Your Webcomic Review is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

There are numerous webcomic review blogs on the internet, and most of them are terrible. They reward low-quality comics, and many authors seek out support and friendship rather than strive for honest criticism. However, I’ve come across a blog entitled Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad, by one John Solomon, which takes the opposite approach.

And I hate it.

Solomon is anti-webcomics; he’s very up front about that, and his goal is to highlight terrible webcomics in the hopes that not only will people stop reading these strips, but that the creators themselves will stop making them. I don’t agree with that goal. Webcomics are a hobbyist’s medium, and Solomon expects nothing but perfection and professionalism from webcomic creators. Too bad he can’t apply those rules to his own writings.

You see, Solomon is a terrible writer. His prose is rife with scores of curse words, which so overwhelms each article that he negates the point of his review. His critiques are lost in a haze of obscenity, which kills any credibility he may have had. Solomon also rambles on about various problems he sees with each comic, revisiting them throughout each article, and with all those swears, it’s boring to read through it all. It’s such poor writing that it makes a person actually feel like they’ve lost a bit of their intellect by the time they’ve finished reading. That’s not journalism, nor is it even clever – it’s literary syphilis.

His other major problem is that he’s a self-righteous hypocrite who can’t take any criticism himself. He has stated that he doesn’t write for any audience – a great goal for any writer – and doesn’t care whether or not people enjoy or dislike his reviews. They’re really just for him, which doesn’t exactly explain why he now has a stable of contributors helping him. The lone wolf has a staff because he apparently couldn’t come up with one review a week, which until recently was his goal. Believe me, that’s a lie, and now that he’s got an audience, he’s full of himself and into the attention. Why would he claim his work is not really for anyone but him, and then put it on the net for the entire planet to see? He plays the part of a “serious” critic, but when someone criticizes him, he belittles and ridicules them in a childish manner. One of his targets even came into his comments section, and politely admitted that Solomon was right, and Solomon told him to get “dick cancer”. Why? He thought it was funny. That says so much about John Solomon right there, doesn’t it? No class and a piss-poor sense of humor. Let’s face it – when a guy has to spend a sizable chunk of each article writing personal attacks against the creators, one really shouldn’t expect that much to begin with. It’s also cute when he uses guest strips in his examples of how the creators had done such a terrible job.

He also enjoys playing the role of a pariah. There are multiple posts explaining how he’s such a persecuted fella. He’s claimed to have received death threats from cartoonists and their fans; this I can believe – there’s just so many crazies out there. However, he wants to be seen as infallible. His ego is so fragile that he actively berates those in his comments section that attack him, and he does this while pretending that it doesn’t bother him. He claims that one of the biggest complaints against him is people asking, “Where’s your webcomic”? Well, folks, it looks like Solomon is responsible for the reprehensibly bad parody webcomic Dominic Durgan, which takes Mookie’s already bad strips and makes them infinitely worse. With more pointless cursing and the dick-and-fart humor of a twelve year old, Solomon proves once again what a clever boy he really is. He’s told creators that once their work is online, then it’s there for the world, and it’s practically a crime when that material is pitifully amateur. If only Solomon could recognize the irony in his statement…

When I first started reading Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad, I thought Solomon was some kind of character – a crotchety, cranky, “fan” who was so over the top that the whole thing was a joke. As time went on, it became apparent that he wasn’t, and he is really like that. Solomon is also Fuego Fish from the Something Awful forums, and his posting style there is pretty much the same; however, he actually offers some thoughtful and useful insights on those forums. It’s a shame that didn’t carry over. The SA crowd can be brutal as all hell, but a lot of people there know what they’re talking about when it comes to webcomics. Honestly, Solomon could have still pointed out the flaws and highlight the out of control egos that litter the medium if he simply baited creators famous for that into flame-fests; an approach like that would not only prove a point, it would likely be far more entertaining. You could get ten years of material off Bobby Crosby alone.

I don’t knock Solomon for his intentions; I just can’t stand his execution. He doesn’t critique – he whines incessantly like a spoiled child. To do that with webcomics of all things…it makes him worse than a Star Trek fan who actually knows Klingon. It’s that pathetically picky. How miserable does a person have to be to intentionally troll the net for bad webcomics to berate? If you come across a webcomic you know sucks, you move on. Sometimes, it may take time to realize it sucks. I know many people who were former Ctrl-Alt-Del and Megatokyo readers; they woke recognized those crappy comics for what they were. I don’t like Solomon’s style of review; it contributes nothing. I don’t like ass-kissing critics, either. As for me, all I try to do is highlight lesser-known good comics or new comics that show potential that the average reader might not encounter during their web-surfing.

Since this will likely find its way back to Solomon – that’s the nature of the net, then I advise Solomon to take his own advice and quit. Since he’s such a hypocrite, I doubt that will happen. He’s not funny. He’s not clever. He can’t even write a decent review. His idea of parody and humor in general is so juvenile that only grade-schoolers would laugh. John – you suck at what you do. Deal with it.

Note: This is an opinion piece and does not reflect the views of all the Way of the Geek staff.

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