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Tweak says, "You be a pie then."

schmevil (schmevil) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-15 19:36:00

Entry tags:

creator: john campbell, medium: webcomic, title: pictures for sad children

Pictures for Sad Children
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The latest Pictures for Sad Children:

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	ian_karkull 2009-07-16 12:10 am UTC (link)
	I live in constant fear of this happening. My skeleton is fucking ruthless. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-07-16 12:22 am UTC (link)
	Icon love. I need to make myself a PFSC icon. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	smarmyimp 2009-07-16 12:14 am UTC (link)
	I'm not sure how I feel about PfSC's return to random disconnected comics. I kinda liked the continuity it had built up through a lot of the early part of the strip. It is still its strange, freakish brand of hilarious, but I liked characters I could semi-recognize and had become accustomed to experiencing the strangeness. Still disquieting and hilarious, though. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	ian_karkull 2009-07-16 12:26 am UTC (link)
	I maintain that recurring characters and long, overarching storylines are the death of every humor comic strip. They're why comics like Shortpacked! or Questionable Content are hardly ever funny anymore. Besides, the only recurring characters where Paul and Gary and maybe Sara. I do miss Paul though. Paul who is a ghost who is awesome. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-07-16 12:33 am UTC (link)
	Totally agree. Random is always fresh. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	timemonkey 2009-07-16 12:42 am UTC (link)
	Shortpacked lost it's funny when it tried to go all serious, thus forcing us to think of them as people and reminding us of child abuse every time we look at half ofg them, not because they had an ongoing story. Humour comics just need to excersise better judgement when choosing their storylines. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

ian_karkull
2009-07-16 04:55 am UTC (link)

Humour comics just need to excersise better judgement when choosing their storylines.

That's kind of what I meant when I complained about overarching storylines. Trying to infuse a humor strip with melodrame (which inevitably happens with a strip that's cast-oriented) will become irritating at best and offensive at the worst (see the great CAD Debacle).

Additionally, Shortpacked!'s main source of humour has always been making fun of Batman, Transformers and their respective obsessive fans. Personally, I've never given a damn about any members of the cast, even way back when they where still trying to be funny. The One Off mocking strips are always way better.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

smarmyimp
2009-07-16 06:07 am UTC (link)

Well, yeah, but "consistent characters" and "melodrama" are not mutually inclusive. Just having continuity and recurring characters doesn't mean that PFSC would eventually get Srs Bsns.

The fact that its humor is so quirky and weird helps a lot with that. Every time something approaching real pathos comes up, in the next strip a strange giant object falls on a guy and he has to do his pointless job from underneath it.

I mean, there should theoretically be notches on the dial between "lol zomg so random purple monkey dishwasher" and "THIS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS, I WRITE SERIOUS WEBCOMIC".

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-07-16 06:27 am UTC (link)
	John seems to have a handle on balancing storyarcs with the random. The same cannot be said for a lot of webcomics authors, who get trapped in overly long arcs. Never mind the melodrama, if PFSC went with regular, three month long stories, I'd probably start to wonder other strangeness I was missing out on. Also, there will never be enough purple monkey dishwasher, dude. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	porringer 2009-07-16 03:31 am UTC (link)
	But the linked-as-story comics gave us the Prufrock series, and the child-with-pillowcase, and the horrible truth in the characters, and... I miss it too. PFSC does still have moments of being absolutely spot-on in their painfully sad humour, but those continued stories had a sort of rhythm and developed the weirdness over more space. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	red_cyclone 2009-07-16 04:20 am UTC (link)
	The child with pillowcase is, and always will be, my favourite bit of Pictures With Sad Children, of which I now feel an archive binge coming on :) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-07-16 04:23 am UTC (link)
	And then you will report back to SD with your favourite strips. g (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ian_karkull 2009-07-16 05:02 am UTC (link)
	I've got nothing against storylines, as long as they don't get too convoluted and self-absorbed, as most webcomics are wont to do. John's story arcs tend to be concise and are often interrupted separated by standalone strips, that's the kind of storytelling I like. You mentioning pillow case girl does make me want to dig up and repost Sara's story though. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	fungo_squiggly 2009-07-16 12:20 am UTC (link)
	Look on the bright side, Chris: now you never have to go to work again. You can just lie in bed all day, watching TV or whatever, and mooching off your more-enterprising skeleton. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-07-16 12:23 am UTC (link)
	My skeleton is as lazy as I am. The universe is unjust. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	smarmyimp 2009-07-16 06:09 am UTC (link)
	But he has no finger bones with which to change the channel! What if Ricki Lake comes on? In such an event, he would not even be able to shoot himself. Why won't you let him die to escape Ricki, skeleton? Why won't you let him die? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	fungo_squiggly 2009-07-16 06:35 pm UTC (link)
	But he has no finger bones with which to change the channel! If he can call in sick to work without any bones, he can damn well change the channels too, says I. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	aaron_bourque 2009-07-16 12:28 am UTC (link)
	o.o _~ (Reply to this)

	zegim 2009-07-16 12:36 am UTC (link)
	"Such thoughtful bones" Oh, how I love Pictures for sad children. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-07-16 12:38 am UTC (link)
	Ha ha ha. I didn't see the alt text. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	psychop_rex 2009-07-16 05:21 am UTC (link)
	"Come back here right now and get inside me." Given that this IS Scans_Daily, I am amazed - nay, astounded - that nobody has commented on that panel yet. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-07-16 05:34 am UTC (link)
	Dude, me too. I chose that panel as the preview image in order to encourage exactly that reaction. WE'RE SLIPPING. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-07-16 07:28 am UTC (link)
	It's possible, I suppose, to overestimate the amount and quality of perverts you're attracting - although I really never thought I'd say that about the 'net. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	smarmyimp 2009-07-16 06:10 am UTC (link)
	Color his clothes red and green. 100+ comments are assured! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-07-16 06:28 am UTC (link)
	Zing. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	bluefall 2009-07-16 07:40 am UTC (link)
	We're dirty pervs, sure, but we're dirty pervs who like a challenge. schmevil already did all the work for us on this one just by cropping the panel that way, leaving us only to bask in the finished pervy product. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-07-16 07:51 am UTC (link)
	So you're saying that if he/she (I don't know) HADN'T cropped it as the preview image, you'd be all over it like flies on molasses? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-07-16 08:07 am UTC (link)

Me personally, I can't say. Depends what kind of mood I was in when I clicked the cut. And admittedly, fewer people would probably have clicked the cut to pick up on it in the first place without that out-of-context tease (I'm on to you,

schmevil), so the odds of a multiplicity of clever comments such as you might see on a Robin post are low (also, there's less context to make jokes from; a joke like "don't let Bruce see you like that, Timmy" requires worldbuilding and a mutual immersion by fans in that world that PFSC doesn't have).

But yes, someone would have picked it up, I'm quite sure of that.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-07-16 08:11 am UTC (link)
	Bait the good, upstanding members of scans_daily? Me? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-07-16 08:17 am UTC (link)
	Do we actually have any of those? I thought we were full up on filthy oddballs and wanky pirates. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	aaron_bourque 2009-07-16 09:12 am UTC (link)
	I'm upstanding. Well, I'm upsitting, now. I guess. . . . . that was bad. I do not retract it. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	psychop_rex 2009-07-16 08:18 pm UTC (link)
	I'm fairly upstanding. I have moral character. I haven't tried to conquer the world for checks watch at least five minutes now; that should count. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ashtoreth 2009-07-17 04:04 am UTC (link)
	I've noticed that the more meta and comment you put on a post (unless you say something controversial) the less people comment. People seem to prefer discovering the jokes themselves. (Reply to this) (Parent)