For three years now I’ve either drawn comics or written for them or read them. I’ve done speeches about their advantages and importance as a unique medium. I’m a devourer of archives and a harsh critic of half-assed attempts. Most of the speeches I’ve given have focused on the dichotomy of the community fostered on the web as opposed to print, and they’ve been well received by geek kids. For others, I’ve been speaking another language with cultural references and inside jokes that the audience members are none to happy to be left out of. The biggest complaints seems to be that it’s too overwhelming, there are too many to choose from, where do you start?

These comics that I read I hand out like drugs to friends and acquaintances; the first one’s free but the others’ll cost ya. You like Ctrl+Alt+Del, here, try some Gamer Lamer. Feels good doesn’t it? It’s like introducing two close, personal friends to each other, offering interests to spark conversation. “Allow me to introduce you to my friend Two Lumps. You’ll get along great, you both like cats.” “Oh have you met Chopping Block? No? Well you guys have a scary amount of interests in common!” Creating dreamy fan-kid love is rewarding. I’m a modern match maker.

The hard sells are the ones you know someone will love, if only they’d give it a chance. Society stereotypes have spilled over into the webcomic-verse, apparently threatening manhoods everywhere. When my male friend caught me reading Little Dee, his reaction included grandiose accusations about delicate female dispositions and more than a few unkind words as to my apparent preference towards dolls over video games. I informed him, as I am informing you, that Little Dee is very manly, totally aggressive and more action packed than he could imagine.

So where do you tell people to start? Is there a starting point or do you just close your eyes and point? Are the big names really the best or can we move past the “fame=good” equation? The problem of community has been on everyone’s lips lately, with a different opinion from everyone you ask. As the medium evolves, how will we all play a part? The answers, I think, are for someone more political than I.

Over the past months Tim Buckley at Ctrl+Alt+Del has morphed his comic into a self-sustained community. He’s reinvented his site design, introduced animated shorts of his beloved characters and opened up CADMedia for reviews and previews of video games on all platforms. Up until now, however, it’s been all Tim, all the time.

This morning Buckley put out a broad call for writer applications to fill a staff working on CADMedia. The expectations for applicants are intimidating and he’s not calling it a volunteer position for nothing. The applicants can expect criticism, disagreements, deadlines, hard work and no pay. Sounds grueling you say? That sounds exactly like the life of your typical comic creator. We all work within our art form not for its rewards but because we don’t know how to live our lives without it.

The value of a well-written and honest review is immeasurable for readers. It’s not about typing up 300 words on what you like or don’t like. Journalists have to juggle their own personal opinions with useful, needful information and sometimes these two things clash with wild and spectacular production. We journalists tell you what we like and hopefully we tell you why, but we don’t always tell you if it’s any good. A good video game review will help someone turn over $49.99 of their money for something they’ll love, or pass it up until they can get it used for $12.99.  

Good luck to Tim in his search for the logophiles, the verbose and the poignant. For those who are brave enough to go through the application trial I have a few words of advice. Don’t let deadlines scare you, edit yourself religiously and remember that you are not bothering contacts when you call for information. They want to talk to you as much as you need to talk to them. Finally, at the risk of sounding embarrassingly clichéd, if you really enjoy your subject matter, the rest will come easy. Just write.

One of the worst revelations about reviewing anything, restaurants, bands or comics, is in deciding when to shake your head and tell people something really stinks, despite the presence of talent. Not everyone can have the most awesome, fantastic, oh-my-god-you-must-read comic and for Monster Machine, boy is it true.

Pulling off a four panel comic strip that is poignant, funny and doesn’t use cheap tricks for a few chuckles is hard. Pulling off a four panel strip that uses only two or three characters and hardly any backgrounds or body changes is even harder. Her! Manages the feat with startling entertainment and runs on the same principle that Monster Machine does. The difference is one has good dialogue and motion within the strip and the other remains motionless and uninspiring. There is no real personality or history to the characters. They are flat and offer no genuine or unique funny.

Two of the biggest sink-holes new (and occasionally, old) online comic creators get sucked into is in thinking that they can pull off Breaking the Fourth Wall and ego maniacally referring to the comic creator in the comic, in this case Daniel Davis. It nearly never works out and readers flinch with mistrust. Once you start self-referencing yourself, it’s hard to gain back the respect of readers. More often than not readers want to be sucked into the world and the characters you create, even if they are set-ups for one liners and shattering that illusion is a mood killer. Even without these two troubled approaches to the comic, Davis’ writing is just bad.

To be fair though, the comic is new. As in, it’s been around for two months. To Davis’ credit, he updates almost every day and has maintained this schedule from the beginning. This is encouraging and hints that perhaps in a year the characters and writing will flush themselves out and if he keeps up his updating schedule, he’s sure to find his voice. There is truth in understanding that comics don’t hit their stride until at least a year out, and for Davis, I hope he keeps going that long and I’ll tell you why. Davis has something that even long standing comics don’t have; amazing and unique artwork.

If you check out everything he has done over at his site Steam Crow Press you’ll find yourself entrenched in quirky and delightful monsters of all shapes and sizes. His print work reminds me of Meghan Stratman over at Bunny Pirates. I was honestly shocked to discover that this comic that seemed so terrible was created by someone with the choppy, sweet and well crafted talent I’d been impressed with for so long over at Bunny Pirates. Davis has a cool mind for art.

So did I change my mind about Monster Machine? No, it’s still a terrible comic. But Davis has given me hope for an evolution into funnier and better writing. I’ll cross my fingers.

When I think “determined”, I think of Sommer Leinbach. Valiantly clinging to the hardscrabble prairie of Omaha, Nebraska while maintaining a collegiate career would harden most people, but Sommer still finds tenderness in her heart for her two cats and her boyfriend. Working in a hospital might grind down most people with the neutral colors, antiseptic smells, and complete lack of cynical smartass geniuses, but Sommer perserveres. And arguing both politics and Battlestar Galactica would get you pegged by most people as a complete geek, but Sommer … okay, you probably got her on that one. Anyway, she’s our second new writer here at Fleen.

Everybody say hello to Sommer!