Dork Tower

Every now and again I have to go through my stuff and decide if I want to keep it or not.  Some things I've held onto for years I finally decide to part with, while other things get sold or given away and I spend the next few years trying to get it again.

Usually just so I can hold onto it for a short time and then get rid of it again.

However, there are a few things that I keep in particular boxes that I have such fun with on a regular basis or have such fond memories of that I'll probably still have them until I'm old, wrinkly, and (hopefully) yelling at kids to get off my space-lawn.

One such thing is my collection of the works of John Kovalic, primarily my collection of his comic series Dork Tower.

The Terrifying Message of Sandra And Woo

There's a web comic out there I read called Sandra And Woo.  It's a story of a twelve year old girl (named Sandra) who lives with her father.  She winds up with a pet raccoon named "Woo" (which in itself is rather bizarre) and soon after realizes that animals can talk.  That is, they can talk to her, nobody else has found out yet as far as I'm aware.

For the most part the strip is interesting.  There are some cool little plot threads happening with a lot of the side characters that Sandra and/or Woo intersect with, and there aren't any characters who are simply cardboard cut-outs of "bad guys."

It's not perfect, of course.  The fact that Sandra has a friend named "Cloud" (whose parents are avid Final Fantasy fans) who trains to be a master sword fighter makes the whole thing start to feel like at any moment Sandra is going to discover a mystical gem that will give her "Raccoon Princess Power" or something.

However, the most recent story line has bothered me for some time now.  I realized that underneath a quaint story about a raccoon trying to be the first to climb a sheer cliff face, there's a much, much darker message.

Namely, if you aren't getting pregnant and having babies, you're wasting your life.

The whole problem revolves around the "Raccoon Goddess" whose name is "Seeoahtlahmakaskay."

Yeah, I can't pronounce it either without choking on my tongue.

Anyway, when the character attempting to climb the cliff (named Butterfly) reaches the pinnacle, Seeoahtlahmakaskay is there to greet her.

Now, am I the only one who thinks it's rather cruel to tell someone, when they've achieved something no other person (or raccoon) has accomplished before, that "oh hey, I had to make your parents hook up to have you, they totally weren't into each other, so technically this victory of yours is really my victory."

I mean, that's just cold.

Add on to that effect that the comic has established that raccoons don't mate for life.  So not only did the Raccoon Goddess have to "work her tail off" to get her father to hook up with her mother, but it was more than likely just a "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" encounter.

Later, when Butterfly is feeling a hint of disappointment that she's accomplished everything she wanted to in life.  Look at what Seeoahtlah- look at what her "Goddess" seems to recommend.

So, yeah, you've done your life's work, time to sit down and crank out some kids.  This is considering that Butterfly was just told by her "Goddess" in a previous strip that a climbing technique she invented has saved many raccoon lives.  But hey, you do one thing in life, then it's off to having kids, right?  That's how life works?

Oh, and look at the "Goddess" and her reaction when Butterfly decides to do something else.

Look at that disappointed face.

But it only gets worse from there.

Once again, the Goddess has made it all about her.  Obviously a normal celebration for something incredible one of their number did is insufficient, so let's take a close look at what she does.  A divine being has just used her divine powers to slip an entire mob of her followers some celestial "ecstacy" at their party.  All that's missing is some flashing lights and a dubstep soundtrack and the massive group "date rape" would be complete.  Because it doesn't matter what else the raccoon populace might have going on in their lives, their Goddess wants babies, dammit!

This is the most recent strip.  The Raccoon Goddess is essentially telling Butterfly she's mistaken in what she's doing, from simply pointing out that she's "going the wrong way" to the fact that "what you want to do is wrong, you need a man in your life to make you happy.  And have babies."  The fact that Butterfly has to apologize for how she chooses to spend her life, even if it's doing something that might inspire other creatures or find a new, life-saving climbing technique, is simply...what's the word I'm looking for?

Abhorrent.  There's the word.

I mean, these are characters with very human emotions and personalities.  Some are jerks, some are kind.  Some have dreams and goals for their lives, others simply take life as it comes.  Some (such as Woo and his girlfriend whose name I can't remember there on the log in the last comic) even fall in love and are willing to risk their lives for each other.

Now imagine if whoever your faith revolves around descended to Earth, looked around, and declared "what are all you women doing?  Why aren't you cranking out more kids?  Chop chop, those eggs aren't going to fertilize themselves!  What's that?  No, you can't be happy with your life as it is right now, you don't have a man creating a new life inside you as we speak!  Do I have to force you all to be horny so this can turn into one giant orgy?"

I don't know about you, but I find the idea of some divine being doing that to people completely disturbing.

Plus, look at panel four.  "...think of all the kind and handsome males..."  Remember, it's very rare for a raccoon to mate for life, so when Seeoahtlahmakaskay says "all" she probably intends for Butterfly to hook up with all of them.  "I'm sorry, but I feel that your privates should be a revolving door for any guy who's good looking and is willing to pick up the check after dinner."

Now, to be fair, considering how often these creatures are killed, accidentally or on purpose, I can understand why their Goddess would be concerned with the raccoon population.  If the raccoons were portrayed as being animals on that level, that would be one thing.  However, we've already seen that these creatures are distinctive and unique.  They have different dreams and goals in life.  Sure, maybe some just want to chill in the woods, eat some berries, and mate with others, but Woo enjoys living with a family of humans and trying his hands (paws) at new things.

Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but so far this story line might be enough to make me stop reading the comic entirely.  I might give it one more week to see if they drop the whole "Seeoahtlahmakaskay is this close to telling Butterfly she's stupid and her dreams are stupid and she needs to be a mother to get any satisfaction from life" plot and move on.

Erik's Favorite Things: Shotgun Shuffle

I think I've established that I like webcomics.  With the newspaper comics page being as much a source of innovation as a dead cow stuffed in a car trunk, it takes creative individuals with unorthodox stories to really shake things up.

Well, that is unless you count the recent week where they had Doonesbury talk about rape in the military right next to Zits and Prince Valiant.

What I'm saying is that newspaper comics need help.

Ask Erik: Episode Seven

Here at Ask Erik, we want to tackle the important issues that weigh on your mind.  That's why we take your questions, and our crack staff of researchers toil away, searching through archives, libraries, and the deepest holes of the internet to provide the intelligent and sophisticated answers your questions deserve.

And when that fails, we rely on animated gifs.

To Erik:  What did you think of Bob and George?

I knew I'd have to address politics one day.

Okay, the year is 1987.  Bob Dole announces his candidacy for president to a huge cheering crowd.  soundly defeats then-Vice President Bush in the Iowa caucus to attempt to determine who will run for the republican party in the upcoming election.  However, he is soundly defeated in the New Hampshire primary, thus paving the way for Bush to begin his ascent as- what?

...oh, the comic strip Bob and George?

...oh, well, um, hm.  Okay, I'm not really prepared, but let's see what I can do here.

Okay.  Bob and George is an online web comic that I used to read wayyyyy back in the early days of webcomics, when Keenspot rose supreme and sprite comics were all doing their best to be the next 8-Bit Theater.

And most of them were doing a terrible job of it.

And of those sprite comics, one of them was Bob and George.

See, the ongoing joke in those days was that if you could think of some jokes (they didn't have to be funny) but couldn't draw, then sprite comics were your ultimate outlet.  You could just grab sprites from video games, tweak them in Photoshop, and pose them in panels and bang out a few words to make people laugh, usually focused around either the jokes children made towards video games or making random pop culture references.

To their credit, Bob and George managed to avoid most of this during the time I read it (back when I had 40 webcomics I was keeping up on), but my interest waned when I realized there was no clear-cut end goal in the future.  I dropped most of the webcomics I followed sometime in the mid-2000s and the numbers really never got back up to where the used to be.

I will give them credit, they did manage to fill in some big plot holes that happened between the Mega Man games, and while I was almost always bored with the actual stuff involving Bob and/or George, many of the side characters were given some interesting depth and backstory.

Bob and George is probably one of the better sprite comics that existed, considering how many usually made five strips before the jokes about "Tails has two tails, so he has two buttholes" dried up and the creators gave up.

Looking towards the end of the archive, it appears the plot got pretty complex before ending up with the original characters being the only ones really mattering to the plot.  While I might, at some point in the future, be willing to scroll through eight years (!) of strips, that time is not now.

So, in the interest of filling space, why don't I discuss some of the other webcomics I've read through the ages?

Now, I've already mentioned Girl Genius,. and if you aren't reading this yet then I'm afraid science proves that you're bad and I don't like you and you aren't invited to my birthday.  You have one of the deepest plotlines I've read in a comic book much less a webcomic, one of the most interesting alternative history worlds I've ever seen, and characters who are both complex and three dimensional while still being able to be sources of major drama or humor.

Seriously, you have no excuse not to read it.  Go now.  ...wait, read the rest of this first, then go.

Okay, so how about some others?

How about a comic full of debauchery, sin, and some really straight-forward social commentary about equal treatment for women, politics, and finance reform?  A comic willing to poke fun at atheists and christians and zen bhuddists?  A comic that has Satan running a major corporation to tempt everyone to evil while Jesus kung-fu kicks things into good?  A comic where a perpetually horny young man, his almost constantly stoned pig friend, and a woman determined to not let society hold her back can have conversations with God himself (usually in hand puppet form)?

Sinfest (which last I heard was proud of its seven failed attempts to become a syndicated comic strip) is a black and white daily strip (with glorious color Sundays!) that tackles every topic you can possibly think of.  Sexism in Hollywood, where freedom begins and liberties end, bullying, an addiction to technology, the high and low points of religious beliefs, and many more are regularly
lampooned by the strip, but done so in a way that has you laugh and then pause and think about it.

It's definitely not for children, though.  The language and topics covered might not only be inappropriate for children to handle, but also difficult for them to understand in context.

One major theme in the comic is that things in the world just aren't "good" right now.  But despite the major flaws, there's an undercurrent of hope, faith, and even love that keeps the "darker" forces from completely winning.  Whether it's a "devil girl" realizing what it means to be human because one person is always kind to her, or an all-girl group on bicycles and tricycles fighting the "patriarchy," or even just the fact that Satan can never beat God, you get this overall sense that "things will work out.  Just relax.  ...y'know, unless we're telling you to panic about something, but even then, things aren't all bad."

...it's a complex message.

So, instead of that, how about a comic about stick figures?

Okay, so xkcd won't win any awards for artwork (although some of his early strips show signs of a keen artistic eye), but what it lacks in colors, 3-D artwork, and panels, it tends to make up for with some of the most intelligent jokes I've ever read.  The comic is a true nerd humor nirvana, where you can find humor about the Higgs-Bosun, Star Trek, early programming languages, or even dinosaur origins.  There's also a ridiculous amount of math and science through the series, but don't let that scare you, non-nerds!  There's also comic strips that simply comment on people and pop culture in general, like the following:

Or...

So, how about something with a bit more artistry, perhaps a few more panels, but possibly even less color?

Ah, Basic Instructions.  Another of my favorites, Scott Meyer has been able to milk a simple idea take a concept and turn it into a brilliant series that makes me laugh every time I read it.  His use of language distracts you from what might be an obvious joke that anybody else would tell and have it blindside you from an entirely new direction.  The artwork tends to be the same basic character designs every time, but since those old-timey postcards with phrases that make me seriously wonder what people aspire to anymore, I don't think it hurts the series any. 

Others I tend to read on a regular basis are Penny Arcade, Kevin and Kell, and Full Frontal Nerdity, and there are a few series I keep meaning to get back into, but those might be for another article.

And hey, maybe, one day, after a few too many drinks, I'll tell about the time I cameoed in a webcomic that was so popular, it had its own printed comic miniseries.  Wiigii.