Posted 06:19 (GMT) 12th August 2007 by David J. Bishop

Am I going to be that guy? You see these people, these amateur cartoonists who are or were huge fans of Scott Kurtz ranting impotently on their little websites about what a jackhole he is, and how wrong he is. It'll start with "This week Kurtz said..." and what will follow is a horribly warped version of what the man said, taken in the worst possible light, which will ultimately veer into "Well, sir, I disagree!" territory before finally disintegrating into a character assassination of Scott himself, the original point long forgotten.

And that leaves me thinking, "Who are you? Who the hell are you to argue with Scott Kurtz, or to think you're arguing with him, when in fact he will never read what you have put? And why would he listen to a string of fat jokes punctuated intermittently with semi-coherent points anyway? Who are you to touch the hem of his robe?"

Indeed, who are these people? Well, it's obvious. They're people who didn't know you could have cartoons on the internet until they were twelve years old and a friend told them about PvP and they met the characters and fell in love with them and read through the archives and laughed and cherished each month of strips like a favourite episode of The Simpsons, all the time thinking "Who is this Scott Kurtz fellow? He must be a wonderful man!"

When people come into the world of webcomics they are innocent and Scott Kurtz is there like St Peter at the gates of Heaven, holding the key to an endless supply of free entertainment. And although they finish the archives they still come back every day to check the website for new content and then they discover other comics and read their archives. And they may find one they like better than PvP, their tastes may develop to the extent that they find themselves drawn to a completely different genre and style of comic, but there is still a place in their heart where PvP is special. Before they discovered webcomics they were children... and Scott was Dad.

But then they stumble upon some other cartoonist complaining about being rubbed the wrong way by Kurtz and that guy refers to another incident on another forum and they innocently follow the link and then before they know it they've been plunged into a world they never knew existed. Here's a shining example from some guy called Bobby 'Fake Name' Tangents:

"I've long disliked Herr Kurtz and his lackeys. He's grandiose and egotistical at the best of times, and his comic never dragged me in... Ignore him. He's not worth your time or effort."

He says the comic never dragged him in (like some sort of cartoon siren) but of course it did. These haters are all people who worshipped Scott Kurtz but at some point became disillusioned. And that love curdled to anger and bitterness. And the innocent Scott Kurtz fans read the one-sided second-hand accounts of Scott's tyranny and say to themselves, "Wait, I worship Scott Kurtz too! Will a day come when I hate him?" and they read on and think "No, Scott would never say that. He would never do that." But he did. Scott Kurtz said that. He did do it. And suddenly they start running around the internet like they've just been unplugged from the Matrix, as if they're finally seeing the world the way it truly is. "Woah!" the cry. "Scott Kurtz is an asshole!"

Before Scott Kurtz was perfect, a benevolent source of comedy gold and now he's a towering ego on legs. But this isn't true. Scott Kurtz is just a passionate man who cares so deeply about comics that he never pulls punches and refuses to compromise on his beliefs - not because he's a jackass but because he loves cartoons. He's a man who just wants to tell the truth as he sees it and doesn't have time to dress it up or sugar coat it. And that's all he ever was - a man. He's not perfect, he's just human. He's as flawed and messed-up and insecure as we all are. His only crime is saying things which, taken out of context, make him sound like a dick. And that's why the haters hate him. They're not justified, they're just disillusioned. Because there's nothing worse than finding out your father isn't perfect. There's nothing worse than finding out your hero is human.

Scott should not take the adolescent tantrums to heart. Because adolescence is a time to rebel against the father-figures, a time to lash out at authority. I'm sorry to say I myself went through a similar period of disillusionment, but you move on. You graduate. You grow up. I learnt some valuable lessons from my time as a teenage Scott Kurtz hater. I learnt that forums are a breeding ground for ignorance and that if you want to know who a man truly is, you must listen to his podcast.

So I'm emphasising how much I respect Scott Kurtz, I'm deliberately trying to separate myself from the rabid idiots and hateful children that normally write indignant rebuttals to Scott's new posts. Why? Because this week he wrote about the insular nature of webcartoonists and ignoring criticism and I have an indignant rebuttal to make. I will try to deconstruct the argument rather than the man. Because I'm not that guy.

I can't reproduce the entire argument here so I'll just give you the gist. Scott talks about reading a review of his book How to Make Webcomics, a review which criticised the book for encouraging artists not to listen to critics. The critic said: "In other words, he doesn't think the critics are right." Scott said:

"All of the progress I’ve made in my work, be it writing or art, was accomplished through getting it wrong the first time. My father always told me that the first brush stroke will never be perfect. There’s only so much you can learn from reading books on writing or art theory. You have to create and get your hands dirty and see what works. You have to take risks and you have to fail."

And he goes on to talk about experimenting in the public eye, trying things out knowing they could well be a mistake - and trying them anyway because the alternative is playing it safe. His point, as I grasped it, is that cartoonists have to innovate and not care what people think, to throw everything at the wall and decide as an artistic community what sticks. Scott can judge a new colouring style in Penny Arcade to be good - as a fellow artist and a friend - but fans cannot. "Ultimately, we can’t chart our course based on what our readership or critics thinks is working. We have to go with our gut."

"And that’s why", Scott concludes, "there is no chapter in our book on when to accept that, sometimes, the critic is right."

Well, sir, I disagree! I think Scott, bless his heart, has confused criticism from a malcontented fanbase and criticism as the body of literature exploring the nature and history of art, and I think that this is the same mistake the critic reviewing Scott's book made. When Scott uses the word 'critic' he's talking about people e-mailing you and telling you that you suck or that you should change something back to the way it was before. When the critic uses the word 'critic' she's talking about, well, herself - or Roger Ebert, or English Literature students writing pages of literary criticism about Dickens.

And I accept that you have to give yourself permission to be bad at first and improve later. I mean, just compare my first five strips with my last five - the line art used to be really squiggly, Michael's nose keeps changing shape, the characters keep looking at the camera as if to say "That's the punch line, folks!" and the girls just look weird. You stop noticing it after a while but when I glance at those earlier strips it's really quite jarring. But I had to have the stones to make those strips in the first place and put them up on the site, to be just another sucky comic until I stopped (or will stop). And so I didn't let the fear of being bad paralyse me - all the progress I've made was accomplished through getting it wrong the first time. But I wouldn't have improved without critics.

For the first year of the strip all I heard was that I was drawing the breasts wrong. You guys never saw this but the first proper comic strip I ever drew was for my school paper when I was, um, 14? 15? And that had the first human girl I ever drew in it. Up until that point, I had just been drawing animals and dudes. So even though I've been drawing for nearly 22 years, I've only been drawing women for seven of those. And I sucked, ladies and gentlemen. I sucked big time. But by the time I started Life on the Fourth Floor I thought I'd settled on a style of drawing ladies that worked rather well. It was a matter of some pride for me. And it looked like this:

Urgh. And the stupid thing is, people told me it looked weird. It does. Why do they have boobs coming out the side of their bodies, they asked. They criticised me. And I didn't listen. They were wrong. This wasn't bad art, this was just my style. I was trying to have each character finished in as few lines as possible, with as little detail as possible. Hair could be a blank mass sitting at the top of the head, boobs would be a single line that hints at a boob. I didn't let the critics get to me, I soldiered on.

But they were right! God damn it, they were right. I tried to fight it but this style wasn't working! I was older now, I had a girlfriend. I had had time to study female anatomy (if you know what I mean and I think you do). I couldn't stick with the same art style I used in the school paper, when I couldn't even talk to girls! So, in the words of Marvin the Martian, it was back to the old drawing board. I reworked the character design. I even went back through the archives, modifying each strip to incorporate the new design. And the result was this:

Getting better. There's a degree of depth to the characters now, they look 3D. See, before I thought that if I spent hours drawing boobs over and over again that would make me some kind of pervert, but when the alternative is women with square foreheads, 2D boobs and no eyebrows you've just got to bite the bullet and be a pervert. So, to reiterate, people criticised my cartoon, I fought it, realised they were right, and improved.

The art still wasn't quite right. I'd grasped that women had different jaw-lines to men, that Amy and Charlotte couldn't have square mannish jaws but getting their cartoonishly large mouths to fit into the new face-shape was difficult so their chins ended up looking long and thin sometimes - but overall I was happy with the improvement. But then people started complaining again. Charlotte has square boobs, they said. Why does Charlotte have square boobs? They look square. Why come they so square?

What? They're not square, I thought to myself. She's just wearing a bra. How ridiculous. And that's what I told myself - the character design was just fine now. I'd worked hard, I'd reworked the archives but finally Charlotte looked how she was supposed to look. And that's what I told myself as I drifted off to sleep. Then one night I sat bolt upright in bed, dripping with sweat, screaming. And it took me a second to realise what I was screaming because I had just woken up. The words were "Oh my God, they are square!"

So then the character design became this:

And David saw the new character design and thought that it was good. The chin isn't as pointy, the hair is better - the boobs have been redesigned to incorporate the elements I liked best about the original design. People had complained of the old design - critics to a man - that Charlotte's breasts were not just square but too big. Considering the whole gimmick with Charlotte and Amy's relationship was that Amy had nightmarishly improbable proportions, Charlotte was quite generously endowed herself. But I couldn't make them smaller - I'd tried that but they looked too small in proportion to her head, she looked like a lollipop. But then I realised that I'd drawn her waist too small - as soon as the proportions were fixed, suddenly she looked better. For the first time Charlotte actually looked pretty. And that was always my intention, that was always my point - no matter who you perceive to be more attractive than yourself, you're beautiful just the way you are. It's not a point that lends itself well to ugly character design.

And that's really the problem I had with what Scott said. If your attitude is 'critics are always wrong' you might as well say 'all people with hats are wrong'. I don't have a lot of time for professional critics and I don't like it when amateur critics point out flaws without being invited to do so. But when they're right, they're right. It doesn't matter who says it - even if that person is the world's biggest jacktard. If an evil bastard says you should donate to charity it doesn't automatically become wrong. Remember Hitler was a vegetarian; that doesn't mean vegetarianism is evil.

It boils down to philosophy. The fact is, the truth exists. It's real and it's out there. It's not all relative, it's not in the eye of the beholder. It's pure, it's real and it's absolute. The definition of knowledge is a belief with enough evidence to justify it that also happens to be true. When people believe in God it's not knowledge because there isn't enough evidence to justify that belief - so it's just a belief. But that doesn't mean it's not true. Bearing this in mind, let's the say the truth is that your character has square boobs. You believe she does not. Someone else believes she does. It doesn't matter who believes what - it doesn't matter which of those people is an artist and which of them is a critic, one of those people is right and the other is wrong, end of story. Even if the person who thinks the boobs are square is the world's biggest moron with absolutely no evidence to support their claim, no justification, it doesn't make what they think any less true.

You know in your heart that it's true. The boobs are square. You can try to argue, you can justify yourself until the cows come home, you can run, you can hide. But you know the boobs are square. You drew them square. All the arguing in the world isn't going to make the truth false.

The rule of thumb should be 'critics are always wrong... unless they happen to be right'. Because statistically it's bound to happen sooner or later. You have to listen to your critics, all of them. Listening is not the same as unconditionally obeying. Other people have come along with other complaints about the strip which I disagreed with because their comments rang false. You always have to be like a prospector, sifting through water for a nugget of gold. In order to sift, you must first listen.

But that's listening to critics. Listening to fans is a different story altogether. The charming men and women who have e-mailed me about LotFF have all been clever, awesome people. What I'm saying now is not based on personal experience of dealing with a fanbase. But fans in general, as a species, those strange creatures that cluster around a body of work and cling to it are a dangerous bunch. They will defend you to the death, they will dress up as your characters, they will write their own fiction in which their two favourite characters make out. Some of them will develop their own ideas of what your work should be and then pretend that huge chunks of your story didn't happen if it contradicts this. They will ask you to service them with pictures of your characters in the bath. You don't have to listen to everything they say - that's why the seventh Harry Potter novel didn't have a scene in which Draco wore leather trousers or a scene in which Snape and Hermione did the horizontal wand duel. Yes, listening to fans all the time is certainly not going to help you innovate.

But criticism is a different story. The first rant I ever wrote was called 'In Defence of Criticism', but really it was a defence of drama - a nebulous term used within the 'community' whenever egos clash. The assumption amongst most fans and creators is that if one cartoonist criticises another he's just attention-seeking, he's just being petulant - impudent, even - and he should be ignored. The validity of his comments is moot. That first rant was my attempt to fight against that viewpoint, criticism is good, I said. Bring it.

Perfect example of this 'drama' phenomenon: I did a parody of Misfile. The parody strip is here and you can scroll down for the news post that came with it. This was mean-minded fault-finding, I won't deny. My critique was neither fair nor balanced, it ignored all of the comic's good points and the overall tone was vitriolic, perhaps even juvenile. But the purpose of this site is first and foremost to entertain. So forget fair, I was going for funny. Anyway, I had no reason to be nice to Chris Hazelton, I didn't know him. I had read his comic and found it deeply annoying for a number of reasons, in the same way I found X-men 3 annoying for a number of reasons. It's nothing personal (except with the whole Halle Berry thing - that is personal).

What I didn't know at the time was that one of my readers had posted a link to the parody in the Misfile forums. And when this fact had been brought to my attention, I found that I had inadvertently whipped the rabid fanbase into a frenzy. And unleashed a megaton of zealous hatred, it seemed. I said 'Bring it'. They brought it.

I am still convinced to this day that Misfile sucks. The two main reasons, which I didn't include in my attack - I actually went easy on the guy - are that Misfile is a transgender comic and it contains a lot of fan service. And those two sort of go hand in hand. First one - it's a transgender comic. Some guy called Ash gets turned into a girl through the magic of phlebotinum. This is actually quite common in Japanese cartoons and even though Chris Hazelton isn't Japanese, I really like 18th-century literature and I'm not 300 years old so we'll let it go.

Even more conveniently, the only way for Ash to (eventually) turn back is to play along and do girly things like shopping for bras and fondling him/herself. And no matter what, no matter how far away Ash is drawn, no matter what level of detail the rest of him/her is drawn in, you can always see his or her nipples through his or her clothing. All the girls are drawn with maximum cleavage or suggestive shirt ripples showing, always posing in a way that best shows off their curves. That would be the fanservice I talked about before. The fans in this case, judging by what I read in the forum, are people suffering from varying cases of gender identity disorder. For some reason or other they consider themselves to have internal genders at odds with their exterior plumbing, as it were. They see Ash muddling along trying to live a certain life when he's different on the inside and their hearts go out to him. I can't really speak to that. I'm not saying these people weren't born the wrong gender, I'm just saying I don't understand it. I mean, who's to say what a man or woman should be anyway? If I cry watching Forrest Gump, does that mean I'm really a girl inside? I quite like going shopping. How much shopping is too much before you're officially a woman? Does the whole thing hang on how good at opening jars you are?

Anyway, I find the whole concept behind Misfile deeply sexist, both as an exploration into what it means to be 'male' or 'female' and as an excuse to draw nipples. And even though I personally think they're barking up the wrong tree, some of these hard-core transgender fans have built their whole identities around Chris Hazelton's comic. And then someone showed them my parody. Rock, meet wasps' nest. Wasps' nest, rock.

First came the dismissals - I was just jealous therefore it didn't count, I was just being petulant therefore it didn't count, none of them had ever heard of my little comic therefore it didn't count - these I expected. Of course, it didn't make anything I had to say any less true - because no matter what quarter it comes from the truth is the truth.

Second came the accusations that I just wanted attention, even though I no more wanted this attention than I wanted the attention of ravenous wolves. This is where the word 'drama' cropped up.

Thirdly came the counter-arguments, which were mostly just "he's wrong because his is" written enough times in as many different ways as it took to convince them (and me) that I was wrong. But I rallied.

Fourth came counter-nit-picking which was borderline doublethink. I said that Chris's Welsh character didn't sound anything like a real Welshman. Anyone who has ever heard a Welsh accent will agree. The facts are there, Welsh people don't drop the t's from the ends of words. All through my childhood up until I was 12 we spent every holiday in Wales. Take it from me - I know. Just type 'Welsh accent' into Youtube if you don't believe me. Someone tried to argue that Welsh people do drop the t's and who was I to say they didn't? How do you argue with that? Those are the kind of mental gymnastics a sane person cannot perform.

Fifth was the declaration that I was just stirring up trouble (I was) and that I should be ignored.

Then there was the character assassination. Someone had dug through my site and read enough of my news posts to convince themselves that I was an Imperialist. I don't know how they managed that. Anyway, I'm not. I hate Imperialism. My favourite song is called 'Take Down the Union Jack', for God's sake. Someone's been watching The Patriot too many times. Racist much?

Then came the devastating attack, you know the kind. Someone says something small that is at once unexpected and heart-breaking. You get that winded feeling like all the breath has been knocked out of your body and suddenly you're six years old again and someone's kicked over your sand castle. Yes, then began the "How can he criticise when his comic is so awful?" argument. And it's a flawed argument, too, because like I said before Hitler was a vegetarian. It doesn't matter how bad my comic is, it doesn't automatically make what I have to say any less true, it doesn't magically change the linguistic make-up of Wales.

So, my attitude was that these people weren't being logical, they weren't being fair, they weren't even being coherent. They were being assholes. And regular readers will know I'm quite an asshole myself, so imagine how much worse these guys had to be. I didn't have to listen to their criticism right?

Wrong. I listened. Even though it hurt like knives made out of frozen lemon juice to the heart I listened carefully as they mercilessly tore my comic strip a new arse. Every flaw was not just pointed out but held aloft like a human heart in an Aztec sacrifice. "Here's why we don't have to listen to him!" they screamed. "He sucks!" And I listened to everything they said, because criticism is good.

Worst moment? This guy dug around the site and found an old picture of Amy and posted it on the forum:

By this point Amy was on her third redesign and I was finally happy with how she looked. Perhaps not in this picture, but in general I was happy with how she looked. This guy in the forum said he couldn't quite put his finger on why but there was something not right about the design. He said she looked like a man in a wig. And when a fucking transgender fetishist says your character looks mannish you sit up and listen. What hurt the most was that he was right. He was right! As happy as I had been before with the character design there was something off about it.

I just wanted to cry. But then, would it have made any difference if my mother had pointed this out? Or if God had come to me in a dream and said "Dude, your girl cartoons look like drag queens." Like I said before, the truth is always the truth no matter who tells it. Hitler was a vegetarian.

So, back to the drawing board. What was wrong with the design, what had always been wrong with it? I had tried drawing the breasts and the bodies and the faces differently every time and people were still finding fault. Something about the design was still a 21-year-old technique for drawing men shoehorned into a 6-year-old technique for drawing women (this was a year ago). What was wrong with it?

And then it hit me. Ears. Ears! It was the ears! Why could you see their ears? I'd never noticed it before but in the vast majority of cases, a woman's hair covers her ears. All this time I had been drawing the hair wrong. And really, why was I drawing it as a weird blob? It wasn't a wig, it was soft scoop ice cream! Ha-ha! In your face, Misfile fan!

And so I looked at some photographs, took a long hard look at how a woman's hair really behaves and came up with this:

Her hair is in a real style with the same level of detail as the male characters, her ears are covered so she no longer looks like a dude and her face shape is slightly different - no more big-ass pointy chin. This is how Amy always looked in my head and her character design finally fits in with that. For now, anyway.

Now, don't get me wrong. That guy in the forum was still being a dick but I can't help but feel grateful to him, because even though his logic was faulty and his punctuation was poor he inspired me to improve my comic. Now, if people had written to me and complained that my innovation was crappy and they liked Amy the way she was before it would have been a different story - and I think that is the kind of criticism vs. innovation Scott was talking about. And I know he believes in listening to criticism and running it through you personal filter too because he said so, so he was just being hyperbolic. But the way he phrased it - "Do not take into account the possibility that critics are ever right." - made me respond. Because if it wasn't for criticism I never would have innovated in the first place. And the most delicious part is that if I hadn't criticised Misfile to begin with, I would never have heard their criticism of me! And did Chris Hazelton listen to me? I don't know. If I had to guess I would say not because his comic still sucks. That's not a nice thing to say but this isn't about being nice this is about getting better.

Most of the milestones in Life on the Fourth Floor's development have come about as a direct response to criticism. Better yet, those comments have helped me train my inner critic so I can look at my strip and see exactly what is wrong with it. But I'm only one guy - I'm so deeply immersed in the work I'll never be able to step back and see the biggest flaws.

So, this is my message to all cartoonists everywhere: always listen to critics. No matter how stupid they are, listen well. Because one day a critic's going to come along who tells you just what you need to hear. Because criticism is good. And Hitler was a vegetarian.

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