Hemingway Comix

Owen: This showed up like six times in my Google reader today. Apparently people like it. What do you think about it?

Victor: I don't like when people think the word "cheese" is funny. And "I am so fucking drunk" is kind of a predictable "non sequitur" punchline but I could imagine myself laughing at it if I was in a different mood maybe.

Owen: Yeah, this didn't make me laugh, it made me think of mocking it on our blog. I think that "In a way, he died in every war" could be a funny line, if it wasn't sandwiched by crap.

Victor: At first I thought his big puffy mariner's sweater was like a Shakespearean type get-up with one of those giant collars and the thing made even less sense. Remember when you asked me earlier if I remembered that comic Non Sequitur? I do. It was pretty good, it got kind of wack in the later years. Was dude hella Christian? It's weird that the spell check doesn't think "sequitur" is a word. Oh wait, I guess because it's Latin. But it's kind of been an English word for a minute...

Owen: Yeah, I remember, that comic was awesome for a while, but I remember it getting really weird and incomprhensible later. Wait, you just left, are we still writing this? I think it probably sucks that people make comics that reference things like Ernest Hemingway in a sort of dismissive way. This isn't actually a joke that you would get if you didn't know who Ernest Hemingway was. I guess that doesn't really matter, but it seems cheap or something.

Victor: Sorry I went to go change the channel cause I'm really not liking Nacho Libre right now. But then I couldn't find anything else and I came back to blog more. Blogmore. What? spellcheck recognizes blogmore as a word but not sequitur. Oh wait, it didn't underline sequitur either. Did it somehow turn off? kjfg OK, yeah.

Owen: I think kjfg is actually a word.

Victor: What?

Owen: Nothing, sorry.

Victor: Nacho Libre is so dumb.

Owen: Yeah, I really don't understand why this movie exists. Oh, and I forgot to say that I couldn't agree more about the "cheese" thing. Also, if Ernest Hemingway ever met the author of this comic he would totally fucking kill him. Easily.

Victor: Oh, what I was about to say was I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to make a joke about Ernest Hemingway that someone wouldn't understand if they weren't familiar with him. I really think the "cheese" part is probably the most objectionable thing in the comic.

Owen: It's concievable that the author's use of the word cheese was coincidental and he/she doesn't think it's funny either. God dammmit. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

Victor: OK, but like even if he was just like, "OK, what word should I use here? Uh... cheese... perfectly neutral cheese..." that's still stupid. Cheese is a bad filler word in general, but especially in a comedic setup.

Owen: Yeah, I know.

Victor: OK, sorry I made you keep blogging after you said you wanted to stop. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is on now. More like Who Wants to Be on a Boring TV Show? AM I RIGHT?

Metablog: SCOTT MCCLOUD FUCKING SUCKS

Victor: In this very special wehatethiswebcomic.blogspot.com blog entry, we are reviewing an old draft (4/23/09) of a review of a Scott McCloud comic on the internet somewhere (now lost) that I started when I was pretty drunk. We never finished it because I think Owen has complicated feelings about Scott McCloud...

BEGIN QUOTED TEXT:

Victor: SCOTT MCCLOUD SUCKS DICK THIS GUY SUCKS SO HARD HIS DRAWINGS SUCK HIS STORY IS BORING LIKE ONE SENTENCE INTO IT, WHAT SOME DUDE AND A CHICK IN SPACE KISSING AND TALKING ABOUT SHIT? FUCK YOU! THIS IS THE WACKEST SHIT. WACK AS FUCK. WHY THE FUCK DO PEOPLE LIKE THIS GARBAGE?

Owen: I am sensing some anger.

Victor: Come on, you don't hate this dude? Don't you hate dude?

Owen: Um, well, actually, after I read Understanding Comics, I tried to get Wesleyan to pay for him to speak there. But they wouldn't. And then I stopped thinking about him until right now, and like the few times we've made fun of him before. So I can't say I hate him, but I probably will if I read any more of his online comics.

Victor: Wesleyan didn't pay for it cause they knew he sucked. This dude is fucking stupid. What the fuck is this stupid bullshit?

Owen: No one at Wesleyan knew who he was. Maybe it would help if you articulated your hatred a little more specifically.

END QUOTED TEXT

Owen: I still haven't thought much about Scott McCloud. He wrote a book that attempts to use a lot of academic sounding theory about narrative and aesthetics or whatever, and a lot of make sense but a lot of it feels like some Freudian shit or something, because it's mostly about what makes sense to him and I think a lot of people believe it because it's written as a comic book and no one else has tried to do anything similar. But it becomes very suspect when you consider that he has no other successful comics, and his fictional work sucks a lot. But, still, I don't feel angry.

Victor: No yeah, I think we've even mentioned briefly in an old entry of wehatethiswebcomic.blogspot.com (or in real life) at some point that we both dug Understanding Comics but his other shit was pretty wack. But yeah, I guess I would have probably gone to see dude speak. He's like a Freudian William Carlos Williams.

Owen: William Carlos Williams? Really? I don't get that at all, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you know what you're talking about.

Victor: He's the black dude from Star Wars. But you wouldn't get that cause you're not a Trekkie like me.

Owen: Fuck no. You fucking loser. Wait, there's a black dude in Star Wars?

Victor: You know who's a fucking loser? SCOTT MCCLOUD.

Owen: When I was talking to him about coming to Wesleyan he said he needed two hotel rooms or something because he travels with his wife and two kids. I think, I could be misremembering that. Anyway, the dude has a wife and two kids and makes a living drawing bullshit. He doesn't care if he's a loser.

Victor: Yeah he does.

Owen: Okay.

Victor: I WIN!

Owen: Fuck.

Some Shit

by somebody we can't find on the Internet




Owen: This is another one from Bob WeiS/Z, but we can't figure out who the actual artist is because it's on LiveJournal, so we don't know if this is actually a reoccurring comic or just some random thing. Anyway, I really like it, even though it's not funny. I also like that "fucking" is spelled "fucken."

Victor: Really? I was kind of bugged by that. But then again, I don't capitalize the word "internet" and you do. DIFFERENT STROKES, YOU KNOW? I don't think it matters if it's reoccurring or not. In any case, I don't really like it. It just seems like another Sentimental Moment Profaned by an Irreverent Statement, which I'm usually down for but feels kind of contrived and awkward to me this time.

Owen: Yeah. You're right. What I liked about it though was that you immediately knew without reading the text that that's exactly what it was going to be, and that there would probably be the word "fuck" in the second piece of text, or something else profane. So I still hate the author, but I think the thing is funny. And I like the drawing. I don't know, who really cares, I have to pee.

Victor: OK, see you later. On further contemplation I believe my problem with the "punchline" though was threefold:

1. The spelling of "fucking."
2. Referring to Piglet as "the pig" is like something that a dad or a screenwriter for a Shrek sequel would say.
3. The reason for Pooh flying off the handle is too arbitrary to justify the radical switch in tone (which was expected in the first place; the agreed-upon pleasure being in "The How," to quote Mark Twain).

Owen: I just got done peeing, although this is like a month later, and rereading this comic I have the exact same feeling, which is that, although it's kind of annoying because it's just a rip off of a lot of other things, like everyone I know making Calvin and Hobbes comics with different words, that are profane. I think what is annoying about it is that you can imagine whoever made this piece of shit sitting at their computer and being like, oh this is great a idea I'm going to make the bear say something really weird and non-nonsensical and that's funny cause this is like a precious children's story. Anyway, I still like it, but would like it more if there wasn't any text.

Victor: So you are saying you like how it sucks? OK, I'm on board with that. It's kind of like William Carlos Williams in that respect.

Owen: Do you even know who William Carlos Williams is? You fucking idiot. It's nothing like that.

Victor: He's the black dude in Star Wars, right?