Webcomics Thisandthat

So Scott Kurtz is full of these empty ideas about the value of “Making It Big.” And then there’s this ignorant review of PvP and Penny Arcade… I dunno. If I have read all of something, I don’t need to hear a review of it from somebody who has attempted to sample representative parts of it for purpose of reviewing it. If you have to do that, just say “I don’t like it much” and leave. That’s your review. You don’t have to like it much. Nobody’s asking you to. Just let the people who like it like it and get on with life.

Would you read a review of the Lord of the Rings from a guy who said “I couldn’t be bothered to read the whole book, but I read a whole chapter from each book of the trilogy for purposes of this review.”

Maybe you could pull something like that if you are a paid reviewer who is handed something to review that you may or may not want to review but it’s your job. But if you’re just a yutz on the web with a blog? Here’s a clue, there are a lot of us yutzes on the web with blogs who are willing to talk about things we actually have read all of. Perhaps too many of us. For that reason, if you can’t be bothered, don’t bother, and don’t bother the rest of us with it.

I could criticize PvP myself. It’s not the world’s greatest, funniest, most perfect webcomic. Sometimes it’s not funny for long periods of time. Sometimes Kurtz makes an ass of himself. Maybe I’ll get sick of it and stop reading it next week. But somehow I’ve come to care enough about the characters and laugh at enough of the jokes to just keep on reading it so far.

As for Penny-Arcade, I’m completely not the target market, most of the inside references mean nothing to me, but enough of the comics have, despite all that, made me laugh hard enough to threaten urinary continence, that I’m a devoted fan. But you know, nobody else has to be. It’s fine if you don’t like it. I don’t like lots of things other people like.

I only heard of this review cause Kurtz linked to it in his news, and Websnark had snarked it. From Websnark’s description of it I actually expected it to be worth reading. I was disappointed.

Don’t know why I’m blogging about it except to express my disbelief that this guy would go to the trouble of reading small portions of a work he didn’t enjoy in order to say “Eh, I dunno. It’s not that great” to the World Wide Web.