Demented Came The Writer

We've kinda been inundating this blog with essays recently (THANKS ROB), but oh well, you'll just have to deal with it. I felt the spirit of webcomic-critique move me and so I wrote a little something.
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(there is apparently some disagreement about the gender of this "Jules Rivera." I'm assuming he is a man but if I am wrong, just change "he is a fucking idiot" to "she is a fucking idiot" etc in the text below.)

Some people were talking about this essay, "Art, 'Art,' and Almost 'Art: What qualifies as 'art' in webcomics?'" by Jules Rivera. Mostly they were talking from an xkcd-point of view, because Mr. Rivera uses xkcd as an example and he provoked a fanboy rage more powerful than ten thousand burning suns. Also, a lot of people just disagreed with him.

I did too, in fact, I think the essay is stupid, though not entirely worthless, as I'd like to use it as a jumping off point for some related thoughts.

His article discusses art in webcomics, with the acceptable premise that art is key in the storytelling, and the conclusion that good comics must then have good art. His last paragraph states that "in order to put out a good-looking product, it helps to still have an artistic eye to get it right." He divides the world of webcomics up based on style: a comic can be a Stick Figure comic, which he decries as "choos[ing] to draw the most haphazard crap" in place of working on art; a Photo Comic, which, if only has a single frame of a photo with no retouching, "DOES NOT qualify" as a webcomic (totally wrong, by the way), a Poser Comic, which uses creepy posed CG characters, which he worried can lead to "a crop of comics that all look the same," and lastly, a comic where the author Hires An Artist, which he likes.

These categories are absurd. Let's start with the lowest of the lowest hanging fruit: Poser Comics? I have never heard of that, and I follow webcomics pretty closely. His examples are "House of the Muses" and "Legend of Lili Deacon." Do ANY of you read those comics? I don't. "Lili Deacon" has been on hiatus for about five months, and "House of the Muses" appears to be some kind of obscure gay-rights / history comic that, I will admit, has characters who look creepy as hell. The point is, they're pretty obscure. But for Jules Rivera, apparently, this is a major category of webcomic. Um, ok.

Photo comics are not nearly as obscure, of course, but they still hardly seem common enough to warrant such a prominent place in the essay. I read about 30 comics regularly, and the only photocomic among them is Superpoop (READ IT, it is great), and it doesn't even take its own photos. I don't consider the author a "lazy bastard" just because some of his comics are one frame of one photograph, nor do I consider the comic "lazy and contrived." It's different from drawing your own work, but so what? As I see it, it's a good analog to general photography vs painting. Is a photo any less a work of art than a painting? If you see an exhibit of photography, do you think to yourself, "well whatever, that isn't cool, because it didn't take effort the way real art does."

Stick figure comics is I suppose where we should spend most of our time. The simple matter is that there's nothing inherently wrong with them. Pictures for Sad Children makes it work really well; the simplicity of the comic (not to mention the lack of color) contributes to the overwhelming feeling of despair that makes the comic so distinct. See this one for an example. Just imagine that comic with detailed, realistic figures. It would suck, no?

And that's true of xkcd too - the problem with xkcd is that often, the simplicity of the drawing detracts from the experience rather than adding to it. In this comic, for example, you can't even tell which way the guy is facing in the last panel, which I would say is pretty important. update: how could I forget this comic - probably the worse example of simplicity in xkcd getting in the way of clarity. Rivera's analysis (that "IT. IS. LAZY." to make a stick figure comic) is a little, shall we say, less nuanced, and that's because he doesn't care.

It's true: He doesn't care. The point of his article is not to actually discuss the function of art in comics, as he claims. Rather, it's to talk shit about any comic that isn't drawn by a professional artist. As he says at the end, hiring an artist - note that he does not say anything about trying to learn to draw yourself - is his favorite method. Why? He comes out and tells us: "it gets me work." Ballsy, Jules. Ballsy. "Commissioned artwork looks like the real deal because it IS the real deal." Holy fuck, this isn't a column, this is a late night advertisement for a shitty artist. "Tired of lousy comics that all look the same?" he might as well say. "There must be a better way! well NOW THERE IS! Call now and hire MISTER JULES RIVERA and your comic will have the BEAUTY and MAGIC of a real professional comic! Just look at this list of satisfied customers! so WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? CALL NOW!"

Literally, his advice at the end is "just pay someone with an artistic eye to do it for you."

I knew he was a hack because he has totally unnecessary naked women at the top of his column (LOOK AT THIIIIIIIS!) as way to get people's attention. And reading this shitty, shitty analysis of webcomic art has only reinforced that. I don't know what the hiring criteria are over at "Comic Related" but clearly they're pretty pathetic.

In summary, Jules Rivera sucks. THE END.