have found myself about to pass out at 5:30 in the morning. One mug of Super Coffee later I'm dancing around the kitchen to 'No Sex For Ben'. Thanks, Super Coffee! In other news, Katy Perry kissed a girl and liked it. You know, just to try it. Don't really know why that song has got under my skin this week. Maybe it's the catchy rhythm and abundant hooks, maybe it's the titillatingly saphist imagery. We may never know. At Last The World Revolves Around Amy Posted 03:57 (GMT) 2nd August 2007 Okay, new strip in place and you can read it if you have not already. Hooray for me! A lot of what I do around here is done out of guilt. For example, Wednesday's strip was late, which leads to guilt over being such a lousy cartoonist, which leads to me spending all the time between 6 am Thursday and now working away on improving the strip like the ill-shaven obsessive I am. So here's what's happened - more plotting out for future months (and indeed years) of storylines, story arcs and character development. Also slight tweak to some character design - you will find that the male characters all have proper eyebrows and not just lines. It's a style that never looked good on the girls (nota bene those who pluck their eyebrows and draw them back in with a pencil) and which I have only used 50% of the time when creating male characters. If you look at my smiling and erroneously-bearded face above this very paragraph you will note real eyebrows hang over my dreamy eyes. From now on that is the golden rule. There are other character design tweaks in the pipeline but I don't want to pile too much on at once so it can wait. Guilty leap forward number three is me working ahead by a good month with the pencils, which means I can now look ahead at August and see how it shapes up story-wise. Folks, it looks like this month will be Amy month. Fans of Amy can rejoice. It's not fair for me to have a favourite character but Amy is both easy and fun to write - so easy and fun that if I became lazy the entire strip could degenerate into 'The Amy Show'. So I try to use her sparingly. As much as I love her, you can have too much of an evil, bitchy thing. Then again, I don't want any of the core six characters becoming a Robbie or a Jase, one of those characters in a comic that is introduced from the start like all the others but gradually fades away as the author realises they have no idea what to do with them. Of course, we can't all be chiefs or there wouldn't be any roulette croupiers and some characters must inevitably fill a supportive role, like healers in an RPG. But we want to avoid Robbie-and-Jasification. So whenever I find myself neglecting one of the cast I'll shove them into the spotlight for a while. We have had storylines revolving around Shivani, we have had storylines revolving around Bob and we have had storylines revolving around Michael. For the first time ever we have a month-long storyline revolving around Amy. Just to stop it from becoming 'The Jack Show'. P. S. Speaking of Jack, this is for the benefit of my mother. The guy in today's strip is not supposed to be me. The groom in Sunday's comic is not me. Jack is not me. Stop asking the same question every time you read the comic. Just because a character a) is male and b) has dark hair does not mean he is me. Aside from the fact that a character bearing an uncanny resemblance to your son has already appeared twice, it's blatantly obvious to everyone else that my Mary Sue character is Kingyo. Strip Up At Last Posted 06:18 (GMT) 31st July 2007 The strip is up at last. It was worth the wait, right? Shit, it's exactly a 24 hours and one minute since my last news post. I'm so bad at this whole punctuality thing. Still, somewhere in the world it's still Wednesday. Call Me David 'Icarus' Bishop Posted 06:17 (GMT) 30th July 2007 Having provided three strips in as many days and having gotten the comic back on track we must descend once again into mediocrity and failure. Like Icarus. That's... that's where I was going with that one. We're back to a two-a-week schedule and that schedule is doing what it normally does i.e. kicking my ass. If I was a bastard I could tell you that you've already had one of your two free comics this week on Sunday in the form of the super-awesome extra-special birthday strip. If I was a bastard. But because I am nice I'm calling that a seasonal bonus and providing you with strips for both Wednesday and Saturday, which will bring the total to five comics in ten days. Because I am nice. Now, that many kick-ass strips takes it out of a guy so I'm afraid today's installment will be slightly delayed. There's no saying at this point how slight the delay will be - it could be up Wednesday or it could be early morning Thursday. Of course, it all depends what time zone you're living in. I think my readers in China have a good chance of seeing it... yesterday. And that's pretty damn punctual. So, for those of you skipping down to the last paragraph, I like making you extra things but the extra things take a little longer, so sit tight and keep coming back throughout Wednesday, Thursday and then you're safe until Saturday. Most of you won't be reading this until Tuesday anyway. The Man Who Was Awesome Returns Posted 09:06 (GMT) 27th July 2007 Because it is his counterpart's birthday today, there is a special bonus comic for the third day in a row which sees the return of Matthew, Shivani's ex-boyfriend. What adventures has he got up to since Christmas when they broke up? See for yourself. My brother is just as awesome as depicted, even in ways you at home can appreciate - he has been on-hand as a sounding board for many a half-finished punch line and as a hypercritical eye to every completed strip, pointing out exactly what was done wrong in each instance - perhaps so I can improve or perhaps because he sees my chest swelling with pride and likes to watch it deflate. He is the one who decides if something is funny enough to be worthy of your consumption and, as I mentioned last year, he has also pretty much written some of the strips, more than I would like to admit. If you see him in the street, you owe him a drink. He'll be easy to spot, he's the one sending ripples of awesome out in all directions, breaking hearts and saving lives one day at a time. Happy birthday, dude. Twofer Posted 07:29 (GMT) 26th July 2007 Just like I said yesterday, there is a new strip up today. I feel kind of bad that yesterday's update got so little time in the spotlight but you can still find it here if you missed it. As always, the archives page is here for you in this time of confusion. How did I manage two strips in such record time? Easy - I haven't been to bed since Wednesday night. I'm actually starting to hallucinate. I wish I was joking - I'm seeing things, shadows that look like human figures moving across reflections in the piano opposite me. They only move when I look at something else - as soon as I look at the reflection properly they stop. And of course when I turn around there's no-one behind me. I'm just literally losing my mind a tiny bit at a time. Time for bed I think. My eyelids feel like sandpaper. Meet the Hacks Posted 16:28 (GMT) 25th July 2007 To celebrate today being a Friday we have a new strip up and this means I have finally caught up with my own update schedule. So there will be another comic tomorrow. In fact, just keep coming back every day on the off-chance that comics have sprouted up of their own accord. And today's strip includes a cameo from Nick, LotFF Fan Club Member No. 35! If you would like a cameo, just e-mail me and ask. In
other news, I was quite amused to find this comic on the Ctrl+Alt+Del
website, the site I mysteriously keep returning to like a dog returning
to its own vomit. Tim Buckley has Then again I can't crow too loudly since, for all my attempts at originality, my modus operandi has always been to create what is essentially a remake of Friends in the style of Family Guy - at least, back when both shows were funny. They've both rather lost their way as of late. But don't worry, the same won't happen to LotFF because it's not written by a team of people the membership of which is in a constant state of flux. No, the comic will always be written by me so it can't get any worse. Who am I kidding? As if it could get any worse. Anyway, speaking of unoriginality and hack comedy let's talk about Disaster Movie. You can watch the trailer here and if you follow that link you will be able to catch a glimpse of the poster, too. From the trailer alone I caught references to 1. Iron Man 2. The Incredible Hulk 3. Enchanted 4. Hancock 5. Sex and The City and 6. Juno. Somewhat tellingly, none of those films are disaster movies. And even more tellingly, the last four are comedies. How can you satirise a comedy? I mean, comedy by definition presents a situation and then finds funny things to say about that situation. Poking fun at something which is essentially already poking fun at itself is not impossible but very hard. I'm not saying Sex and the City isn't ripe for parody (because it definitely is) but Enchanted? Enchanted is a parody of a Disney movie. Hancock is a parody of a superhero movie. How do you parody something that already parodies itself? Well, they don't. In the trailer, Iron Man is hit by a falling cow, the Incredible Hulk's jeans tear off, Giselle from Enchanted is hit by a car, Hancock flies into a lamp post and Carrie is beaten up by Juno. Noticing a pattern here? Step 1. Dress someone up as a character from a genuinely entertaining film. Step 2. Hit that character with a bad prop. Step 3. Return to Step 1. A cow does not satire make. What flaw in Iron Man are they pointing out here? Iron Man's weakness to cows? The thing that doesn't exist? There's nothing funny about that, nothing satirical, nothing which elevates this gag above a seven-year-old child pointing at Iron Man and saying "Ha ha Iron Man is dumb!" (which no seven-year-old would do because Iron Man is awesome). They don't even say why Iron Man is dumb, they just hit him with a cow and we are supposed to be in stitches. The stupidest part is, the Iron Man film does quite a bit to play with the expectations of a super-hero film, creating a number of genuinely funny moments. But let's face it, Iron Man is a rich alcoholic in bright yellow and red metal suit. There is room for parody there, if one was so inclined. But these jackasses don't even try. Or they don't know how to try. Who are these jackasses? The same guys who made Date Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans (more on that title in a second) and, presumably, the unfunny parts from Scary Movie. Who are they? Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. I am utterly opposed to violence and murder in every way but if any two people did deserve to die these two would. They're not just idiots, they are thieves. That bit at the end with Juno kicking Carrie in the face? Stolen right out of Don't Mess With the Zohan. Almost verbatim. If your shtick is 'every character from every film released this year plus jokes' they have to at least be your own jokes. Otherwise it's not just unimaginative it's immoral. And I'm not exaggerating to make a point, I'm serious - stealing other people's ideas and passing them off as your own is just evil. And really, Zohan? It wasn't funny when they did it in the first place. It gets better, by which I mean it gets worse. If you look at the poster you'll see crude facsimiles of Kung Fu Panda, The Dark Knight and Hellboy II - films which have only just come out. There is no way these guys could have seen those films in time to make this one, unless they have a time machine. Which means they can only have watched the trailers. Think about that for a second. They are 'making fun' of films they haven't even seen. How can they get away with this? If I was to write a review of Final Fantasy XIII in which I said it was bad that would be libel. How can Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer point at Batman and say "this came out this year, it is dumb" before they've even seen the film? Satire is a powerful weapon which should only be levelled at deserving targets. In order to find out if a film is deserving of parody you have to watch it first. I, however, do not have to watch Disaster Movie to condemn it - the poster and the trailer commit enough sins already. And not just jokey film critic sins of bad writing or unimaginative plotting but actual real sins like stealing and lying. I've had enough. I for one will not stand for this kind of bull shit anymore. The human race needs to take action. These parasites have attached themselves to the film industry in order to churn out lifeless, brain-dead copies of every main character from every film released since their last cinematic abortion. The only way to stop them is for film-makers to stop making films. Seriously, just wait for a couple of years and Friedberg and Seltzer will have to come up with their own ideas. They will wither and die without a host. We'll find them both in a ditch somewhere, all grey and shrivelled like E.T. Sure, we'll have to go without films for a while but won't it be worth it to see these hacks perish? Maybe not. Okay, plan B. We go round to their houses armed with clubs with nails in them and beat them to death. Seriously, how would you feel if you spent years of your life creating a genuinely heart-warming and funny film that is simultaneously a parody of Kung Fu movies and an awesome Kung Fu movie in its own right? What if the protagonist was a flawed but loveable Panda voiced by Jack Black, a character that teaches children that it doesn't matter what they look like, they can still do anything they put their mind to? And what if two douchebags came along, watched the trailer, picked up on the fact that there was a panda but nothing else and shoe-horned your character into their low rent r-tard movie which just so happens to be exactly the same as the one they made last year, right down to the '[INSERT GENRE] MOVIE' title, the poster showing that title in chunky red capitals with all the cast gathered around it and the same demeaning Carmen Electra cameo? How would you feel? You'd be heart-broken. You would be well within your rights to go round to those douchebags' houses and beat them to death with spiky clubs. Let's do this! P. S. I have a theory that every film with 'Meet the-' in the title is automatically bad. Look at the evidence: Meet the Fockers, Meet the Robinsons, Meet the Spartans. All badly-written films with badly-written titles to match. How can a title be badly written you ask? Simple. At its most basic level, a title answers the question of 'What is this film/book/comic strip/TV show about'. What is this show about? It's about How I Met Your Mother. What is this book about? It's about Great Expectations. What is this film about? It's about Spider-man. What is Meet the Robinsons about? It's about the fucking Robinsons. The 'meet the-' part is utterly redundant. Just call it The Robinsons. I think it's safe to say that when I watch Patch Adams I'm going to meet Patch Adams. You don't need to tell me I'm going to meet the people your film is about. 'Meet the-' just adds a nauseatingly self-satisfied sheen to the whole thing. 'Meet' is the first word of, like, 70% of all trailers. "Meet Frank. He's a cop with a lot of time on his hands. But what Frank doesn't know is he's got a time machine buried in the back of his head etc. etc." Imagine the annoying trailer voice-over man saying that. Not the good one, the smug-sounding one. The one who does the voice-over for Rob Schneider films. That's what I hear every time I see a film with 'Meet the-' in the title. Let's just say I don't have high hopes for Meet Dave. P.P.S. Yeah, I know I described Carmen Electra's cameos as demeaning. Carmen Electra, a woman who became famous via Playboy and Baywatch, doing something which is beneath her. I stand by it, those films are dog shit. We're number 385. Not as good as 'UNA Frontiers' but still better than 'Rockin' with the Erock'. Fourth Floor is a Toddler Posted 7:27 (GMT) 23rd July 2007 Hey, two things - firstly, there's a new strip, for free! Secondly, a big thank you to everyone who took the time to e-mail me their feedback and support in the light of my last news post. You know who you are and that you are awesome. If anyone else feels like e-mailing me I promise I will personally answer each e-mail in detail, usually in a way which is about twice as long as the original message. I'm quite an inefficient writer. That means even if you send me hate mail I will treat you to a detailed and thoughtful response, as some dude called Phil could testify (if his words weren't muffled by his own ass). Those two things out the way, I'd like to report that yesterday was one of our best single days for readership. Which is surprising because it represents a week's worth of page views in one day but unsurprising in that it was a Tuesday. And Tuesday is the best day for readers. That means that most of you guys come here on a Tuesday to read the strips or the news posts or whatever else happens around here. We update Wednesdays and Saturdays, the past two weeks have seen a Monday Wednesday Friday schedule to catch up. The only day that has been neglected is Tuesday and I suppose to a lesser extent Thursday. I think in the history of the strip only one update has been on a Tuesday. Maybe two. So, why Tuesday? Tuesday nothing happens here. Tuesday I play video games and eat cereal. It just doesn't make any sense that anyone would come here at that time. If any of you can shed some light on the subject we have a forum but somehow I think this is going to be one of those things that doesn't get any response. It's driving me crazy though. I mean, why Tuesday? Why? Oh shit I almost forgot. Thirdly, today Life on the Fourth Floor turns three! God, has it really been three years? Well, looking back at the first strip it feels like it's been 8 years. I really used to suck, didn't I? I suppose that's the drawback to improving, you look back to see how far you've come and all you can do is cringe. Well, 143 comics in three years isn't bad, that's nearly 50 a year. That's more than I ever expected. All of this is more than I ever expected - just being a cartoonist, creating characters and telling stories that keep people coming back every week, bringing smiles to thousands of people - this is what I always dreamed about. Thank you all for making this possible, for reading through the bad parts in the archives, for coming back every... Tuesday... for sending your encouraging e-mails and for your word-of-mouth advertising that has brought us up from 0 readers a day to nearly 100. You guys are the coolest, smartest and biggest audience I have ever had and the best part is when we're celebrating four years I know you will be cooler, smarter and bigger. Hopefully so will the comic. Some of the Worst Similes Ever Posted 9:55 (GMT) 21st July 2007 It was such a success last time we are again working to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule this week, which will allow me to catch up at long last. So here is another new strip just for you. This is hard work. Well, this concludes this storyline! Scheduling issues aside, I deem it a success. I mean, I'm happy with how it turned out visually, I'm satisfied with the pacing, the characterisation and the comedy. And all I can do is make comics that please myself on some level and hope that my readers feel the same way. I'm flying blind, reaching out to an audience of 6000 silent people - you guys. I can only assume you like the way I'm running things, because you keep coming back and don't complain. So far, no negative feedback and quite a lot of positive feedback (by my standards, anyway). I got an e-mail a while back from someone who thought I was awesome, and that's always good to hear. And Perk Daddy said in the forum how much he liked the X-men strip, which totally made my day. And I suppose if you eat a delicious meal at a restaurant you're not going to give your compliments to the chef every single time. Still, in light of this month's storyline it's interesting how much my relationship with the site's readers is like having a relationship with God. You can't see him, you can't touch him, you only know through a handful of texts that you're doing what he wants you to do - but you believe that he exists, you take it on faith that he's there and he's on your side. Actually, it's more like being a scientist who runs 100 experiments but only gets the results back on six of them. And all those results support the scientist's theory so from that he has to just assume he's a good scientist. No, wait. It's really like being a stand-up comedian - except the audience are in the next room and whilst they can hear the jokes you can't hear the laughter and you don't even know if people are walking out of the comedy club. What I'm trying to say is I appreciate it when you take the time out to applaud and the more often you do that the better indication I get of what I'm doing right. And then the stand-up routine improves for everybody! Thanks very much, I'm here all week. You've been a great audience... I think. Tip your waitress. We're number 390. Not as good as 'Cat's Grace' but still better than 'Rockin' with the Erock'. Wha? Indeed Another New Strip Posted 12:43 (GMT) 18th July 2007 Friday is the day upon which Ice Cube may well hit the highway on the Vegas run, the night upon which everything is popping. Friday is the day the Cure fall in love. And it's the day Steely Dan collects everything that he is owed, and indeed the day is Black. More importantly, Friday is the day we update for the third time this week. Feast your eyes on this! I have also taken the liberty, sir, of updating the Archives page. What with our erratic update schedule, you may well have missed one. Easy to check with this handy numbered list! Don't say I never do nothing for you. I still remember the day I made the archives page, because it forced me to come up with names for each strip. I had always hated the convention of naming each page and vowed I would be different, but the best laid plans of mice and midgets etc. etc. each strip has a quirky little name. You can have fun reading down the list of strip names and watch them go through phases. At first they are all very descriptive, then they gradually become more abstract and eccentric until finally, at about number 80, two strip names together form a quotation from Oscar Wilde - and those two strips are not next to each other on the list, either. That is some Da Vinci Code shit right there. Another, about 50 strips ago, is a description of Kingyo's penis. Looking back, I don't think the names add anything - except a terrifying insight into the author's demented train of thought at the time of writing. Still, jolly useful nonetheless. Also, the time has come to begin worshipping Neil Patrick Harris as a god. Observe. Another New Strip Posted 18:24 (GMT) 16th July 2007 Wassup, people! It's Wednesday, and you know that means another strip. Because we are updating on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule this week there will be another update on Friday! See you then. If you want to stay up-to-date with the strip even when it's updating frantically, you can always subscribe to or bookmark the Fourth Floor Twitter feed. Between now and then, I would appreciate if you voted for us on Buzzcomix or Top Webcomics because it helps raise awareness for the site. And now would be an ideal time to recommend the strip to friends, since we're updating so much. I knew I could count on you guys. Peace out, see you Friday. We're number 402. Not as good as 'Tweep' but still better than 'Singularity Blues'.
Miscarriage of Justice Posted 14:36 (GMT) 14th July 2007 For those hitherto unaware, there is a new strip up as promised. This week we are running a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule because a) It is the holidays b) I am behind and c) I love you all but don't get used to it, I struggle to update once a week during the lean Autumn and Winter months. Let's see if I can work ahead after we catch up again. Anyway, enough of this blasted shop talk. Has anyone been reading Ctrl+Alt+Del or however you're supposed to pronounce it lately? What the hell has happened there? It's been a while since I ranted futilely about Tim Buckley's shortcomings but I have focused in the past on his biggest flaw, the hopelessly derivative nature of his work. It seems since then he has developed a whole new flaw - horribly down-beat drama. Allow me to elaborate. Actually, before I do I'll stop myself. I've criticised Buckley for writing about the same topic as another writer and (accidentally?) writing the same material. So, full disclosure, I've watched Yahtzee's critique of webcomics and found it very funny. I suggest you go away and watch that before hearing what I have to say. He basically covers all of the main points here, definitively, forever. This is a seminal work of Buckley-bashing which will shape all future works. I prostrate myself before him. He has cut to the very heart of the matter - the ease with which Buckley does what he does, his refusal to accept criticism in any way and the eccentric and charismatic author-insertion persona who behaves like an idiot/jackass and is loved by everyone nonetheless. It's all there, it all fits, it sings. Since Yahtzee never actually mentions Ctrl+Alt+Del I fear I might be giving the game away. However, he does at one point mention "Bontrol-Bolt-Belete" so perhaps I'm not spoiling anything for you. He also says this: "Let's say, for sake of example, that you're sick of making Companion Cube jokes, and suddenly do a serious storyline about your female character having a miscarriage. Obviously, you'd need to have several blood clots in your brain to think this is a good idea; you're established as a wacky humour comic, so this is going to be an awkward tonal shift at best, and hugely disrespectful of the subject matter at worst." You might have guessed that this is exactly what has happened in Ctrl+Alt+Del. And I have to agree with Ben Croshaw on this one, it's an incredibly stupid move. Now for my thoughts. I'd be lying if I said the storyline hadn't affected me. I know people who have had miscarriages. I think even people who have never had children can understand to a certain extent the excitement and anticipation of pregnancy and how a miscarriage represents those hopes being crushed. We all get it. And so I was touched on an emotional level - even though I don't give a shit about any of the characters in Ctrl+Alt+Del. It's not my fault, I've never been given a reason to care about them, Tim has no idea how to write sympathetic characters. Still, this storyline got to me, not because it was well written but because I am a human being. Which makes me feel a little used and manipulated. I was thinking "What? This is how we're going to play it, Buckley? Miscarriages?" It's just mawkish. You feel dirty for being made to care about these characters by a writer going for the lowest-common-denominator tragedy. And that's what this is; the equivalent of winning a fight by kicking the other guy in the balls and running away. Yes, you've succeeded but you really shouldn't have had to go there to do so. And this whole pregnancy story arc felt like an after-thought anyway, like Tim rushed into it. One second, it's stupid jokes about glue and plans for a wedding, the next - BOOM - pregnancy. At the risk of sounding like a broken record I will point out the fact that February is the month PvP's wedding storyline got into full swing. I'm not saying it's related, I'm just saying. Anyway, because of its awkward pacing Ctrl+Alt+Del's pregnancy was never treated with any real emotional gravitas until it ended. And even now, in the aftermath, characters are working through their emotional problems in a way which does not equate to real human behaviour. In any way. In my years of reading Ctrl+Alt+Del I've noticed a tendency for Tim Buckley to rigorously apply logic to any human interaction. Two characters will argue, one will deliver an impassioned speech and the other will respond by pointing out exactly why that is illogical... and thus somehow win the argument. Defeated, the angry character will exclaim "Logic... my anger's mortal enemy." Or some such bullshit. Have you ever heard anyone say that? Yes, it's meant to be a punch line but a few weeks before that the punch line was a dead baby - now we're supposed to be in the realms of real human suffering. But instead, it's emotion being overcome by logic, drama for Vulcans. But we all know in our hearts that this rings false. Emotions cannot be rationalised, passion defies reason by definition. Whatever logic the head contributes, the heart will over-ride it. Heated arguments are never about who can provide the most reasoned response but about who can shout the loudest because that's the way humans work. Tim Buckley... just doesn't get us. I can't avoid the feeling that he would prefer us to all act like the emotionless robot character. I would argue therefore that he really has no business writing about miscarriages. And now it looks as if Lilah might be breaking off the engagement. I'll try not to roll my eyes. That's a nice message to send out to couples going through these kinds of problems - yeah, life doesn't really go on following a tragedy. But really, if anyone is going through something as sad as this in real life, are they really going to want to read about it in Ctrl+Alt+Del of all places, a strip which in between installments of a storyline about a dead foetus treats us to a one-off 'gag' about a man being rendered sterile? So... he can't have a kid either. Nice. No, not nice. That's just psychotic. What the fuck is he thinking? And really, if Lilah does break off the engagement over this it will be biggest plot hole ever, since she's managed to put up with her fiancee acting like a complete douche in every single previous strip. It's a retcon, really. Like I said before, he just doesn't get us. Which makes me wonder why I read Ctrl+Alt+Del at all. Why do I torture myself like this? Why do I keep coming back to a strip I don't find funny, one which is so badly written as to make me question whether the writer has ever spoken to people in real life? I think I read it because I still have hope, hope that it can improve. I get the impression he's trying, somewhat desperately, to make his strip work on a real emotional level, even if it's handled with all the delicacy and precision of a gorilla performing brain surgery with an electric shaver. As I said before, I've ranted in the past about how unoriginal Tim Buckley is. Well be careful what you wish for because this car crash of a storyline is Tim Buckley trying to be original. It is original, I'll give him that. But only because no cartoonist in their right mind would ever do this. At least, not this way. See you on Wednesday. We're number 413. Not as good as 'Used Books' but still better than 'Within Shadows'. "My Name is... Ovenready!" Posted 15:58 (GMT) 12th July 2007 Just to show off, I have completed another strip and it is awesome. I tried updating once every other day in June to catch up but it nearly killed me and I ended up back where I started so forget that. For the next two or three weeks we are on a tri-weekly Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule until the date matches that shown in the archives. I'm not sure which is more disgraceful, that I managed to get in this mess in the first place or that it has taken me this long to rectify it. For those interested, I have a Twitter thingy which will tell you what I'm doing as it happens, including when I'm updating the strip. Should be useful considering the majority of my readers live in another time zone. Why Ovenready? Well, it's a funny story. About six years ago I was registering for something and all of my usual usernames had already been taken so I just typed in the first word that came into my head, one relating to chicken. Because it's so useful, it's sort of stuck as my handle. It just happens to be a re |
What
the Hell is a WaMu Anyway?
