Geek Entertainment News and Commentary

You Got Miscarriage in my Gaming Comic!

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 12:53 pm by Jami

I watch Yahtzee’s game reviews every week because they amuse me greatly. This week, he decided to take on gaming webcomics that aren’t Penny Arcade. Somewhere along the way, he calls out Tim Buckley for doing a miscarriage story arc in a comic known for slap happy gaming humor. Yahtzee doesn’t call Ctrl-Alt-Del or Tim by name, but I can’t think of another gaming comic that has done a miscarriage story arc. Yahtzee then goes on to dismiss gaming webcomics altogether for clogging up the internet and wasting space. I can’t wholly disagree. And his overall assessment of the genre is quite accurate and funny. But let’s get into this miscarriage thing.

I don’t read Ctl-Alt-Del on a regular basis. I’m not much of a gamer so I don’t get the jokes. I did see the comic in question and I thought, from an artistic standpoint, it’s a very powerful four panels. Some of the best stuff I’ve seen Tim draw. But should a creator change the tone of his comic so abruptly just for one arc? And can the comic ever return to its happy days after such a devastating story?

When I saw the comic, I was reminded of sitcoms. Every once in a while, they’d sneak in some deadly serious episode with a poignant message or lesson to teach. There’s the famous pedophile episode in Different Strokes, Good Times had a child abuse arc, Fresh Prince took on driving while black, Roseanne examined domestic abuse. The list goes on. Although these episodes might be controversial, audiences tend to accept them and move on. Why should it be any different for webcomics?

UPDATE: Aha! I see that Yahtzee has a deep seeded hatred for CAD. Scroll down to his post entitled “You CAD” in which Yahtzee describes why it lacks the funny.

19 Responses to “You Got Miscarriage in my Gaming Comic!”

greg
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm

I read Ctrl-Alt-Del and I was quite startled by the miscarriage story arc. I was wondering if it reflected something in Tim’s life that he needed to vent, and that making it into a comic was his way of getting all his emotions out. I imagine that it could be very cathartic.

Devin
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm

I don’t think it was totally out of left field. Ethan and Lilah got engaged, got pregnant, and… sometimes stuff like that happens to couples. Besides, I don’t think the characters of the series are ready for baby subplots just yet.

Cowhat Ninja
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm

You’d have to read Tim’s comics AND his newsposts to get the whole story. He explained his reasons for wanting to do this storyarc, and I don’t see anything wrong with it. He wanted to make his characters more in-depth; Ethan was kind of an idiot that could think of nothing but computer games, but I think this whole experience has changed him a bit. Before this happened, he wasn’t really taking life seriously, but I get the impression that he’s been grounded down to earth a bit more now.

Funny how this Zero Punctuation guy didn’t mention what’s been going on in PVP lately, you’d think he’d have something to say about teenage sex and the loss of innocence and the departure of one of the biggest characters.

I think it’s just that the artists want to do something more with their webcomics. They don’t want to be the same one-trick pony. You can’t complain about a comic being the same as everyone else then complain again when they try to do something different.

VonKraut
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 1:29 pm

I like both Yahtzee and CAD. If Yahtzee doesn’t like CAD the solution is simple, don’t read it. In his YOU CAD rant he talks about artists needing praise. Well also the internet is full of critics, just look at any youtube video comment or IMDB message boards for that matter. Granted Yahtzee makes his living complaining about things he doesn’t like and he is generally funny, but in life I think you shouldn’t waste your time focusing on things you don’t like.

Paoken
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm

I actually enjoyed that arc, lately I’ve found myself moving out of the one shot joke comics and into a more story based preference…so maybe it’s just me.

As for this guy…well…we’re all entitled to his opinions…but it seems to me that he’ s made a career of mocking people he doesn’t like on the internet…I mean I’ve taken shots at people before, but not on a regular sustainable basis. But he does sound angry…or maybe that’s the British accent.

I think if it was a guy from the US saying things like that he’d be much less amusing.

I don’t know why but accents make everything better.

(PS: Does acting like a dick really get you more hits? I’ve never tried that…maybe I should. >_> My problem is I just don’t care enough to keep a feud going.)

BAMikeyD
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm

I dunno, I think his logic for why he doesn’t like CAD and other comic artists is a pretty good reason not to like some one.
Any artist who doesn’t want to accept criticism is just a douche bag that will never advance. And I mean constructive critique not “Oh yeah that’s looks cool!” or “That’s a shit bag piece” if you’re going to critique something, either positively or negatively you should no a bit about the subject matter, and why what was in it was good or bad. An artist doesn’t want to hear “good job” or “bad job” and leave it at that.
But I digress, if the artist at CAD doesn’t want to take critique for his work, that’s fine, he’s just going to plateau and possibly lose fans.

Oddball
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 2:52 pm

Wait… in his blog he bashes Ctrl+Alt+Del for not getting to the point and being to wordy, yet holds up Dinosaur Comics as an example of a “good” webcomic?

How come I have a feeling that this guy just throws shit around to stir up hits? Hey, John Devorak has been able to make a living at it.

Kindless
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm

I thought the miscarriage arc was rather out of the blue, and I don’t buy Tim’s excuse. It seems to me like he wanted to do something shocking, probably to cipher out the die hard fans. I can’t honestly say I care that much. I read a comic because it entertains me. If it doesn’t entertain em, I don’t read it. CAD has been entertaining ever since the comic of Ethan asking Lillah out (because that was both adorable and absolutely awesome). The miscarriage arc.. I couldn’t care less about it. And in fact I’m almost certain the comic will go back to it’s regular shit in no time, now that Tim has gotten it out of his system. Everyone needs to be emo once in a while.

Jack T Robyn
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 6:17 pm

Buckley has been taking a lot of flak from fucking everyone in the last few months. I suspect this may have a little something to do with both the present storyline and the choose-your-own-adventure one he did last month (or the one before?)

I’ve been reading CAD since August ‘05 and it’s still on the list (five down from here). A few others have been dropped since, and before.

But I have never, admittedly, went back to work 35 minutes late from lunch on a Wednesday because I was sitting at The Escapist waiting for CAD to update . . .

No, that was something else…

epoch9
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 8:07 pm

explosm did a really good parody of the situation.

http://explosm.net/comics/1310/

Justin
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 pm

I don’t read CAD too much since I don’t really find it that funny but I thought it is a good change up, you can’t keep the same stuff going no mater what you’re doing. (Just read it) Yea it was great, I loved it actually.

And to point out another serious story in Fresh Prince that hit WAY to close to home was the episode where Will he meets his dad, seriously.

Laurie
Posted: Jul 3rd, 2008 at 11:55 pm

Once upon a time I used to like CAD. Eventually I grew bored with it for the exact reasons that Yahtzee dislikes it.

Gene
Posted: Jul 4th, 2008 at 3:15 am

First, Oddball, he wasn’t comparing CAD and Dinosaur Comics on wordiness, or what is a good comic. It was a comparison on the use of copy-paste art, where in Dinosaur Comic it has been a part of the style of the comic since day one, and in CAD, according to Yahtzee, it is used as a safe bet, and a waste of Tim’s artistic potential.

Which move me to the main point: This ZP wasn’t a bash at CAD. Just like his review of Turok, he used a single source to point out the problem with the genre as a whole. In this case he used CAD as the single source for this, which honestly was a good choice because if he use some unknown comic no would give a crap about what he was talking about.

If you remove the CAD reference, basically this ZP is about the waste of potential for the sake of getting buck in the wedcomic world. Just like how Yahtzee call out game for doing the “Let be like Halo/GTA/etc” thing. He’s calling wedcomics out for doing “Lets be like PA/PVP/etc.”

Leto
Posted: Jul 4th, 2008 at 11:57 am

Frankly, the sheer number of parodies “Loss” inspired made up for it all.

Wayne
Posted: Jul 4th, 2008 at 11:55 pm

Wow. I read CAD for a while. It was OK, but it was never enough for me to add it to my breakfast list. I hadn’t heard of this kerfluffle as I had never heard of this Yahtzee guy until Jamie posted this.

So I went and read the comic.

WOW.

It really hit home for me because my wife’s parents had the same problem: different RH blood factors. But back in the 50’s, they didn’t know much about that and they obviously didn’t have the shot to circumvent the problem. My wife has five siblings, and her mother had, IIRC, an almost equal number of miscarriages.

My wife and I also have different RH factors, so this is also a potential problem for us.

In all fairness, since I don’t know a thing about this Yahtzee guy, I went to watch the link that Jamie included. And I shut it off less than 90 seconds into it. This guy is doing bad stick figure animation and calling game web comics hacks? I couldn’t bring myself to watch the rest of it.

Look, there are more genres of web comics than I can name. According to the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_comics, there are over 18,000 of ‘em! So if you don’t like a genre, find another. If a web comic creater/artist/writer/whatever wants to occasionally stretch his story-telling skills, good for them! It’s called growth, it’s improving skills, it’s advancing one’s career.

It’s a good thing. If you don’t like it, skip it. If it offends you, maybe you’re on the side of the just, but also maybe you could benefit from reevaluating what you found offensive about it.

I hate intolerance.

Chris
Posted: Jul 5th, 2008 at 5:15 am

Got to meet Yahtzee at a convention in Brisbane just a few hours ago, that was all kinds of awesome. As for CAD, I never really read it for its humourous side but I still managed to entertain myself now I just cant stomach it so I stopped reading it. Another Point, If there is one thing Tim Buckley never did it was improving his skills or expanding his ideas. His refusal to accept criticism was and is one of the biggets turn off’s about CAD.

Fm
Posted: Jul 5th, 2008 at 9:07 am

Well I don’t read cad,know the story that every one is referring, or these two people issues with each other but attacking some one publicly like this seem so republican (only nice way i can say it).If you hate some one why will you contently come back to the subject of that guy just to get mad.just avoid the person all together.about this issue of criticism all artist take negative criticism badly.Cant blame a person for loving what he created he spent hours creating this and some one said it suck.It’ll upset any one a bit.Don’t think so go tell some one there kid a screw up and see what happen but to act in a matter that isn’t that your opinion and i respect it is a very asinine thing to do.Stuff like this only make both side seem uptight.

There is nothing wrong with having a serious story in a comic.Yes depending on the over all story it might brake the passe but there nothing wrong with trying to create relevance and deeper meaningful story.If a story truly make some one feel it should be wrought and it should be read.I don’t consider any thing good if i don’t walk away from it feeling something.Anger hate love lost these are all emotion we should have and to run from them cause they don’t feel good is to run from being human.

direwolf
Posted: Jul 5th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

I’ve met Buckley, and, while he may not be the greatest guy (okay, he can be a total ass-hat), I think that he should be able to do whatever he wants with his comic. Frankly, if it isn’t something you’re paying for (and I don’t believe this arc has carried into the CAD animated series), why would you get a say? I’m not saying you can’t critique CAD, but don’t whine about it. You don’t like where he’s taking the comic, stop reading. Consumerism at its finest.

Though I do find it suspicious that the CAD forums have been down since the Zero Punctuation was released.