Advances in journalism lead us Nowhere, and fast.

Minion21g on 6/10/2010 at 13:11

Hopefully, I caught your attention with the title. Stay here for about 2 minutes, I promise that's all I need to shamelessly plug a webcomic I've designed with a friend of mine.

(http://lstncomic.com/) Lightspeed to Nowhere is a webcomic about two enterprising gamers, myself and my partner Todd, going nowhere fast.

Since we're trying to get some attention, I thought I would bring it up here and see what you guys think about our early work. We're running a MWF schedule. Please check in and offer us any advice or criticisms you might have. After all, we're enterprising but not stupid.

henke on 6/10/2010 at 13:35

heh

Needs "Next" and "Previous Comic" buttons.

reizak on 6/10/2010 at 13:39

It has them! They just don't say anything.

I have no constructive criticism, but looks nice enough. Certainly as good as half the webcomics I've read. And one of you is pretty good at drawing, although with the fairly detailed style I wonder if it'll get laborious to do them three times a week.

I'd bookmark it but sometime past the 1000th bookmark that's become largely meaningless.

Salvage on 6/10/2010 at 14:00

It's hard to read something that is completely italics.

Xenith on 6/10/2010 at 14:21

I kind of find the jokes not really that funny. I mean, the one with the haz-mat kind of reads like this:

A guy walks out of the subway train wearing a haz-mat suit. A friend of his, says "wtf" and then the guy with the haz-mat says "well it's only a time till zombies start poping up, what with all the shitty things that happen in the world".

Yeah... not really funny or witty... good sleep inducer though.

addink on 6/10/2010 at 14:25

It might be that it's just not my cup of tea, but I'd say the cartoons lack structure.

For instance 'perception checks' starts with a funny remark about dwarf fortress, without actually identifying dwarf fortress. The remark is only funny once you figure out what it's subject is.. loosing a lot of the potential surprise/fun of the joke.

Then, still in frame1, the discussion goes on about dwarves and polarbears, indicating the dangers of said combination. To be followed by frame2 where indeed the combination has indeed gone awry, just as frame1 warned us. Again missing a lot of the potential surprise/fun of the joke.

Then we end up in frame3, where the discussion further delves into the potential dangers of the dwarf polarbear combo (this time after the joke), to finish up with the conclusion that playing with the dangerous combination is more fun than crushing orcs with drawbridges. With the polarbear thing drawn out like that, I wonder if it actually is..

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'Hazmat Suit Hijinks' seems to feature a completely irrelevant second frame.
Also the first frame could have had more impact if the fellow travellers seem more worried (by for instance cramping everyone in one corner eyeing the suit surrounded by empty seats).

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'Perception Checks' made me chuckle, but it is kind of weird to ignore the fact that the DM conceives the idea of an 'subtly aroused ogre' and gets away with it, while party guest X becomes the butt of the joke. This one probably would work better if party guest X is known to the audience as a deviant..
(Also player and guest X seem to switch places during between frame1 and 3)

ZylonBane on 6/10/2010 at 17:32

"Is that a game? Or did your monitor decide to off itself?"

Please tell me Google Translate was involved in writing that dialog.

Vernon on 6/10/2010 at 19:05

yeah it was really hard work to decipher that sentence - phew, I picked up a sweat and had to complain about it too

anyway, henke's right - signpost the buttons because tbh they don't look functional

SubJeff on 6/10/2010 at 21:10

Quote Posted by ZylonBane

"Is that a game? Or did your monitor decide to off itself?"

To "off yourself" - to commit suicide. Translation: "Or did your monitor decide to kill itself?"

Didn't mind the comic, fairly amusing. The art needs work though.

EvaUnit02 on 7/10/2010 at 04:41

First off it's suffering from what I like to call "Penny Arcade Syndrome". A comic strip should be completely legible on its own, you shouldn't have to read an attached blog post to understand the point. I believe if an entertainment product requires one to study secondary sources, then it's failed at its job. Eg a film requiring you to have read an accompanying novel to properly grasp what was going on.

The Civ MP and Dwarf Fortress ones are good examples of this. I personally instantly understood the DF one, but it would completely fly over the head of someone who hasn't at least read up on the game. The worst offence of the DF strip is that it never even mentioned the actual name of the game in the strip itself.