how many of these blobos can you name? (this is engagement bait btw. i hope it works 😉 )

Book Review: A history of webcomics by T Campbell, 2006.

This book is free to rent on the Internet Archive right now! Don’t download this out-of-print book from Anna’s Archive, that would be illegal.

A contemporary review of the book can be found on Fleen (original blog) (IA), and it makes an interesting companion piece to this blog. This review is largely negative, focuses on mistakes, and is clearly written by an reviewer as familiar with the topic as Campbell is. I think these mistakes are important, but this review won’t focus on these.

I am not Fleen. I was reading webcomics in 2006, but am not intimately familiar with the topics this book tackles. We are now almost 20 years removed from this History of Webcomics. And there’s been a couple of changes in that time. The book opens with calling 1993-2005 a Golden age. If one were telling the history of webcomics today, would this era be more a footnote? Maybe the value in this book will be to prove this is a time worth remembering. I don’t know.

Let’s get reading!

The b00k spends 2 pages explaining the history of nerdc0re, and ends it with this legendary comic page in complete earnest. Its worth remembering the times before irony poisoning. Forget irony poisoning! Forget it! And enjoy a classic! Here it is!

Does anyone here speak L337?

The book spends A LOT of time on Scott McCloud, of course. This is your invitation to re-read Choose Your Own Carl. It spends a lot of time on Dilbert, on Sluggy Freelance, on User Friendly and a drama involving hotlinking User Friendly comic strips. It keeps returning to this Nerdcore idea, which feels so dated, but I… I don’t think its an inaccurate description of this millennial zeitgeist, even if we’d use ruder words for it today.

It feels like its taken a while to get to the Gamer comics, the comics we’d most associate with this era today. PVP and Penny Arcade are most talked about, with a large section dedicate to the flame wars Kurtz of PVP would get into. Infamous webcomic CAD only gets a passing mention, in the same sentence as several other comics such as Real Life, which are both comics whose reputations have diverged significantly.

Characters from the websites Keenspot and Modern tales face off.

TWO PWNED L0Z3R5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The comic discussed platforms and businesses for several pages. Maybe interesting, but these are the same concerns all netizens are still facing. If you’re familiar with the encroach of capitalism on the web, you know the shape of this discussion.

When webcomics try to form collectives and unions, its worth pointing out there’s a turbulent history there. People will learn from experience, I suppose. The turbulence is platforms vs users, humans vs capital, and the natural interpersonal conflicts we all navigate. These don’t go away easily with time and change.

oh shit campbells on about the N3RDC0R3 again

There’s a section in here about Furry comics. I genuinely think some furries might find these pages interesting, even as they mostly litigate what are ongoing flame wars. “Is furry porn ethical” is touched upon, but it presents the phase “Furverts“. There’s some jargon for you. Never say I don’t do anything for my furry readers.

From the Furry section the book transitions into a brief discussion of adult webcomics. Furries and adult media were already heavily associated lol. Although the book doesn’t mention any adult comic by name except the paysite Slipshine. Lol there’s a short mention of Paypal dicking over adult comic makers. Paypal hasn’t changed, but you need to be pretty new around these parts not to know Paypal has always sucked.

The Ice Queen. Joe Zabel often uses 3D figures created in poser to startling effect

CHAPTER SEVEN: MONEY MATTERS AND
THE MODERN WEBCOMIC
There is no webcomics industry. There is no large commercial exchange of
webcomics. There are [only] a handful of people making anything more than
extra spending money from their webcomics.
—Scott Kurtz, 2005°”
I do webcomics as a hobby—I don’t do it to gain fame or popularity or earn
money, and it feels like too many artists are doing webcomics for the wrong
reasons. All I say is, I believe webcomics should be done for enjoyment and not
for money or fame.
—Space Coyote of Saturnalia, 2005°"*
Rare is the artist who cares nothing for success, i.e., survival! But [that] ideal is
alive in the hearts of many artists who may hope for success, but won't alter their
work to obtain it.
—Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics?”
Four of my favorite online cartoonists are Patrick Farley, Cayetano Garza, David
Gaddis and Mark Martin; and I can tell you with certainty (‘cause I know these
guys) that if their sites could support them financially, they'd be posting 5 times
as often! And so would |, for that matter.
—Scott McCloud in J Can’t Stop Thinking?”

Above: Ctri+Alt+Del sold out of its first printing before the first customer received his first book.

Space Coyote, AKA Nina Matsumoto, has absolutely turned her art hobby into a career. I’m familiar with her work. I wonder how she feels about these statements now. It doesn’t matter what this one random person thinks, I suppose. But its interesting.

The talk of monetization is also extremely obsolete. There’s talk of marketable plushies and print editions: yes. But there’s a lot of wondering if “donation drives” will ever work out. Can a comic be crowdfunded? is a question the book seems in doubt about, when we know the answer in current year is a resounding Yes.

It briefly mentions the feeling of being nickel-and-dimed, which is something I do feel. With so many patreons around, all with ever increasing price floors, supporting your fave artist feels more expensive then ever. I get that we’re in a cost of living crisis. We all are. The readers, too. Not that I don’t have a list of ppl im supporting – but this individualist pricing structure has its limitations. Support government funding for the arts, now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There’s also a lot of words on advertising, a venture in which the price floor has lowered considerably over the years. A modest page can’t get a nice chunk of pocket change with advertising alone any more – and the adverting nowadays raises massive privacy issues. Download ublock origin, now!!!!!!!!!

Not that webcomics remained breeders-only. Manga traditions had loosened up American preconceptions here, too; manga had genres specifically for gays and lesbians,
and even its mainstream showed widespread acceptance. More than one well-known
manga (Ranma ,
Futaba-Kun Change,
Sailor Moon) featured a
boy who spontaneously
changes genders. 
‘“Transgendering”
found its way into
webcomics like E/
Goonish Shive, where the
gender-switching was
similarly arbitrary, and
Venus Envy, which dealt
with real
transsexuality.’’”> Merely
gay characters were
relatively populous. Gay
authors were usually
positive or matter-of-fact
about being gay, so
Justine Shaw’s brutal
honesty startled the
field—but soon attracted
it. 
Naturally, gays, like women, found certain genres friendlier than others. True
gay-bashing was extremely rare, but most nerdcore and gamer strips either featured jokes
about heterosexual men doubting themselves or avoided the subject altogether. They
were under no obligation, of course, so long as other genres were there to pick up the
slack. In certain matters of faith, though, almost no one seemed willing to step up. 
EI Goonish Shive, above,
explores identity with
magical, temporary
gender-swaps, while
Venus Envy, right, tells a
more down-to-earth
story of a transsexual.

Nothing to add here, I just thought some readers might want to read about ‘transgendering’

There’s more to read, about race in webcomics and class in webcomics. Remember to not download this book from Anna’s Archive if you want to read all about it.

Although the book mentions bigotries in webcomics, I think remembering that webcomics always tackled progressive issues is something worth remembering and celebrating.

Exhibit of webcomics alternate futures past. including world domination, micropayments, and artificial intelligence.

hm

The future.

Did this book from 2006 predict the future?

Shifting hierarchy: This book predicts new comics will replace old mainstays. A very safe prediction, and one that is absolutely and obviously true.

Decentralization and DIY: I think the book unfortunately got this one wrong. But the future it predicts seems more rosy that the reality we got. Webcomics are almost exclusively on platforms now, as are most netizens. That’s not to say decentralization and DIY have completely fallen by the wayside, and are usually where the most interesting webcomics, if not the most successful, exist right now.

Short-form as a vanguard, long-form in development: Short comics continue to be shared and spread most on social media, as short form content is just more shareable. One-offs are just as likely to do numbers as shortform strips from a bigger comic.

Techno-art: Stagnation tbh, as art becomes #content for #platforms. Nothing wrong with PNGs, ain’t broke. Although I think new web technologies are increasing potential out there.

Generation One. Cartoonists who had grown up with the Web joined the field and began to change its aesthetic from the inside out: Yes, true.

Organic ties to readers: ok…

Demographic expansion: Other web media took some of webcomics attention. The audience for webcomics is no doubt larger, but that same audience has more web multimedia taking their attention. This is a good thing

The elite reader. For good and for ill, webcomics’ own creators and their biggest
fans exerted a disproportionate share of influence on their surrounding culture. Criticism
was difficult and fan-service was easy.
I’m not sure what the prediction here is, but uhhh,,,, true?????????

An industry in embryo: There’s more money in webcomics today compared to 2005. True I guess.

The book also proposes six broad scenarios for comics future. The sixth one is the web vanishing completely. Could still happen. Of all of them, “the expanding long tail” scenario is the most pressing and accurate. It predicts a move to platforms, who aggregate the efforts of artists into large platforms for themselves. It also proposes a scenario where webcomics remain populist and serve the lowest common denominator: an anxiety still expressed.

WHATS THE REVIEW, POINDEXTER???????????

pic goes hard, who drew it.

This pic that goes hard was on page 108 of the PDF. I’m lost in the credits.

from the bookcore

this is da nerdcore

its got L337

like a elite

comics

bcomics

the internet

moar liek teh splinternet

anyway heres this classic by beanytuesday

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pokemon

The story is simple and for children, and pretty much The Plot of every merch-driven narrative. The evil new Team Rocket has stolen all the Pokemon Cards and kidnapped the strongest card players, can you rescue the cards and the strongest card players?

English Patch Overview

You don’t need to play the first game to get into this. The English Patch is extremely highly recommended, as NPCs share hints and several fights require speciality decks.

The fan translation is extremely organic sounding and high quality, although it’s translator admits they don’t know Japanese that well. It is what’s called nowadays a Machina Translation Post-Editing effort, with the machine translation used being over a decade old. It could even be considered a rewrite rather than an extremely accurate translation. But MTPE or rewrite, the translation is extremely good, reads naturally, and contains all the gameplay clues and information a player would need. It’s good work, its excellent for what it is.

The only sign its a fan translation is the fact it lets you use hiragana and katakana in names. This is an option the original game had, which an official localization probably would have removed. Leaving it in just adds more opinions for naming, and a fine thing to leave in, I love options. You can use the character which looks like a face, ツ (tsu). It’s epic.

The fan translation was done by Artemis251 (the main translator guy) and Jazz (credited as supplying the base; adding the ability to write English text, and doing a menu/card translation).

Get the fan translation: Romhacking.net page or Arty’s Generic Site.

Finding a JP Rom is up to you. The legal thing to do would be to buy a cartridge and dump it yourself, and I am obviously a law-abiding guy. I don’t advocate crimes, but WowRoms of a 20 year old abandonware game wouldn’t be unethical to acquire. Original devs and Nintendo aren’t getting paid either way, so who cares. Hypothetically + In Minecraft.

Review

The game is easy, but has a difficulty curve. The endgame trainers are a fair challenge, but its still a game that children can beat. The earlygame is fairly open-ended, but the game gets more linier as things go on. This isn’t a bad thing, it lets the developers control the difficulty curve more.

There is no penalty for losing a card game, except in rival fights, which reward you with rare cards for winning on the first try. But you can complete the game fine without those rewards. Like in irl card games, sometimes you will lose fights to getting a bad draw at the start. But this can also happen to your opponents. There is also no forfeit option, meaning if you’re in a no-win situation it can take a while to lose and try again. There’s autosaves in battle and systems to discourage save-scumming, so you can’t restart in a no-win scenario.

Progression is very horizontal. Each fight wins you a new booster pack of pokemon cards, and more flexibility within the in-game metagame. This adds complexity organically.

Everything is very close to the real card game, with pixel art translations of actual art. All of them look fine, although several look better than others. A lot of them are attempting to translate a variety of art styles into pixel art, to mixed results. Everything being pixel art does flatten the range of art styles its imitating, but it still conveys the original art at the same time.

Yes, you can get the famous Charizard card. In the game. I don’t think Charizard is actually a very good card. It’s a glass cannon and resource hog, which leaves you in a nigh-unrecoverable state if it shatters. Charmelon is definitely one of the best second-stage Pokemon, however.

There are various NPCs who will give you suggestions for strategies in decks. Perhaps these strategies would also have been interesting if performed in the irl card game of the day, although I assume the metagame has advanced somewhat in the past 20 years.

I don’t know how people who were into the modern card game would react to this game. Its a blast from the past, and would either be interesting for that reason, or too different from the modern game for those people to enjoy.

How fun you find this game does depend on how you feel about the Pokemon trading card game IRL. I was a casual fan as a kid, so I found the game very fun. If you can’t fucking stand the Pokemon trading card game, this game won’t save it for you. Oh well.

The field pixel art is gorgeous. It looks very much like Pokemon Crystal, but with a lot of tile animation which makes the environments come alive. Its very cute.

The Team Rocket grunt characters are wearing red uniforms. Very cute.

Team Rocket

Characters face sprites have three emotions, netural, happy, and sad. The characters faces react when they draw a new card, and based on how they feel about the match. NPCs have absolutely no poker face. This makes gameplay more interesting, as it adds an element of attempting to read and predict your digital opponent. Its very simple, but its compelling.

I like this game. Good times. If you’re a pokemon fan and it sounds interesting to you, give it a whirl.

Blorbos from my game

Was Ronald the first friendly-rival in a Pokemon videogame? I’m sure somebody knows for sure, sperg out in the comments #engagement

Old men from pkmn ????

Palette limitations on the GBC meant they had to give this girl green tears. I love it. I like when small children crey, welcome 2 my twisted mind nah

thank god they gave Courtney an anime laugh in this game. Very good game design.

The way they’ve drawn this guy’s glasses is great. They’re like fucked up eyes

always love a Anime Scientist

Introverted Pikachu-loving NEET.

Team Aqua

nuclear family

glub glubbo

Rancid old man

Rancid old lady

Facemasked chef.

Extroverted Pikachu-loving NEET.

Firey chef men (return of the fucked up glasses)

These motherfuckers. kinda gay ngl

More mother fuckers.

The guy in the hat wants you to build a deck with all the legendary birds and dragonite in it? And they’re such bad cards and its a three type deck why. I ended up building a deck based around the birds, the eeveelutions, and the dratini line. It ended up working pretty well, and it was an interesting challenge building a three-type deck. but it also fucking sucked

anyway the girl just looks cool

christ the final boss is so good. look at him. he has evil red eyes its so good

imakumi? red version

President and CEO of The Pokemon Company, and the producer of Pokemon, Tsunekazu Ishihara

One of eight powerful post-game bonus bosses, a ghost locked away in a sealed shrine for being too good at pokemon cards, cat faced man

see, this is one of the things which keeps me coming back to media for children occasionally. It’s just so fun and corny and brazen to play this shit completely straight. yes, somebody could be so good at pokemon cards they need to be sealed away. its not even noteworthy, this is just a common trope. its mundane. a ton of kids shit does this and it owns. other ghosts include a clown and a plague doctor