Superman Is a Tool

Just a couple posts ago, I criticized Superman stories. They inevitably feature Superman nearly losing, then inexplicably summoning the energy to win after all. I've thought about it since then, and that's not always true. Sometimes, Superman is the villain.

Obviously, Superman is never a traditional villain. He never wants to hurt people. It's his desire to help that makes him a villain in both Red Son and The Dark Knight Returns. We all know that Superman is a total tool, these stories capitalize on the fact. Bad Superman stories make Superman into just some guy that has more powers than a normal guy. Good Superman stories show that Superman is alien in every sense of the word, not just because he's from another planet, but because his abilities set him apart from anyone else in the world, except a  few other supers.

Anyway, I just read Red Son today, and it's fantastic.

Superman

Is it just me, or is every Superman story "Oh man, it looks like Superman's on the ropes! No, wait! He's summoned the energy to win, even though he couldn't do it a second ago!"? It's particularly egregious when he's on the ropes because of Kryptonite. It was my understanding that Kryptonite didn't just make him a little nauseated, it's supposed to make his powers not work.

The worst offender of all time is the latest Superman movie, where Superman is stabbed near fatally on an island of Kryptonite, and only needs to fly off to get some sunlight before he carries the entire island of Kryptonite into space.

Good heroes do things even though it seems impossible. Superman manages this by having his power levels fluctuate wildly for no apparent reason. Maybe there's a rich vein of Superman stories where this doesn't happen, but I don't know of them.

VGCats

Have you ever been to VGCats? It's a typical Penny Arcade rip-off, with mostly video game jokes that aren't funny, even though they mention "Recent Game X".

It's been years (literally) since the guy has made a comic that's funny. Why do I keep going back occasionally? Well, you know how people slow down to look at a car accident. VGCats is a car accident that occurs with regularity*. In this case, the collision is between the creator's ego and terrible writing.

It's really strange to see some art that he's clearly put a lot of time into combined with a "joke" that's clearly inspired by the Cardboard Tube Samurai, for example. 

Other embarrassing things: the joke "Whoa, the mechanics of this video game world we live in sure are crazy!" is only good joke a few times all by itself. Saying that VGCats uses that joke often would imply that they do other jokes.

OK, let's be fair, VGCats also does jokes that are essentially the same, but slightly different. For example: What if a video game character's actions were performed in a different context? And there's the classic, What if a video game character was in a different video game?

There's one other joke, and it's not a video game joke, but it's awful in a different way. It's awful because the content of the comic is awful. For the creator of VGcats, sexual abuse, rape, prostitution, child abuse, sexism**, pee and poop**, murder, etc. aren't something to make jokes about, they're jokes all by themselves. "Look how wacky I am! I killed a baby in a comic!" What is that guy's deal?

There's also the Family Guy "Joke"***, where one of the titular cats is in a video game. There's no other joke; it's just "whoa, the generic guy I invented is in a video game! Remember video game X?" Hilarious!

Also, the writing seems to think that telling a joke in ten sentences is way better than telling a joke in one sentence. The opposite of good writing.

I don't know why I wrote this, it's like making fun of a child's crayon drawing. There are the people who see that it's obviously terrible, and there are the people who are blinded, and neither will change their mind because of this.

PS. One other thing: I'm pretty sure I've seen at least half of his "topical" jokes somewhere else first. I doubt this is a coincidence.

*Or it would, if the creator could maintain his grueling planned schedule of updating once a week.
**There's so much this, it makes me wonder if the creator has some sort of issues, or if he's just an idiot. Then he has the gall to pretend to be above this sort of thing!
***Doesn't really deserve the name joke, but I don't know what else to call it.

qwantz

How could you not love dinosaur comics, when they have a card for sale that says this?

Dogwelder

There are many great superheroes. Few can compare to one that I have recently discovered: Dogwelder.

A superhero who literally welds dogs to people. Dead dogs.

Here's the first appearance of the greatest hero of all time.

PS. I was tempted to write up the dogwelding power in GURPS, write the guy up as a character, bring back the old contest for an even more obscure guy than the current unsolved character. I probably will write up dogwelding some time.

PPS. If you need any more information on Dogwelder, I suggest the excellent dogwelder.com