Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence

If a Canadian Goose Can Be PM …

This is the second post from Contestant #10; the assignment was to review one comic from a list of three randomly selected from the backlog of sites submitted by creators to Fleen for review. I, your humble editor, have not read the comics in question.

Canadian Creation Myth reminds me of a story my parents tell me about their thirteenth wedding anniversary. They went to the Road Kill CafÃ©, where they were lambasted and harassed by waitresses, and generally enjoyed what might have been an unlucky anniversary. They went for the atmosphere, not for the food.

CCM has a lot of atmosphere. The splash page invites you to “click it to enter you piece of shit.” The main page, under a picture of a drunken bunny passed out in his own vomit, announces that “here is today’s goddamned comic.”

CCM has some moments I genuinely enjoyed. As a political geek, the commentary on the Canadian Elections was particularly humorous. Of course the Canadians would elect a goose in a clever ruse. Of course the goose’s first act as PM would be to chase a toddler, and clearly all he would do is shit in the office.

But while my parents expected to be harassed at dinner, I must say that I was uncomfortable with the attitude of the author towards the reader.

The sense of malaise becomes even greater with comics like this one. I can’t decide if the author is trying to bust down gender stereotypes and violence and failing, or genuinely thinks that scaring little girls with rape and demanding they fulfill gender roles is funny. If there is one thing that completely turns me off, it’s the perpetuating of the rape culture.

The artist is a bit mysterious, as well. He invites you to contact him (“if you hate this stupid comic you can e-mail me here to tell me”), but never gives his name or anything about him. A Google search of the email address reveals that it was used to register at a Webcomics Chat forum, where he has only posted 186 times.

A final strike against the comic, for me, is the announcement on the title bar of the main page that it is “the most inconsistent comic on the internet” as well as the information that it hasn’t been updated since February 20th, 2006.

Maybe this is a niche comic. A niche occupied by those who like to be harassed by their entertainment. After all, the Road Kill CafÃ© survives. But if you go for the food rather than the atmosphere, you may be out of luck.

Only 186 times?

Heck, I’ve had my own forum for 2 years and just broke 200 posts.

Huh, just glancing at those strips you point out I really liked this. Totally twisted. I cracked up trawling the tiny archive too. Pity the navigation lacks a ‘latest’ button.

Of course the answer to an inane question given to a reanimated head is ‘why?’ There’s a bunch of stuff I liked. “I’m doing a hooker.” “Of course you are, you’re homeless.”

I didn’t see the ‘Rape Culture’ (I’m assuming that’s the idea that woman cause rape by acting outside certain ideas?) in that strip you mention, I saw expectations of a mother who cares being subverted into a mother who’s totally selfish at a vicious extreme. If anything seemed to show a worrying attitude to rape it would be this example of material possessions distracting us from important things like that.

I was going to say it reminded me of Bill Hicks’ anger, but then with Hicks there was a hope that the audience would rise above his expectation.

I guess I’m saying I agree more with Contestant #6. It’s a very specialised sort of humour, found in Eating Dirt and other comics. You’re right that it appears to have become defunct. However, I did like your piece on college reflections in non-college comics. Have you read Piled Higher and Deeper?

I won’t get into a debate on rape here, (Email me if you’re really interested) but just to clarify what I was trying to say. From Wikipedia, which is admittedly not the most reliable source, but says it pretty clearly:

Rape culture is a term used to denote a culture in which rape and other sexual violence is common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media condone, normalize, excuse, or encourage rape or other violence against women. … for instance, sexist jokes may be told to foster disrespect for women and an accompanying disregard for their well-being, which ultimately make their rape and abuse seem acceptable.

Thank you for the compliment on my other entry. :D And I will definately look into that comic. (Yay! Another for my archive!)

I kind of liked the rape joke on its own. My objections to it, if any, stem from unoriginality – that sort of humour has been around for a while, and whiteninja and SMBC do it better. It essentially felt like well-trodden ground with not much new to add, but I will say that the execution was reasonably good.

This was a pretty well-balanced article for the most part, I think.

The comic itslef reminded me vaguely of Crun‘s Offensive Comic.

Great review. Nice writing. I’ve been to the Roadkill Cafe, though not in a long time.

I agree (at least, I think I’m agreeing) that there is a point where an artist’s anger stops being a coy mechanism of creative ennui and becomes trite and overplayed.

In the end, I didn’t care for the comic much, but I do look forward to reading more reviews from you. I liked this review enough to go back and read your last one again, which I liked more the second time around, though I still think this one is better.

To clear up some of the artist mystery, and because I like web-snooping, the artist’s name is Andre Babyn, he’s 20 years old and lives in Toronto, and he’s reading these posts.

[…] In my first review here, the lack of a clear update schedule was one of the final straws in the camelâ€™s back as to why the Canadian Creation Myth would not be given a return visit from this particular IP address. But there are plenty of comics in my cache that donâ€™t have a regular update schedule, but stay in my bookmarks. […]

[…] New Livejournal comic! AndrÃ© Babyn (who used to do Canadian Creation Myth) has returned with Frank and Earl The Astronauts. Babyn informs us that It has poor art but not so poor that you will be spending ten seconds wincing at it. In fact, the art is about 37.8 times better than CaCreaMy, so that’s all right. No crazy astronaut ladies yet, but I have hopes! […]

RSS feed for comments on this post.

If a Canadian Goose Can Be PM …

Contact Us

Archives

Search

A Good Start