8-02-05

Looking at Comics

I was amusing myself the other day, scrolling through Robert Howard's Tagboard, when I saw someone compare his site to Eric Burns's Websnark.  Now, while I'm sure Howard was very flattered by the comparison, I found myself disagreeing with it.  What Burns and Howard do—while they both generally deal with the subject of webcomics—are completely different things.  Despite my completely different (in the sense of lower) numbers, I'd like to point out that what I do is also different from what either of them does.
          I write reviews.  I do a quick critical analysis of the whole product of a webcomic and make a recommendation to my readers.  Note the words "quick" and "whole" in the preceding sentence.  They'll come up later.  The thing is, despite my jokes about getting your money's worth, I feel a very strong obligation to you guys; I started the reviews so you could go to my links page and know why something is included there, or link out to the archive and find out why something is not.  That being said, I feel no obligation at all to the authors of the comics I review (okay, I feel an obligation to give them a fair look, but that's all).  You guys, the readers of Casual Notice, are my top priority.  To that end, I try to provide fair and honest reviews of the various comics featured here and on the links page.  These are, however, mere recommendations; I try to justify them with my reasons for liking or disliking the comics featured, I do not and cannot provide an in-depth analysis.  I will not keep revisiting the same comics if they happen to have a particularly good (or bad) day.  That's not what I do.
          Lucky for you, there are twos sites out there that do those two things, and they are both very well written and maintained.  So here, without further ado, are my reviews of the "reviewers".  There won't be any star ratings because that would just be stupid, but I will link this column from their links on the link-page for future reference.
Not Just a Review
          If you want to understand Joyce's Ulysses, there are a ton of books that do nothing but break it down, chapter by chapter, and explain it to you.  If you want to understand Clan of the Cats or College Roomies from Hell!!! or any of a number of other comics out there, go to Robert Howard's Tangents website.  The term that applies is "critical analysis".  If you've forgotten your Sophomore Lit classes (or never attended college), it means a careful and objective dissection of a literary work.  That's what Howard does, and he does it very well.
          Every comic featured on Tangents is subjected to the same treatment.  He introduces the comic with a short summary of the current action, then he goes into a deep inspection of the archives—complete with example strips—detailing every plot point, every example of character growth or devolution, to explain how they got there.  If you were a CRfH!!! fan three years ago and you want to know how Dave got from mooning over Margaret to obsessing about his financial inferiority to Blue, Howard can tell you chapter and verse.
          The fact is, with some of the older continuity strips, there is no way—barring my personal practice of blowing an entire night reading archives—that you can just start reading the comic without taking a quick peek at Tangents.  In fact, even if you are familiar with the back-story of the various serials out there, you may want to look at Tangents just to remind yourself how it got to the point it did.
Catch of the Day
          By contrast, Websnark, by Eric Burns, doesn't much concern itself with the past.  What Burns does is trawl an amazing list of comics to deliver the best thing that day can offer.  This is a dangerous way to play it.  Some days, the seas of the net just don't want to give.  Some days there is a flood of riches and Burns finds himself struggling to present his catches before they grow stale.
          In many ways, Websnark is like the "Daily Picks" columns in your local newspapers television supplement.  Except that, unlike the supplement, Burns doesn't just reprint press releases, he reads, reviews and encapsulates the daily offering himself.  He reads a lot of comics.  Despite his disclaimers that he can't surf the entire net, he has well over a hundred comics on his trawl list.  I have no doubt that he regularly skates past more than a few that aren't on the list, just to see if they've done anything worth his effort.
          And don't let my comparison of his column with the "Daily Picks" fool you.  Any similarity stops at both columns tendency to ignore past quality for the sake of the day.  When Burns includes a strip (complete, as Tangents, with a thumbnail for reference) he pulls out all stops, and doesn't stop commenting until his readers fully understand his reasons for showcasing that one strip.  When Burns says "Go read this", you should go read it, or you'll really be missing something.
          Burns doesn't always write about webcomics, however.  Websnark is a general blog that just happens to have a lot of daily (and weekly and occasional) trawls, so don't get your tights in a wad if Burns ignores the latest wackiness over at PvP in order to comment on his own inability to recognize the warning signs of a worn tire on its way to a blowout.  It's his personal blog; he's not required to post anything but his own thoughts.
Try to See It
          I hope I've explained clearly enough how the three sites are different.  Because that's all we are, different.  Howard and Burns do what they do exceptionally well, and what they do is often more useful to the casual reader than my reviews. In many ways my reviews are more similar to the reviews you'll find at Comixpedia (except that those are member-submitted and are more likely to be written by either a fan or someone with an axe to grind—not that the editors over there don't do a good job of moderating the extremes). Sometimes I just won't like a comic; I can wrap that visceral response in any number of technical phrases, but what it comes down to is I just don't like it.  That's my right, my responsibility:  I owe it to you guys to tell you what I think is a good value.  You owe it to yourselves to either visit the featured site and see if you agree with me, or visit the experts and see if they do.

Updates:  Daily
Caveats:  In-depth analysis, lots of thumbnails

Updates:  Multiple times daily
Caveats:  Not always about webcomics