As part of our duties in investigating and prosecuting webcomic authors, we've been closely following the webcomic community Smack Jeeves, a hosting site that boasts “providing free, quality webcomic hosting services to thousands of webcomic authors.” While on an undercover investigation, one of our officers started fiddling with the site url and found that by modifying the php id in the address to lower numbers, older comics could be pulled up. However, several of the comics have since been deleted and the Internet Archive fails to pull up any copies of what was in those profiles. Luckily, not all of them have been, leaving a record of some of the oldest comics on Smack Jeeves:
#10: Admin's Comic
Surprisingly, the administrator does not have the oldest comic on the site. One would think that the first page would be some proof of concept “Hello World,” page. The profile says that the administrator has “absolutely no artistic talent, and an even worse sense of humor, so don't expect much,” and it certainly lives up to the description. There's a couple photo comics of bands and their lyrics. Majority of the comic is mainly used for status reports on the site and possible T-Shirt designs submitted by users. There are a couple of actual drawings here too, which are nice.
#9: Dragonball: The Lost Sagas
There's a pervading stereotype that Smack Jeeves consists mostly of yaoi and Sonic sprite comics. Well, that's completely untrue, because one of the oldest comics on the site happens to be a Dragonball Z sprite comic. The comic itself is awful, with Comic Sans dialogue, eye searing colored gradients and hand done backgrounds that clash with the sprites, and “jokes” that are pop culture references at best and non-jokes at worst. Interestingly, the administrator comments on the comic pages, offering some praise and criticism, giving us an idea of what the standards were for sprite comics in 2005 compared to now.
#8: Pure Caffeine
This one is a gaming/slice of life
photo comic, and the longest running of the whole set, with almost
200 strips. It's also one of the worst. The photo
quality
is
spotty,
the
effects
are
awful,
there wasn't a single
funny
strip
in
the
whole
series,
and there's some nonsensical arc about Papa
John and a cardboard cutout of NASCAR driver Ricky
Craven being rapist kidnappers or something. I got through about
¾ of the way through it before giving up. I doubt that it got any
better afterwards.
It's hard to say anything about this
one because majority of the comics won't load. Either there's a
problem with the servers or he uploaded the comics on an image
loading service (to circumvent filesize restrictions) and he either
deleted the page or his account was terminated, explaining the
massive gaps. What little still exists makes it clear we're not
missing much. The characters are stiff
and never
change position and humor isn't enough to justify it. Based on
the ratings and the comments, it wasn't well-received by the
community at the time.
It's another sprite comic, this time
from Zelda. More bitmixing, with Link's sprites clashing with Sonic
and Mario
backgrounds. The jokes aren't any more inspired than Dragonball:
The Lost Sagas, with a Star
Wars “I
am your father,” reference but with Link and Ganon, and more
than one joke about how Navi
is
annoying (though that joke might not have been driven into the
ground in 2005). I'll admit that this joke was pretty
funny though.
A and B are two floating heads in a
void. They wish they had more parts than just heads, then those
parts start appearing
mysteriously.
The comic ends with the author and a huge block of text explaining
the last three comics as some sort of experimental introductory
method and what the future of the comic will bring, provided that the
author has more time to work on it (he doesn't). The lineart and
coloring are sleek, and his self portrait isn't
bad, albeit cross-eyed. The humor is just random things
happening and the characters freaking out over it, so nothing
particularly interesting about them besides that.
It's a comic about pie, the wackiest
of all the dessert names. The pie
comes alive, people try to eat it, and it runs off. Flash back
to a Sith Lord baking
a pie, and a hippo breaks through the wall and steals it. The
Sith Lord tries to zap the hippo but hits
the pie, bringing it to life. Cut to a turtle and a dog with a
man head eating pie when the Grim Reaper chases
the animated pie. The art varies in quality from purely digital
to poorly scanned pages edited in MS Paint. Despite the varying
quality, there's something enjoyably surreal about it. “Did you
drug these,” the man-headed dog asks the smoking turtle? Drugs
were probably involved somewhere along the line. We'll pass this on
to the DEA for further investigation.
“A comic about two gamers.” Never
seen that before. The
first (and only) page is a joke about one of them watching the
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
trailer one too many times. It's drawn on notebook paper and the
dialogue is Comic Sans added with MS Paint. Will Jeff ever get over
his fear of turning into a wolf? Or did he turn into a wolf, migrate
over to another comic drawn on lined paper, and join in on the sexual
exploits of three
polyamorous foxes? And what's the girl's name? Guess we'll
never find out.
That's not an insult, that's seriously
what the comic is called. And it just so happens to be a Sonic
sprite comic. Looks like the stereotypes are true. Just looking at
the title makes it clear this wasn't going to be any good. The first
page features GBA sprites on a Genesis background, which is looked
down upon now in spriting communities. The first
page features randumb humor, a yo mamma joke that was tired even
for 2005, and isn't remotely funny at all. The rest of the comic
consists of self-contained fight
scenes and internet
slang. To be fair though, the comments on the last page seem to
indicate this comic was bad even then, with one
commenter offering constructive criticism. And just as old as
the sprite comic itself, somebody deriding the entire medium based on
one bad example for “suck[ing] mega buffulo [sic] balls.”
Shiznit is a noir-fantasy comic about
a bounty hunting agency. The first case involved a former colleague
who was thought to be dead but actually was alive and working for a
gang. The second and uncompleted story was about a joker creature
looking for his father and going to the agency to look for him. The
comic has some of the best art of the whole list, drawn in pen and
ink and using hatching to give a sense of value to otherwise flat
drawings. The artist either can't or won't draw fight scenes
though, leading to instances where the narration has to cover
for
off-panel
action.
The stories are also very plot-driven with little attention for
characters. Johnny apparently wants Shiznit dead and joins a gang.
Why? I don't know. He got an immortality stone and lodged it in his
chest before he died. When? Why? Doesn't matter. However, this one
feels like it had the most potential of all of them, and it would be
interesting to see if he produced anything post-Smack Jeeves.
Is there anything to take away from
this experience? Mainly, the changes in the site's quality and
community from then to now. The art and stories being currently
posted seem to be much better than the ones made in 2005, and while
majority of the comics remaining from 2005 are mainly humor or based
around gaming, the variety of genres has also expanded in eight years
time. However, what it gained in quality and variety it has lost in
a close-knit community. The commenters in these comics show up again
and again, offering both praise and criticism. Even the
administrator shows up from time to time. Now, authors have to
request reviews in a section of the forum because the only people who
comment are people who already like the comic and think it's perfect
the way it is, making it difficult to find things to improve on.
This is to be expected when a
community expands from a small pool of comics to over 10,000. It
becomes impossible to read through every comic, and makes more sense
to briefly look at the banner, the latest page, and move on if it
isn't appealing. Not to say there's anything wrong with that
approach, it makes the site far more reader-centric and authors with
good comics can quickly gain a readership. But for others who aren't
there yet, they may leave discouraged by a lack of fans and a lack of
support. This is why we're needed. To bring the worst offenders to
justice and reeducate the others before they become a threat.
We have control. We keep you safe. We
are your hope.
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