Brian Roney’s webcomic reviews

As has been pretty obvious the last few weeks, I clearly don’t have the time to devote to this site that I would’ve hoped I would. Between my sister getting married, various crunch times at work, and looking for interviews for new work because my contract’s running up, I’m swamped.

I still have reviews I want to write, and I hope I will get to them, but this site’s update schedule is hereby “sporadic”. The archives are still going to stay up (as long as I can convince my friend to continue hosting them), so feel free to click through and find some comics you might enjoy. I’m going to put on a bit more draconic comment posting restrictions to chase off some of the spammers that have caught on to the blog’s existence, unfortunately, but please feel free to comment, it just might be a little while until it’s visible on the site.

Sorry to all my readers. Life wins again.

I’m not dead, but my life has been eating all my spare time recently. It figures that right when I figure out which comics I want to review next and how I want to do it, that I don’t have the time to be able to do it.

I should probably point out the RSS feed for the site - http://brianroney.com/?feed=rss2 so people can add that to Google Reader or some other RSS reader and be able to see when I update next without having to check the site all the time.

I should be able to post this weekend if not earlier. Sorry for the delay.

(Due to several host computer crashes this didn’t get posted earlier this week like I attempted. Also, my computers are also acting up- in particular input is being flaky. So there’s a chance that this site may go on long blackout while I go attempt to have computers repaired.)

Since posts have been a little slow for myself recently as I rethink a few things about how I’m handling things here, I thought it might be nice to point out some of the other webcomic reviewers. I hope to be back and posting soon, but I want to make sure that I’m accomplishing something, and to that end I’m going to spend a little time thinking about what I’m doing.

I’ve mentioned Ferrett’s webcomic reviews several times, and he’s a wonderful writer. I’d suggest reading his regular blog as well, as he has a take on many different subjects and writes in his journal daily. He reviews webcomics weekly, and specifically webcomics that have traffic less than his own webcomic, Home on the Strange. The vast majority of webcomics he reviews I end up adding to my list of webcomics (I picked up Mansion of E from him, for instance).

Ferrett also pointed out another webcomic reviewer to me,  Mr. Myth. He updates MWF with his various thoughts on current webcomics, including reviews and news. He often links to several comics in a single post, which may overload those of you who are still trying to catch up on the webcomics I’ve gone over, but there’s a lot of good strips in there, and a lot of interesting news about them.

Tangent also has a webcomic review blog, and he updates nearly daily (M-F?). I may be a little fuzzy on the details, but I’m pretty sure he ended up starting his blog because he felt that Websnark only covered a certain type of dramatic moment, and ignored several strips that Tangent felt deserved recognition. Tangent certainly reads quite a set of comics, and a fairly different one than mine- while we both enjoy some of the same strips, he has a tendency to enjoy more of the long-story based comics, while I enjoy more of the short-story and comedic comics. If you enjoy those sorts of comics, Tangent has quite a list to share, and you’ll probably find something you like there. Tangent’s also ended up getting involved in various webcomic community drama, as he’s a very active forumite in various places, but as I don’t know most of the details of those situations, I’ll leave them as they are.

Hope to be writing again soon.

Sorry about the delay in new posts for a few days there- we had a bit of a DNS issue and I couldn’t get to the site to update, and then I had to deal with some medical problems. We should be moving to real hosting in a week or two, and in the meantime if we’re down we should be back up in at most a few hours (although if DNS gives us trouble again, you’d have to get to a different computer for that, otherwise it’ll take up to a day to clear the cache).

I still don’t have a set schedule for posting. I try to post at the very slowest once every other day. Yes, if I was a webcomic I’d have to mark myself down for being irregular (No, I won’t do reviews in webcomic form). But I’d get major down points for being way too wordy, too.

More posts coming soon.

No review for tonight, it’s late and reading various new comics the whole way through has burned up much of my time for tonight. So instead I thought I’d make a little FAQ and hopefully answer a few questions people might’ve had.

Admittedly, so far only two questions have actually been asked of me, but I’m going to make a few more up because they’re questions I ask myself.

1. Why do you review so many big name comics instead of smaller comics that people might not have heard of?

When I started this site, I only had my friends for readers. Now, my friends, as much as they enjoy webcomics, are not serious webcomic readers. They know of the comics that they read, and a few that they just don’t really care for, and others fall by the wayside completely. So when I reviewed Order of the Stick, many of my friends hadn’t heard of it before. Thanks to the review, they started reading and loved it. I understand that most of the people I catch from the web are the kinds of people who’ve already read most of these, but I’m still getting used to the idea of having other people for feedback.

Besides, I’ve reviewed a few comics that aren’t in the top 100 of www.piperka.net, such as AKoTaS, Nukees, and Partially Clips. So I don’t feel too bad. And the longer this goes the more likely the comics I review will be lesser known. Also, the top rated comics are top rated for a reason, because they’re generally quite good. I’d like to expose people to them if they haven’t given them a try yet.

If you prefer reading reviews of smaller webcomics, I suggest Ferrett’s webcomic reviews. He specializes in such things.

2. Why are your reviews so positive? Why don’t you tear the bad comics apart like Your Webcomic is Bad (warning, coarse language)?

Well, for starters, I read all these comics daily. By reviewing only comics that I read daily, you’re guaranteed that at the very least, I’ve been willing to continue subjecting myself to the comic. I don’t see the point in writing a review to try to tell people that a webcomic is bad. Webcomics aren’t like movies, where you’d've wasted three hours and $10 to see something that you could’ve read a review for and skipped. Webcomics are almost always free for the reading, and you’ll generally figure out whether you’re enjoying yourself in the first ten minutes, which is about how much time you’d've wasted reading the nasty reviews.

Instead, I want to show people what comics they might actually like, because if people can spend five minutes reading a review and then saying, “Yes, I’ll clearly enjoy this comic! I’m going to give it a try.” (and having it be correct), then I’ll have helped entertain somebody.

Also, I’m a wuss and like saying nice things when I can. I do try to be objective and point out flaws where they exist, so people can skip the comics that hit the points that they won’t like (and I’m trying to be better about that). But I honestly enjoy these webcomics, so my reviews are going to reflect that. Even when I write a review where people might consider most of my points to be negative, it’s still a strip that I read regularly, so clearly I’ve seen something in it to make me not mind any of those negatives.

3. When are you going to review X?

Well, at my current rate of one review roughly every other day, I’ll get through my current comic set in… about a year. That’s not counting the comics I’ll add through that time, too. I actually have tiered bookmarks on my browser, since if you try to open up 150 tabs in Firefox at once it will crash at you. Some of the sortings make sense, but they’re still pretty haphazard. I may try to sort them at some point in the future so I’ll be able to give a better comment about what order I’ll review things in, but right now it’s really whatever I feel like. Occasionally I even roll dice to see if they suggest a comic to review.

So I suppose the answer is… I dunno.

4. I misphrased. Why haven’t you reviewed X yet?

Quite possibly I don’t read it. You’ll likely never see a review from me of Dinosaur Comics or Sinfest, for example. I understand they’re both very popular. They’re just not for me. It happens.

5. Will you review my webcomic?

If you have sent me a link to your comic in the hopes that I might review it, it has gone into one of three categories: Didn’t make it through the archives (in which case I’ll tell you so), made it through the archives and added it to my daily reads, in which case I’ll get to it eventually but with no particular idea when (so far this is where most of them have gotten to), or I made it through the archives and loved it so very much that I’ll likely review it next (in which case you’ll likely notice).

6. Why didn’t you mention X? It’s the best part about the comic! The plot twist was so amazing! And when Y died! You need to mention that.

I try to avoid giving away spoilers of any sort. I figure if something isn’t mentioned in the first twenty five strips, I don’t want to give it away. This is why I try not talk about characters in the present tense in strips where characters die, so you don’t get to know who’ll make it. I try not to talk about characters that join the good guys later despite being an evil guy to begin with, because it spoils that whole plot.

So the things I feel I can mention: Anything vague that does not give away anything specific. Anything that is constant throughout the comic (telling people that Garfield hates Mondays is not a spoiler). Anything in the first twenty-five-ish strips. I’ll also try to edit comments that have these sorts of things in them, so I’d appreciate if people didn’t try to throw them in.

7. Why don’t you include a panel or a strip of a comic so people can see a representation of the comic?

A couple reasons- a) I don’t like giving away spoilers (see previous question), b) I’m horrible at finding a representative panel from the strip that doesn’t give anything away, and c) I’d rather spend the time that’d be required to satisfy a+b to review comics or fix up the site, instead.

8. Why are various things on the site so plain? Is that still the default theme for Wordpress?

Yes. Improvements are being worked on slowly, but those generally weren’t the highest priority when I was starting out, content was.

You say you have a comic that you don’t think I’ve reviewed yet, and you want to get it reviewed (yeah, I know, I’ve got delusions of grandeur, but let me dream)? How would one do so, you ask?

The following are the criteria I use to review webcomics:

1. Do I know about the comic? This is the easy one. Send me a link - brian at brianroney.com will get to me. If I don’t know about it I can’t review it. I know about a good number of comics, but there’s a lot I’ve missed. If you send me a link I’ve read already, I’ll let you know what the status of that comic is (to be reviewed soon, to be reviewed eventually, didn’t like, or haven’t read).

2. Did I finish the archives of the comic? I only review comics I’ve read the full archives of. If you don’t hold my interest through the archives, I’m not going to bother sending people your way (er… once I have people to send). There’s a couple auto-fails here: if you’re behind a subscription, I’m not going to bother (if you end up going with free archives for a week and then go back to subscription, I may pick you up). If I can’t navigate through your archives without screaming in frustration, I’ll likely give up and go elsewhere. You don’t need to go overkill and have every comic click-through to the next (although it’s very considerate). But there should be “first” and “next” buttons. Be nice to the readers. Sadly part of this step is personal taste, and there are comics that I drop because I’m not interested in them, but considering I read over 150 comics, it’s a reasonable shot.

3. Is the comic updating frequently? I’m likely going to review a few dead or completed comics at some point during my time here. But they’re not going to be on the top of my list. The comics that move to the top of the list are daily updaters that don’t have frequent missing days. If it’s not updating a lot but I’ve got it on my list, I’ll get to it eventually.

I may end up having some friends write webcomic reviews here eventually, in which case #1 and #2 gets replaced with _their_ version of that restriction. We’ll have to see how things go.

I should probably describe the goal of this website before I get too involved in the massive postingness.

I intend to use this website to post webcomic reviews. I read a lot of webcomics. My last count put the current active total at around 170, and that’s not counting comics I’ve stopped reading, comics who have finished, or who have stopped updating for whatever reason. Many of my friends have enjoyed hearing my recommendations for webcomics for them to read, and I’ve enjoyed talking to people about them.

The logical way to follow this up, of course, is to do that same sort of thing at a larger scale. So here I am, intending to write webcomic reviews. I apologize in advance to authors and artists who I have nitpicks about, but take this all with the huge mound of salt that this whole thing is just my opinion, and I’m just some random guy.

Now, most people who will have found my little corner of webcomic reviews will have heard that there are many people out there who already do webcomic reviews. Indeed, there’s a general consensus that claiming to start webcomic reviews is a bit of a joke now. That’s fine. Websnark has certainly done a lot for webcomic reviews, and I don’t even have a literary analysis background. He hasn’t posted quite as frequently recently, however. The Ferrett has a weekly webcomic review, and even his own webcomic (technically websnark had his own webcomic too, but permanent hiatus makes present tenses cry). But he only reviews comics with less readership than his own comic, and prefers gag-a-day comics as opposed to story-based drama comics. The Webcomics Examiner is out there also, with a good weekly review.

So what sets this apart?

A couple things. For starters, I’m somebody different from them. Everybody has different tastes, we’re wired that way. If you don’t like the Ferrett’s love of puns and wacky zaniness every day, but can’t stand the literary analysis websnark’ll bring you, you might find something you like here. I hope you do.

Also, I intend to be updating this more frequently than weekly, which is what you’ll get (at best) from the other three.

Let’s see how this goes.

Dearest viewers. I’ve setup a blog for my dear friend Brian. Please enjoy his humble prose. ~ Mr Admin