Does He Enjoy the Irony?

After Jeff Freeman linked to this site, I read through a bunch of it.  Most of it is bile.  The author loves stringing together insults, an equal opportunity hater, because he does, in point of fact, hate everything he writes about.

The bulk of his reviews of webcomics boil down to “that’s not funny” although most times he does make comments about the art as well.  The irony I speak of in the title comes about in this post, a mere 15 posts in to his run.  He takes a moment to explain that the people who think he isn’t funny just don’t get it because he writes the site to entertain, “Like, seven or eight people.”  The irony is that most webcomics actually start the same way.  Looking at many of them now, you might not be able to see their more humble beginnings, before they got enough traffic for ads to matter, before they put up message boards, or ran charity drives.  Everyone starts somewhere.

If the author keeps it up, he might one day sell out just like Maddox, someone who probably started his website to entertain, like, seven or eight people.

4 comments

  1. Has Maddox really “sold out?” I don’t recall seeing ads on his site. He prides himself on that. The only way you can say he “sold out” is if you could the merch he sells – which was done at fan request and I’m sure he does to keep the site running – and his book, which he promoted only peripherally on his site.

  2. I wouldn’t call it peripherally when for months the only updates to his site were links to his book, that and the writing and release of his book almost completely stopped his writing for the website. And that’s what I mean by “sold out” … like Metallica “sold out”. Maddox turned his website writing into a writing career. If the guy from this website keeps up, he can sell out too, just like all the webcomics he complains about sell out and publish books and sell ads. You say “sold out” like its a bad thing… selling out is the goal of just about every artist. Selling out is better than starving.

  3. I love irony!

    I really don’t enjoy rant sites that are nothing but hate… at least not as much as ones where the author is occasionally delighted (even if it’s no where near a 50/50 ratio).

    One thing I noticed about that site was the link to http://webcomictriage.blogspot.com/

    That’s pure-helpful all-constructive sort of bloggery on the same topic. Boring as all heck, to me, but it made me think these two blogs were different sides of the same coin.

    Rather than the blog just being all the hate from four people with nothing but hate for the topic.

    Only because their blog only links to a couple other blogs, too. If it were just one of a huge blogroll, I wouldn’t have attached any special meaning to it.

  4. The only real problems I’ve got with the “Your webcomic is bad…” site is that:
    1) They almost never say anything nice about the comics at all. Anything even remotely nice is usually covered in back handed insults, like saying, “I don’t find it funny, but some people do… retarded people.”
    2) Most of the insults go beyond the comic itself and insult the author and the fans. If the webcomic really does suck, please explain why exactly it sucks, don’t just say “You aren’t funny and your fans are stupid.” Its about as useful as people who post on MMO message boards that something is broken or sucks without posting any details.

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