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Pretty good space comic if your into that sort of thing

Oct 25, 2009 Death Fluffy link
Oct 25, 2009 Shadoen link
Hmmm, I dunno. Read the comic a couple of chapters and saw that this review was spot on:
(Had to post it here like this cuz the original blog seems to be down. Taken from google's cache version of the page.)

Zap!
written by John Solomon

It may be my own highly cynical nature that makes me wary of anything that incorporates an exclamation mark into its title, or it may be the fact that history has proven time and again that anything that incorporates an exclamation mark into its title is either Airplane! or utter shit. Since Zap! is what I'm looking at today, that kinda narrows down the choices.

Formerly Zap! in Space!, which had twice the exclamation marks and therefore was a better title for warning people about its content, Zap! started off with that strange kind of art where you're unsure whether it was done in MSPaint or not. It probably was. But hey, look at it these days! It's polished, professional and practically pleasant to look at. What a pity that is literally the only positive thing it has going for it.

Being able to draw something nice is negated when you've drawn something that's also stupid, then made it do stupid things and capped it all off with some stupid words coming out of its stupid mouth. Practical knowledge of anatomy and perspective is utterly worthless when you're putting it into drawing pictures of eight-dicked anthropomorphic tigers shitting into the mouths of anthropomorphic dragon-dolphin hybrids wearing diapers. Fuckin' Shakespeare could have written an epic play about two households, both alike in flatulence, and no matter how flowery the language, no matter how clever the wit, it'd still be three fucking hours of fart jokes.

Zap! is neither furry porn nor fart jokes, although that might at least have gotten it a larger audience. It's still just the same kind of colossal waste of space, however. What little plot it has is lifted right out of the collective Japanese cultural subconscious and transplanted without any alteration whatsoever. Check this: the main character, Zap, has amnesia. Not only that, but he's got spiky blond hair and a mysterious mystery villain/nemesis who used to be his friend and has long, effeminate hair.

For those of you thinking "Hey, wait, isn't this Final Fantasy 7?" you are entirely correct but no sweat brah it's all cool because instead of ridiculous-looking swords they have psychic powers that manifest as glowy shit - and sometimes guns. Space-guns. In space! But you know, it's actually not quite as horribly stereotypical as you might gather from that link - no, it's worse. The ridiculous space-crew (in space!) that Mr. Zap seems to be rolling with for the purposes of exploring this cliché plot - pointlessly, because you know how it's going to end since it's just that cliché - comprises of Sassy Intellectual Robot, Big Furry Strong Guy, Beautiful But Jaded Female Love Interest and Spunky Tomboy Engineer Girl. Combine that with Zap being Hero With Powers He Never Knew then by God I think we're so deep in cliché territory that I can barely breathe due to the overwhelming unoriginality.

Zap! Is! Shit! That's all you need to know. There's nothing about it that isn't shit. In fact the only entertainment value you're likely to get out of this crap is how laughable it is. For example, there's a character who's a feline alien - that is, a catgirl. She's on the villain's side and acts pretty much exactly how you'd expect "villainous catgirl" to act, just a lot more dull. But the best part is that she sports the most retarded wardrobe I've ever seen in a webcomic. She wears an ass-cape. That's a cape. For her ass. While I'm sure Tetsuya Nomura is furiously jackin' it to that very concept, us normal human beings have to go "What the Hell, an ass-cape?" The rest of the cast all wear varying degrees of ridiculousness, but the chick with curtains covering her backside wins by a mile.

But, besides a monotonous re-hashing of FF7's plot as enacted by a group of badly-dressed mongoloid circus freaks, what can you - the humble reader - expect from this piece of shit? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever. Any moment of action feels like a mundane cutscene, any moment of drama feels like a mundane cutscene, everything just feels like one fucking never-ending cutscene. Which means it succeeds at being exactly like FF7, I suppose, but it accomplishes nothing else. The characters are so mired in their stereotypes they're actually capable of irritating the fuck out of you with how scripted their behaviour is. Every move they make is telegraphed painfully, you know what they'll do before they do it because the stock character is burned into your mind. You cannot empathise with them because they are just so fucking cliché. Being able to sum up the main character as "happy-go-lucky guy who is very powerful with his powerful power but he does not know it" is basically like barfing up the last three decades of shonen animé without the slightest trace of the originality that made 2% of those shows worth watching.

The writer or writers (I didn't bother to check how many people were involved, because I don't care) are utterly superfluous to this endeavour. There's no reveal, no mystery, you don't think "Oh my, I wonder what will happen!" You're basically reading Frankenstein's webcomic, sewn together from the mouldering clichés of existing plots and then brought to life with 1.21 gigawatts of blatant greed. That's all there is to Zap!, it's just a homogeneous front for Paypal donations. Find me one iota of creativity that went into making any part of it and I'll take back every word I said - a hollow promise, since it can't be done.

That's really quite the sad thing about Zap! - it's not repugnantly misogynistic, like Dominic Deegan or Shredded Moose. It's not devoted to creepy Internet fetishes, like El Goonish Shive or The Wotch. It's just overwhelmingly bland and tiresome, which makes it most like The Broken Mirror. There are differences - Zap! gives off an air of desperation, of "I want to be Japanese SO BADLY" instead of Broken Mirror's feculent stench of "I am a brilliant writer, all my cats tell me so". But any difference in the flavours doesn't change the fact that they're still bland peas in a pod.

I suggest you go read something that's more exciting and original than Zap!, like Ctrl+Alt+Del. Or, y'know, a good webcomic. They exist! They're out there! They're absolutely nothing like Zap!, of course, but that's the very reason why they're good.
Oct 25, 2009 LeberMac link
I think I agree with Shadoen - and

Death Fluffy, it's "you're" for chrissakes.
Oct 25, 2009 Death Fluffy link
Oh, I agree the review is accurate on a lot of points. Its definitely not something everyone will enjoy.

In its defense though, I find that the author or authors have good comic timing. I generally read comics for a chuckle. Its part of my morning ritual that sets my mood for the day. Its also developing a pretty good story and is telling it reasonably well if your willing to look past the cartoon foolery.

I'm not really sure what class of comic reader this John Solomon would be considered to be, since I don't read comics as a serious matter or read serious comics for that matter. /me is trying to use clever wordplay and probably failing

For people that do, this comic may be an abomination. Other people who just want a chuckle or to ogle a cat chick in an asscape, might enjoy.

Regardless, this is the sort of comic I enjoy as well....
http://www.eeriecuties.com/
Oct 25, 2009 Professor Chaos link
As Leber pointed out, "your" ≠ "you're".
Also, "its" ≠ "it's".
Oct 26, 2009 Death Fluffy link
/me sighs

I suppose I should be grateful that it took you guys this long to notice that "The Fluffy" ≠ "grammatically correct".

If people discover my chronic inability to spell, I am doooommmmmed.....

But lolz ;-)
Oct 27, 2009 Professor Chaos link
Actually, Fluffy, "The Fluffy" is grammatically correct. You can use adjectives as nouns, especially as proper nouns. I forget what that's called, substantive use or something like that.
Oct 27, 2009 ladron link
Indeed you are correct, Professor. "The Fluffy" literally means "The Fluffy One" or "The one that is fluffy", due to the substantive use of the adjective "fluffy".

Not to mention the fact that names and titles are not bound by the same grammatical and spelling rules as normal text.

It would appear that this "English" thing is giving you a pretty thorough beating, Fluffy. You might want to try a less intricate language for a while, and see if you can master one of those.
Oct 27, 2009 shlimazel link
Oh, the pain, the terrible pain!

It's not too late, Fluffy! You can still return to the light!
Oct 27, 2009 toshiro link
Hmm... I evaluated and dropped Eerie Cuties, and ZIS... well, I didn't really even start to read it...

I have not yet found a (subjectively) satisfactory webcomic that takes space opera as a setting. Galaxion is ok on two of three counts (art and story), but falls short on 'catches my interest', mainly because I'm not too much into comics squarely intended for girls.

I've recently started reading Red Moon Rising, because I liked the art style, and I like cyberpunk (although they could have left out the magic...). It promises space ships, but none have been forthcoming yet. Will continue evaluation.

It's cute to see people wave around their grammar and spelling e-peens, though.
Oct 27, 2009 Death Fluffy link
Shit! I even fail at failing.

Heh. Fun one Shlim. Lots of fast action. I'll check out yours later Tosh.
Oct 27, 2009 Shadoen link
Too bad Dr. McNinja is not really a doctor :(

edit: Heh, spoke too soon.