A few people lately have been saying that I am all about the hate. But I am not! I like things! So, today, here is some discussion of something I like.
On Twitter yesterday I briefly mentioned how Order of the Stick was getting lots of appreciation for making a million dollars on Kickstarter, but the fact that it got a lot of money isn’t really indicative of how good it is. I mean, Vanilla Ice made a lot of money once upon a time as well.
So let me just say, then, that Order of the Stick is good. It is very good. It is one of those rare webcomics that has actually only gotten better over a long period of time (as opposed to disappearing up its own ass in metanarrative, which is what happens to most webcomics and we all know it); it started as an amusing riff on Dungeons and Dragons tropes and has, over time, become an incredibly deep and complex fantasy epic that never sacrifices its metahumour origins, but doesn’t get stuck in them, either. How rare is it for a comic to be good at both comedy and dramatic beats? Most webcomickers aim for it; they almost all fail miserably, because they are either good jokesmiths who are shit at drama or good melodramatists who are shit at gags.
And Rich Burlew’s plotting has only gotten denser and denser. It’s rare that a plot twist in any comic really surprises me any more, but Burlew managed it in the last week with a Chekov’s gun that I didn’t even identify as a Chekov’s gun until it went BANG. And it was not the first time he has managed this, mostly because his climax points serve as story fodder for his broader arc. It’s amazingly impressive. I’m hardpressed to think of many comics that have done this as successfully as Burlew has in OOTS, and the first two that came to mind were Bone and the first half of Cerebus, and that is extremely good company to be in.
So there you go! Positivity!
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Maybe it was timing, but I read the positivity post and first thing I saw was button that said “no comment”.
OOTS is awesome.
What was wrong with the 2nd half of Cerebus? After all, the story was always obviously leading toward a 12-issue exegesis of the Torah in 6-pt text, illustrated by photo-realistic images from the movies of Woody Allen. Anybody who says otherwise just wasn’t paying attention.
Julius Goat: The sad thing is, your comment about how it was clear that Cerebus was going wacky places because the author was desperately in need of medical assistance is actually true.
Well, if you hated OOTS, we would know for certain that you were replaced by a Doombot. 😉
What are your thoughts on Girl Genius?
I used to read OOTS but just kind of dropped off after awhile. It couldn’t hold me the way Sinfest or Precocious does. It wasn’t bad but after a bit I just stopped reading one day and never really bothered to keep up again.
Regarding the last paragraph: How much One Piece have you been exposed to?
Because Eiichiro Oda has a friggin’ Chekov’s Gunrack of stuff that was introduced subtly or even dramaticly and then left alone for YEARS.
…is it bad that I wonder if V got all the XP?
@J.H. The same thing happened to me at one point, too. Although, in my case it was more of a case of Rich’s updates not coming fast enough for me. I came back to it a while ago, and after an archive binge of what I missed I haven’t been away since.
@Mouser – I was actually rereading the relevant arc yesterday, and I think V couldn’t get XP for it (c.f. third panel in <a href="http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0634.html"this comic).
Well, that was lousy coding. This comic.
And don’t forget that Burlew somehow manages to get his stick figure characters to express more emotional range than many artists can manage with far more detailed artwork.
I don’t know how he does it – I’m assuming that there’s a lot of that stuff about “iconic characters” that Scott McCloud talks about going in my my psyche – but it doesn’t really matter. I just know that when I got to that look of horror on V’s face in the most recent arc I could feel it viscerally myself and knew something horrible had happened despite not figuring out exactly what was going on until quite a while later (because I’m slow and I wasn’t expecting that Checkov’s gun either).
DO NOT hate on vanilla ice cream. There’s a reason it’s the most popular flavor in the country (world?) – it’s in everything. Everything you love the flavor of, dessert-wise, has vanilla in it.
Maybe you’ve never had good vanilla ice cream. Go look in your store for real, old-fashioned stuff and give it another try.
I’d never checked it out, but now I will. The only webcomic I can remember enjoying was KIDD RADD.
It was a really, -really- good twist, and I don’t know anybody that reads it so I couldn’t get any reactions! Yes, that one was -really- good, and I didn’t see that event coming out in that way! There’s a lot to be said for the simplicity of the characters – you fill in the minor details for yourself, so when he has them emote, their expressions coupled with his excellent writing really sells things.
Order of the the Stick is a great webcomic as is Girl Genius
Other things that have made lots of money: ‘Twilight’, Nickelback, the ‘Star Wars’ prequels.
I know no-one disputed that specific point, but I feel the need to reinforce it. People have a habit of equating popular acclaim/monetary value with moral/artistic value disturbingly often these days. Sometimes you just need to accept that the multitudes of people who like/dislike something are idiots.
@Mitchell
But in this case, the reverse is true. OotS is a fantastic comic, something of substantial artistic value, to use your term. The Kickstarter was so staggeringly successful in part because the fanbase wanted to thank Rich for giving us (Us, yes. I donated.) this wonderful story for free for so many years.
Oh, I wasn’t commenting on the comic specifically (since I’ve never read it). That was just a thought that’s been rattling around in my head for a while.
I donated too, but I admit I did it for the bonus comics.
But, of course, I wouldn’t have bothered if I didn’t love the work — I’ve bought all the hard copy volumes.
It’s worth noting that I’ve never played D&D* so love of the game is absolutely not a prerequisite for love of the comic.
*I have, however, played a few videogames based on D&D.
A few years back, someone posted a link to the strip on another forum. I checked it out, and like Grazzt, I lost touch with the thread after waiting for it to update. I started reading it again last fall, and went back and read the whole thing from the beginning. A week very well spent, you ask me.
It takes serious skill to draw stick figures as expressive and dynamic as Burlew’s. Not many people can draw, for example, a very pregnant stick-figure samurai fending off an entire army, or the moment when Elan realized just how evil his father was. (Oh, and if the scene where Roy meets his brother in the afterlife doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, then you have no soul.)
And yes, a very small part of that million plus he raised came off of my MasterCard. I only wish I could’ve given more. (I’ll definitely be ordering the prequels (at the very least) when they go back into print.)
No, Savage Wombat, Vanilla Ice. The “rapper” with the punchable face.
I think I remember Rich once said that the reason the plot started diversifying was because, well, by now, just about everyone who’s ever played 3.5 knows about OotS. It’s run in magazines and gotten credits in the back of books that Rich wrote (which are also really good, Dungeonscape has monsters bred to be used in deathtraps and it’s awesome). So, Rich had to keep branching out from “ha, Sneak Attack/Age Categories/Armor Check Penalties are weird.” Hence, by War and XPs, most of the jokes were based more heavily on popular culture, and by Don’t Split the Party, the RPG jokes were practically gone.
Funnily enough, the worst comic in the whole archives to begin at is the first one, because it’s all about the updates from 3rd to 3.5 (dwarves got stability, bards got armor and skill points, fighters got Intimidate, weapon size categories were restructured). That comic only made sense to big D&D fans when it came out; it might as well be in Greek these days, because nobody’s played 3rd Edition for about nine years.
And apparently I have no idea how to type html tabs. I can’t edit, so MGK, if you could fix it for me and delete this post, that’s be great. Thanks.
I would dispute that it’s genuinely “good”, but it *is* plotted like a motherfucker, and that’s enough to keep me reading.
I stopped reading OOTS a while back – not because it I didn’t like it, but because I had lost track of the narrative and didn’t have the time to pick it back up. I’ve been planning too, perhaps that’s what I’ll do with my spare time, along with Gunnerkrigg Court.
As for Girl Genius, I purposely stopped reading. When i went to college, they were exploring Castle Heterodyne. When I left college, they were STILL exploring Castle Heterodyne, proving the authors had lost their way when it came to good serial-installment plotting. Are they still there? Did the plot finally kick in? Did the artist finally learn how to draw a woman whose chest size is below triple D, because all these large breasted woman just make my back hurt whenever I look at them.
Can anyone explain to me why he needed money to print books? Isn’t it the whole idea of selling books that you, uh, sell them? I’d assume there are profits in that equation somewhere…
“Can anyone explain to me why he needed money to print books?”
From the Kickstarter:
“… many readers (especially those who only discovered the comic in the last two years) have had no opportunity to get [War and XPs.] Because it’s such a long book (288 full color pages, the longest OOTS book yet), the cost of a second print run has been too high for me to raise on my own. Readers ask me every week when it will be available again, and thanks to Kickstarter, I now have an answer”
And now, he probably has enough money to reprint all of them.
Good on him.
“is it bad that I wonder if V got all the XP”
V got no XP for that, it was part of the deal with the devils. Which makes sense because if V got all the XP then he would be super powerful when the devils come to collect, and they wouldn’t want to deal with that.
@Swraw But you need a big chunk of money up front to pay for the print run. Not just a partial down-payment either, you have to pay for the whole thing and then hope that you sell enough books to make it back.
Even big publishers sometimes miscalculate and end up with warehouses of unsold books to be recycled or sold at a loss (see also: “The book of my enemy has been remaindered”) but at least the large publishing houses have money on hand to pay up front for the printing and binding (and shipping costs). Its a lot harder for an individual to come up with several thousand dollars out of pocket for manufacturing goods that might not ever sell.
Ugh, sorry for the typo, Sraw.
next week: John Carter. please?