Daily Strip: January 8, 2005

[RCG]

Tryka girl! What happen? Did you forget your make-up this morning? I'm sorry, but you look just awlful.

[Cheez Wizz]

Maybe there shouldn't be any reactions topic for saturday, because those of us with sense all know that everyone else is just going to complain about someone. If such a technology was invented, i'd smack you all in the face with a stick a few times across the interweb to get some sense into you people. Don't complain about other people's work. I doubt you could do any better. As I said before, there is NOTHING wrong with the comic. Stop nitpicking and enjoy the comic for what it is. A comic. Who gives a crap if you don't like it. The fact is, there's a few billion people on the planet, and they're all not like you. You can express an opinion, but don't go off like you're the only people in the world. "Ian is so terribuhl!! I want keel heem! He no gud because i no liek him!" That's all I hear every week. If you don't have anything different to say, don't say anything. it's redundant.

[Marcellus]

Well, the purpose of this forum is to gauge the readers response to the comic, and when the response is overwhelmingly negative, there will be a proportionate number of negative posts. If everyone who disliked a strip refrained from posting after a simple negative reaction, how could one tell whether such a reaction was simply a single, atypical view or rather the popular reaction to the comic?

This strip is apparently viewed as one of the tritest Saturday strips yet, and the posts here reflect that opinion.

[Trivol]

normally i agree with the anti_Ian mob, but on this one I think he did passably. This is decent, and i almost caught myself chuckling. At this point, I think half the IAn bashing is just force of habit, because this one was clean, clever (with the bouncers at least), and by Ian standards, well drawn. not Pete, but no bad.

[Wistful_Dreamer]

Maybe there shouldn't be any reactions topic for saturday, because those of us with sense all know that everyone else is just going to complain about someone. If such a technology was invented, i'd smack you all in the face with a stick a few times across the interweb to get some sense into you people. Don't complain about other people's work. I doubt you could do any better. As I said before, there is NOTHING wrong with the comic. Stop nitpicking and enjoy the comic for what it is. A comic. Who gives a crap if you don't like it. The fact is, there's a few billion people on the planet, and they're all not like you. You can express an opinion, but don't go off like you're the only people in the world. "Ian is so terribuhl!! I want keel heem! He no gud because i no liek him!" That's all I hear every week. If you don't have anything different to say, don't say anything. it's redundant.

well, geeze, I guess our opinions aren't as valid as yours. Of course we couldn't do any better, we aren't cartoonists. I'm not a musician either, but if I listen to an Ashley Simpson song one minute and the Beatles the next, you'd better believe I'd have an opinion about which was better. As to people putting up opinions which no one else cares about, well, welcome to the internet.

Seriously, I understand where you are coming from. The anti-Ian vitriol on these boards is pervassive and sometimes interferes with discussion on other topics (especially threads focusing on the demons). Alot of it is knee-jerk, and feels like bandwaggoning. If I were an Ian fan (err, Ian's Saturday sluggy strip fan, I actually do like Bruno the Bandit), I would feel quite intimidated on these boards. It's kind of freeky that 90% or so of Sluggy fans fanatic enough to be on these boards (let's not pretend that that is representative of Sluggy fans in general), have this serious dislike for a large section of the strip. It'd be like 90% of the attendies of Star Trek conventions wishing that chekov had never existed or something.

That said, there are serious, rational, and reasonable complaints about Ian's Saturday strips, and this comic includes them all. 1) he beats dead horses: two strips in a row lampooning a TV show that hasn't been topical in a decade isn't as bad as three months of "ball" jokes, but it still is not a good joke for Ian to renew his reign over the demon dimensions (after a four month incursion by Pete. 2) he treats demons as humans in funny costumes: okay, this is pretty common in comic strips. The Class Menagerie and Ozy and Millie treat anthropomorphic animals basically as humans with more-fun-to-draw extentension. However, Pete made the Dimension of Pain demons as truly fearful (if occasionally hapless) creatures that were a threat to your life, not something to mock. If you compare Pete's recent Horribus, Mosp, Reakk and Psych to the versions Ian had when they were playing soul dodgeball, you see a sea-change in character depth and theme. For demons to be going on talk shows, being blue (i.e. white) trash, and otherwise being funny looking people takes away from what makes them terrifying. 3) he uses the really really old theme of the "anti" breed of character reversing good with bad. Tryka and Sweril think Terb and Plorb should have their mouths washed out with filth instead of soap. As I suggested earlier, Oscar the Grouch pretty much capped off useful interpretation of this concept in the first four or five season of his show, and that's a children's show.

Now, these are all legitimate gripes about Ian's work, and they are all well represented in this strip. If you don't like that we don't like it, you have no obligation to listen to us. Just stop pretending we are out of line in thinking or saying it.

[Bode Darkly]

Props to the sluggites! While today’s strip was not all that funny, some of the reactions where. The day is saved!

I’ve always been a proponent of viewing Ian’s work from an ironic perspective; to wit that he uses clichés in a heavy-handed manner intentionally as satire. I think at this point he may also have come to enjoy baiting the community a little in his work. I don’t know how much of this is intentional and how much is just my interpretation, but it allows me to derive some humor from comics like Saturday’s. In fact the ‘worse’ they are on the surface, the funnier they are in a meta-humor way. (OK, I’m reaching a little here – but at least I’m laughing on Saturdays.)

[LadyBlanc]

Lets see what's wrong with todays strip.
1) Jerry Springer has been out of the public eye for years.
2) People who read Sluggy are not the type of people to watch Jerry Springer.
3) The joke is just plain bad.
4) It does not advance the plot at all.

As for Ian's art, we need to cut him some slack here. I know it's not like Pete's, but Ian is not Pete. It's close enough, at least for me.

1) Agreed.
2) Sadly, not necessarily. Some people who are otherwise extremely intelligent can still get sucked into that kind of thing (like my husband, on occasion).
3) It is not entirely without merit, humour-wise. The last panel did get a snort of laughter from me.
4) Not true, actually. Unless these events are contradicted by a later episode, it shows Terb and Plorb's personalities have undergone a fundamental change since losing their aristocracy: they actually didn't want to fight each other and they've stopped being egotistical and conniving. They also agreed to cease hostilities and rule jointly, resolving something that has been an on-going plotline for months.

I agree with the contingent that feels Ian's art has actually improved. Do Sweral and Tryka look like they were drawn by Pete? No. Are they immediately recognizable and sans ridiculously large eyes? Yes. (There is just something repelling about the eyes that extend up above the head of a character.) Works for me.

[tyrant]

Consider, if you will, a scene from The Simpsons. I can't remember the exact wording, but Krusty the Clown walks into a high-class, bustling restaurant and tries to take a seat. He is then accosted by the head chef.

Chef [italian accent]: This way, Krusty, follow me, you don't want to sit with the rest of this scum.

The entire restaurant turns in their seats, looks at the pair and starts saying things along the lines of "What the hell!", "Who the heck do you think you are?", and the like. The mood darkens.

Chef: I mean scum when compared to Krusty!

Everyone breaks into smiles, voices their agreement, and the room returns to benevolence once more.


It seems to me that an analogy can be made here. I wouldn't say that the MitDO* strips are bad, as such, but I can understand how they might look as such when compared to Sluggy niftiness. This strip is no exception, due to reasons given in previous posts.

That said, though, I'm really considering reading through the Bruno The Bandit archives. That way I can have more of an informed opinion on Ian's strips as a whole.

Another point I'd like to make is that none of us in these forums can exactly be considered unbiased observers. I mean, the whole reason we joined these forums in the first place is because we just happen to think that Sluggy Freelance is pretty damn cool. Therefore, any "outside interference", if you will, in this case in the form of the MitDO* strips, will in all likelihood instinctively be viewed disapprovingly.