In the summer of 2004, former CYD regular contributor The New Meat tried his best to critique the long-running FurryMuck-in-still-life "comic", West Corner of the Park, by attempting to make his own "comics" utilizing similar methods. The results are tragic.
Monday, August 9. 2004
The Critique that Couldn’t be Done and Still Can’t!
The Critique that Couldn’t be Done and Still Can’t!
or, "Southwest Corner of CYD"
by The New Meat
When I first accepted Zenzhu’s challenge to write a critique of Jim Groat’s “West Corner of the Park”, a lot of people said it couldn’t be done. Because “West Corner of the Park” wasn’t a real comic so much as a series of confusing, illustrated inside jokes from some furry chat room or something. If, like me, you’re not a regular on furry loser chat, here’s a quick explanation of what’s going on:
- There’s a horse that goes cuckoo for altoids. I am going to accept on faith that this is supposed to be funny.
- There’s a Jewish kangaroo and a horse who wears chain mail and another horse. And, uh, some other shit. I guess it might be funny.
- There’s a chicken who’s from France or Spain or some other Godforsaken ferrin locale. This is funny, because it’s not America.
- There’s some sort of box machine thing with a button and it has a sign that says it produces large-breasted foxes if you push the button, but, in reality, if you push the button, it smashes you with a hammer. People push this button on a fairly regular basis.
- The horse with chain mail has breasts.
- People get married a lot in this chat room.
Extrinsic evidence also suggests:
- Groat threatens to quit producing WcotP when he feels he isn’t getting the attention due a man of his stature.
- WcotP has been called the “Cathy” of the internet, although this seems a bit unfair to Cathy. Usually you can figure out why Cathy’s supposed to be funny even when she fails (as she inevitably does).
- Frequent dead celebrity tribute strips break up the unending parade of anti-hilarity that is WcotP.
Anyway, they were right. I really have no clue what to say about something so completely stupid and nonsensical that merely describing it as “boring” would be an overly charitable lie. So, for this critique I’ve decided to try something new. Instead of writing about why WcotP sucks I’m going to draw about it! It’ll be like that episode of “The Electric Company” where the king decides to deliver his proclamations in song. Because he’s the king who sings. It was a good bit, trust me. Anyway, taking a page from Jim Groat’s notebook, I’ve decided to try my hand at:
Making Web Comics the WCotP Way
The first thing you have to ask yourself when you’re creating your web comic is, why are you doing this? Do you love the comic medium? Do you want to make people laugh, or hone your artistic talents, or perhaps want to tell a compelling story? Well, those reasons are wrong. The only acceptable reason for starting a web comic is to receive sloppy internet blowjobs from your very own slavering fan community. The best way to do this is to throw in lots and lots of pointless cameos of people from within that fan community. And the punch lines should all consist of weird running gags that no one from outside the community could ever understand. That increases the blow job factor!! The principle is, if the audience recognizes people they know in the comic, that instantly turns absolute shit into COMEDY GOLD. To illustrate, check out this totally AWESOME interweb comic that I just created now, entitled “The West Part of, uh, the Chit-Chat Forum or something.”
In this comic, some guy has this hangover where everyone else turns into centaurs…or maybe just he did. Or maybe he was always a centaur and the joke is that he’s fat. Either way, it’s obvious that this is funny because he expected something and then something totally different happened! I think. Okay, it makes no sense at all, but look at how much funnier it becomes when you take a similar situation from the CYD forums:
See, the joke is that I wrote that whole nasty article about Naylor but he acted all unperturbed. This reaction was so totally unexpected because that’s not the way that he was supposed to react! That’s Mitch delivering the bad news and, just for some added cameosity, Mouse, giving this comic a blowjob factor of 3. I put myself in the comic because I’m so cool. Mitch is dressed like Sherlock Holmes because he’s living in England, I think.
Here’s that altoid-addicted horse. This is a running gag throughout WcotP, so I assume that it must be hilarious if you know this Flinthoof guy. Wait, actually, no, it probably wouldn’t be. Since we don’t have any altoid-huffers in our own forum, note how I cleverly substituted a crack about Wayd’s addiction to telling us about his large-breasted wife.
I drew Zen Zhu as a rooster with a bald Chinese guy’s head, because I vaguely remember he used to have a Foghorn Leghorn avatar before he had a bald Chinese guy avatar. Mouse and Genghis the Gerbil are also visible, for a combined blowjob factor of 4.
Here’s another WcotP running gag, something about moderators “toading” players. I guess that’s something like banning them. (I don’t know and I can’t be bothered to find out because I am a lousy reporter.) Are your sides aching with mirth yet? No? Well, maybe that’s because it’s not funny unless you know the featured characters. Take a look at this:
In this comic, I made fun of Mike Hirtes and Ebonyleopard’s constant slapfights. Mitch and Computolio are using magic wands which don’t really exist to discipline them! This comic is especially good because Mitch and Computolio are mods, so blowjobs from them will be extra awesome and will convince everyone all the more of how cool I am for doing this comic! Also, note that Genghis, Mouse and Gargoyle are there too. That’s a blowjob factor of 7!! Computolio is a computer because, uh, Computolio kinda sounds like computer.
A strip about…uh..a box that hits people with a hammer. Yeah, it’s dumb, but, with a little tweaking, it becomes this piece of hilarity:
Which features Paul, Mous3 Zero, Big Evil Ogre, Outsider, DA, Schmeckopolis, and Slaita for no apparent reason, for a blow job factor of 7!
Online weddings are great, because you have an excuse to draw lots of people in. Think of how cool that will make you.
Click for larger!
And here’s an analogous comic from our own forum. Again, I substituted a running gag from our very own forum to make the comic funny. In this one, Donotsue’s gay love for Skunkfuckers, Inc. It’s absolutely amazing how something that’s totally a not-funny inside joke magically becomes hysterical once you throw in some characters based on people you vaguely know from an internet forum! This comic is great because it has 34 people in it. That makes it great! And I’m great for drawing it! HOORAY! Tell me I’m great! Tell me I’m great or I’ll stop this article right now.