By Jeff Kelly

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t know a lot about webcomics. I know what they are, of course, and I know that in many cases they revolve around misunderstandings that result in dark and often grotesque shenanigans. You know, sort of like your average episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. On crack. Dirty, tainted, acid laced crack.

So that’s basically where we stand on the whole webcomic issue. I will admit, I’ve thought about doing my own webcomic, because back in the day I enjoyed cartooning and I try on occasion to be somewhat humorous. Plus, I just feel like there are oodles of visual jokes that can be made about woodchucks chucking wood. Seriously, oodles.

Right around the time I was considering doing my own webcomic, Malcolm shot me an e-mail that consisted of, for the first time since I began writing for The Last Gaffe, an actual assignment.

“John,” the e-mail began, as Malcolm clearly seemed to have forgotten my name:

Leave it up to Malcolm to send an e-mail on parchment paper, right?

Despite the fact that he called me by two wrong names and seemed a little too fascinated by the fact that concoct sort of sounds like a slang word for penis, I thought it was a worthy endeavor, and something of particular interest due to the whole me wanting to do a webcomic thing. It was serendipity, only without John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale and with actual humor.

And then it happened. I began looking up some webcomics, and I realized, to my horror, that Malcolm was indeed a heartless, soulless, possibly sexless bastard. Ladies and gentlemen, I learned what many of you already know. Amateur webcomics fucking suck.

Now, I don’t want to rag on people who are trying to be creative and putting it out there for the world to see. That takes guts, and I certainly appreciate that. Hell, it’s no different than what I’m doing right now, or what I was doing the other day when I was wagging my genitals in the front window of my house. I’m just putting it out there for the world to see, and hoping they enjoy it.

But apparently, there are some things that should just never, ever be put out there for the world to see, like another High School Musical movie, or more importantly for the sake of this article, some truly horrific webcomics.

Take this one, for instance:

Animals In The Workplace

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the three or four weeks since Jeff sent me this article, the comic in question has vanished from the very face of the internet, rendering it impossible to grab any example strips. Since it would be remiss of me to have an article on webcomics without any sort of visual aid, I’ve whipped up a facsimile of the strip Jeff’s discussing, taking great pains to preserve the flavor of the original.

They are animals, in a workplace.

The title isn’t lying, it really is about two animals dressed up in ties and, presumably, in the workplace. Of course we never see them doing any actual work, so it’s amazing that they haven’t been fired yet. Perhaps their boss is too terrified of the fact that he’s employing animals that can speak and make bad jokes.

In the comic above, we seem to have one animal, which I guess is a cat, asking about life on other planets. Terrible grammar aside, it’s a decent enough set up for a joke, I suppose. He’s there asking what I guess is a monkey if he has thought about life “out there.” When the monkey says no, the cat just seems confused.

For some reason, he’s under the assumption that the monkey would be curious about life on other planets. I don’t know why, though, it’s not really explained. Are monkeys from space? Does he really like X-Files? Was this monkey the one who went up in the space shuttle? It’s never explained. And neither is the joke. I sat there looking at this thing, thinking perhaps after the first panel, we may have an actual joke. But apparently, the point of the comic is that you… shouldn’t make assumptions about monkeys’ interest in space? Yes, let’s go with that.

Lakitu

Lakitu seems to be someone’s attempt to create a comic strip based around the creatures always trying to get that rascally Super Mario. In concept, it’s not a bad idea really. A lot of humor could be gotten from the hapless underlings of Bowser as they fumble around and fuck up every chance to stop a fat Italian plumber from ruining their boss’s day. Unfortunately, we’re left with some dude mistakenly thinking he’s spotted Mario, and some other dude who reiterates to himself that there is, in fact, a bridge. Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.

Dragon Ballz

I immediately regretted this decision. I should warn you, if you click on that link you’ll see a badly drawn penis. I’m just throwing that out there right now to save you from what I had to see for the sake of this article.

I’m still not sure what the hell was going on in this comic. Apparently, it’s about some dude named “Rabbits” who comes to earth looking for the titular Dragon Ballz. Apparently, these Dragon Ballz will make him a true man. From the looks of him, I’m thinking “Dragon Ballz” is code for “penis enlargement.” And if you’re like me, by the time you get to that last panel you’ll be wishing the author had named the comic “Dragon Pantz.”

And at that point, I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t go on, looking from one horrifying webcomic to the next. What would my innocent eyes be forced to look upon next? Donkey Kong joining those crazy kids from Latiku and swapping stories about the time they almost had Mario? Pikachu fucking a horse? More horribly executed jokes than a Carlos Mencia stand up routine?

But for the sake of this article, I decided to look at just one more. Maybe by happy mistake I’d click on one redeeming webcomic, which would give me hope that maybe, just maybe, all hope was not lost, and that I might not be completely dissuaded from making my own foray into what, up to this point, had struck me as an awful, awful place. Surely, there would be one comic that might restore my faith in humanity, right?

Numa Numa

Apparently not.