Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Yes Really!

Y SO SRS?

Art - I do like the LOLbat style as I have always been a fan of Marvel/DC - esque art. I love the backgrounds here as well as they give a nice atmosphere while still being subtle. Also, here the shading makes sense because a) it is night and b) they are standing next to a giant spotlight.

To all those people who wonder I complain about PVP hands look at panel four, they are done VERY well, if not a little long in the fingers, and the regular fused hands just look so crappy in comparison to what can be done.

The commissioner in the scene is done well, but is a dead ringer for another famous character, so we'll call him Tim Mordon so there is no problem :).

Finally, doesn't LOLbat's codpiece look a little too "happy" in the second panel? :)

Sorry guys, nothing that was bad art-wise in this strip, so I had to nitpick.

Story - This is just basically a scene ripped from the middle of any Batman arc where a criminal, or set of criminals, happens to take over the city. I had to read it a few times to see that the commissioner wanted him to stay AWAY, rather then help the city, which I suppose is the joke. It was too subtle, especially for a LOLbat strip, and lost it's when I had to find the joke, outside of the leet speak.

*edit* The title of the strip did make me chuckle though and I wish that LOLbat said it in the strip, possibly in the first panel. *edit*

Two questions though:
What is the symbol on the LOLbat spotlight? *edit* Thanks Robert

In your opinion, is LOLbat strip the PVP version (and funnier) of Chef Brian strip from CAD?

9 comments:

Rob said...

The LOLbat-signal is a picture of the ORLY? owl.

awa64 said...

The LOLbat is a completely different joke from Chef Brian.

The joke in the Chef Brian is "Look at me! I'm being absurdist and wacky! Aren't I funny and clever?". There's no point to them.

The LOLbat, on the other hand, derives its humor from the juxtaposition of the LOLbat's absurdism with the frustration it causes those around him. Plus, there's a fun, campy level of well-executed superhero parody on top of that.

evan said...

While I don't think the LOLbat is funny, it's more grounded and not as completely retarded as Chef Brian. There's continuity between the panels, and the dialogue all makes sense. Chef Brian is just, well, words.

I got that the comissioner wanted him to stop. Here's the comissioner's lines:

The city Police department is in desperate need of you... To stop what you're doing out there.

At this point, I already get the joke. but if I didn't, the next panel:

You think you're helping us, but all you're doing is attracting more loons to my city!

I'm not a big Batman fan. I've never read a Batman comic, and I never watched any of the animated stuff or anything... But that was the final note of Batman Begins, and the entire point of the character of the Joker in The dark Knight. Crazy superheroes creat crazy supervillians. If there was no Batman, there would have been normal mobsters controlling the city still, but no Joker.

Anyway, if after these two panels you STILL don't understand:

Dude, seriously. I am going to arrest you if you don't knock it off.

What did you possibly think that line meant?

I mean, seriously. I guess you see it as your duty as the site runner, but sometimes you don't need to criticize a strip. Which seems to be what you're doing now. It used to be critiquing, but when you say things like "Nothing was bad so I had to nitpick," you're not critiquing, you're just looking to tear down.

To be clear, I didn't particularly like this particular strip. I just didn't think it was funny. I'm not a LOLbat fan. But the composition was sound, and your critcism wasn't.

Brett Schiller (Sage) said...

Yes, but I AM a big Batman reader. Like I said, with every storyline where either a lot of supervillians break out and create havok (Batman: No Man's Land, Hush, Knightfall, War Games)
after someone close to Batman dies/is injured (Jason Todd's "death" in "A Death in the Family), or when Batman is injured/killed (What ever happen to . . ., Knightfall) There is usually a discussion of whether Batman is a) a savior of the city that produces such crazy villians b) the cause of the crazy villians.

While Jim Gordon has been a big ally of Batman there have been times when he felt betrayed by him or politically had to go after him. Also, in Batman: the animated series an episode dealt with the aftermath of Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, where Comissioner Gordon told Batman he was coming after him at the Bat-signal for killing his daughter (later revealed to be a dream).

Also, themes like that was seen in The Dark Knight last year with Batman being questioned as the cause of the appearance of the supervillians, having to become a "villian" himself to save Harvey Dent's reputation, and Jim Gordon having to "come after him" due to him being a public enemy.

I;ve seen it all before form comissioner Gordon, Harvey Bullock in the animated series, villians, and Batman himself. They have basicall said, VERBATIM, the same thing.

Paraphrases quote from Batman:
Let's say said by Harvery Bullock, "I'm going to hunt down the Bat, if it weren't for him these crazies wouldn't be running around Gotham wrecking out town

Today's strip:
"The city Police department is in desperate need of you... To stop what you're doing out there."

"You think you're helping us, but all you're doing is attracting more loons to my city"

Where is the difference in the lines? The only difference is in goofy LOLbat versus serious Batman and LOLbat's line's weren't really funny, unless you find leet speak hilarious.

Evan I usually like what you say agree or disagree, but I find it funny that you start with "I've never read, seen, anything other then the Batman movies" then proceed to question something as not similar to those things when you haven't read it at all and I've read a significant amount. It's like me arguing that the Cold Plan "Viva La Vida" sounds nothing like Joe Satriani's song with one his fans, when I haven't heard any of his songs.

Plus, the nitpicking reference was a joke. (funny since you questioned my getting of the joke).
In the first three paragraphs of the art section I praised a) the overall style of the draw b) the backgrounds (used LOVE in the sentence)c) the shading of the scene d) the drawing of Comissioner Tim Mordon and e) how GOOD the hands were drawn. I don't believe I was looking to "tear down".

The comment was just an explanation of the line above; I don't really care about a "happy" cod piece, not my style. I've written "nitpicking" joke before and I'm just playing to the supposed "nitpicking" nature of the site.

Brett Schiller (Sage) said...

Oh
@ Robert
Thanks, I did not know that.

Cold Plan in the above = Cold Play

R.W.McGee said...

I'd like to interrupt the current drama here, briefly if I may, to urge everybody to examine the CAD strip of Monday May 25th...and then also to examine the Penny Arcade strip of the same date, as well as the Penny Arcade strip written on 03/27/2009 titled 'The Law of Unintended Consequences'

It was fairly well known, previously, that Buckley was, to put it politely; a no-talent hack.

However, his current pillaging of the creative properties of his betters has enraged me to the point that I actually drafted a sternly worded e-mail, stared at it a few moments, deleted it and turned off my computer.

Such are the wages of sin on the internet.


Seriously, though. What an asshole.

TheOriginalJes said...

Wow...

And here I was, thinking that the Lolbat's teenaged indifference to authority in parallel with the Batman's end-run around the law-enforcement community's corrupt bureacracy was the real joke.

Silly me.

(...passing oxygen to Sage)

Brett Schiller (Sage) said...

What can I say I'm a little verbose? :)

Unknown said...

Chef Brian, to me, is more like a much-less-amusing take on Penny Arcade's Twisp and Catsby. But whereas Twisp and Catspy are surreal and arcane, but actually generally coherent (In their whimsical way), Chef Brian could be feeding random copy-pastes from Wikipedia into a madlib script and pasting the results.

Plus, the art for Twisp and Catsby is, in my opinion, some of Krahulik's better work, whereas Chef Brian is... well, just the regular artist's work.

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