Okay folks, I am sorry that I am about to talk about something that almost no one but other folks with webcomics will care about, and I know that I promised that there was going to be a movie review, (and there will be tomorrow, it is already written,) but I just had to get a couple of things off my chest.

As you may or may not know, webcomics.com, a community website set up by the authors of the wonderfully helpful book “How To Make Webcomics” have decided to make their site a pay site.

Now honestly, I could have cared less.  I find it slightly hypocritical given their whole business model is the content is free, you buy the extras, and that in a sense the website is an extension of the book which I did purchase, but I digress. They can do whatever they want, and for my part I wont be joining. (I also wont join Costco, in the eternal words of my main man, Groucho Marx, “I’d never belong to a club that would have me for a member”)

“So what did piss you off?” you may ask.  Well it a statement by Brad Guigar, the creator of Evil Inc [not linked on purpose] and the editor and chief of the webcomics.com site. The quote is this:

“It’s an inexpensive buy-in that almost any webcartoonist can afford. It has an added benefit of keeping out people who may not be as serious about webcomics. It naturally weeds out comments from people who may be passing through, and results in distilling comments to those from people who are committed to improving their comics.”

So here is the thing, $30 bucks actually is an expense that, all things considered, I can not afford.  I am a full time college student, and a hairdresser who is struggling to make ends meet.  If it wasn’t for my student loans and the help of my wonderful girlfriend and family, I don’t know what I would do.

Now is this to say that I NEVER get an extra $30 bucks? No, of course not, but that money could be better spent on, oh I don’t know, advertising, or put in a pool to hopefully take some more classes in the skills that I am constantly refining to produce better and better comics.  This year alone, I have spent a considerable deal on drawing classes, not to mention the creative writing workshops and what not.

All in all, I give about 50 hours a week to my comic, and to imply that I am not “serious” about my comic is flat out offensive.  I was unaware that to be serious I need to be more interested in “work shopping my ads” (a real thing) then producing top quality work, which at the end of the day is really what keep folks reading a comic.

Lastly, and this is a low blow, but I recently heard Guigar (on his Fox Business interview) say that he still has a day job. Now, I too have a day job, that’s cool, but I am not presenting myself as a pro (and the definition of a professional is someone who makes the majority of there income from something) and asking people to pay for my advice!

So what does all this mean, what is the solution? Well there isn’t one.  I probably wont read Evil inc. anymore, but truthfully I always found it contrite, like it was begging to be a hit, but there is no way I will stop reading his partner Dave Kellett’s strip Sheldon, that shit is great. For me personally, the fall out is that I just got to see someone I viewed as a great spokesmen of the community, lost my respect because of a perceived cash grab. I will now just sit back and see who takes his place (Maybe it will be you!!!).

Also, for 15 bucks a year, I will stroke your ego, and give you critism on your webcomic, it’s a real bargin!! (hell I’ll even reopen my forum so you can discuss stuff amongst yourselves.)

John K.

THESE REVIEWS HAVE SPOILERS, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

During the holiday My girlfriend, my brother, and I went and did a create-your-own double feature.  We watched the Imax 3D version of Avatar, then went straight to see Sherlock Holmes.

Avatar is amazingly beautiful.  There are just some really striking colors and really the 3D is the best EVER! All that said, it is one of the dullest stories I can remember in a movie in recent memory.

There is no character growth.  All the characters end being the same as they were when they showed up. This could have been solved easily by braking this movie up, having it be three films.  this space could have been filled with the real reasons that the general hates the natives, or why Giovanni Ribisi’s character always has this goofy face, like he has sympathy but is a slave to the shareholders.

But all of that has already been talked about, to death.  What hasn’t been talked about is the HUGE flaw in the storytelling. (AGAIN SPOILERS)  In the big climatic battle, one of the secondary avatars, (and avatar is an alien body created for a human to have their consciousness transferred to for periods of time.  They are made form human and alien DNA, and they look like the aliens, but have four fingers instead of 3,) is killed in battle.  The avatar’s “driver” awakes in a shack and is then shown lurking outside with a big freaking gun.

This is all well and good, but when the main character ends up back at the shack, in his avatar, battling to big bad general, the dude with the gun is nowhere.  This is the definition of sloppy storytelling.  As Anton Chekhov once said, “if you have a gun in the first act, it better go off by the third act.”

I mean, really, if they just wanted him out of the shack, just show him running away without a gun.

As for Sherlock Holmes, well once I got over the idea that it wasn’t really Sherlock Holmes, I enjoyed myself.

Robert Downey Jr. gives a stellar performance.  He is charming and witty, the banter between him and Jude Law as Watson is fun, and the moments where he breaks down how he is going to beat someone up totally should have been in a batman movie… wait… that is basically…. holy crap… the whole thing is Victorian Batman, and I love Batman.  Well done Guy Ritchie!

Speaking of Guy Ritchie, may I say that I was rather impressed.  I am of the belief that he has only done two movies.  He did Swept Away (which is good in that awful kinda way,) and he did Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels five freakin’ times. I mean really, Snatch is like the same movie (visually).  Holmes though was something new, something fun. It was as if Ritchie added a quality of real fun, not violent fun, into his energetic style, and produced something good.

At the end of the day, I would recommend both of these films.  They are both far from perfect, but they both do a good job of entertaining, which is what you go to movies like these for.

John K