Critique my comic

[RebelTea]

Benny
Hand and John

Tell me what you think, thanx. biggrin

[panty sniff]

I mean, it's literally just an even worse cyanide and happiness with less humor.

[Asonixic]

Um, so I don't know how to say this without being horribly blunt, but...

These are pretty offensive - and not in a way that is funny or enlightening. As panty sniff said, you're taking the idea of cyanide & happiness - simply-drawn people with minimalistic backgrounds, etc - and completely losing the point. Unlike your work, though, cyanide & happiness is constantly pointing out social ironies or dark humor. It's clear what their intentions are - they take nothing seriously, not even Jesus' resurrection. But they've spent a long time building up silly, non-offensive work like this as well.

Let's take your least offensive work first, which was "Hand and John." To be honest, I have no clue what was going on here. It was just a man and his hand - and at first, I thought that was all it was going to be (har har) until it wanted to eat his soul? It might have made more sense if John were a serial killer getting away from his last heist and his hand wanted to kill him next - not that it would've been particularly funny - or if John were a demon. Granted, both ideas would've needed more work but it would've made more contextual sense and given readers something more to ponder. As it was, there was absolutely no context that John's hand was evil, besides the fact it was talking, and no reason for it to be scratching his face. Clearly, you needed to think that one through a little more to have it be more of a story and less some kind of macabre eulogy in sequential format.

Your other work, "Benny". Just...*sigh*. No. At first, it was interesting - a man, standing there, frozen, being used like a tourist destination. People bathing him? Creepy. People dressing him like a woman? That actually got a slight chuckle from me. (I dunno why, probably because if I had a grown man who couldn't move, I'd probably do the same thing - dress him in pretty clothing.) But that last line?

Okay, I'm going to stop my rant here to say that, yes, I have an incredible bias. I don't think anything like that is funny under any circumstance. I've heard arguments - even by greats like George Carlin - and I just don't buy it. Of course, someone could argue this point with me and their opinion is just as valid as mine and they're able to back it up with something even I could agree with. I have a bias. Please know that going in to this next part of my rant.

Your use of sexual assault was pretty disgusting. First of all, if you're trying to be just like them, Cyanide and Happiness usually doesn't show the sex. And as George Carlin said, it's all about context when using inappropriate material. Your context wasn't funny. It wasn't even slightly amusing.

I think you have a long way to go before you start attempting comics like this. Look at the original Cyanide & Happiness comics. Read. Watch George Carlin - a master of humor and someone who also has a sense of dark humor. Practice before you post. Ask friends to review your stuff for you and tell you whether or not it's funny. The book, Drawing Words and Writing Pictures has a whole chapter on writing strip comics - check it out from your local library and give the exercises in its pages a shot. In long, you have a long way to go before you can say you've mastered this genre of comics.

[Miscellaneous Artist]

it's not even there