URL: http://eviltomp.deviantart.com/
Author: eviltomp
Genre: Humor, Parody
Schedule: Sporadic
One of my favorite comics from The Best American Comics 2008 is Graham Annable's “Burden.” The comic is about a man going around town paying off his brother's debts, giving out letters apologizing to all the people his brother wronged in the past, and telling them that his brother has left to start over somewhere else. And then SPOILER: it turns out the man killed his brother and went around fixing his mistakes for him. Basically, Evil Tom Preston is this but less morbid. The author is making up for the bad blood his “twin brother” Tom Preston of So, You're a Cartoonist (reviewed previously by Riiser) caused by doing the exact opposite of what he's done in the past. And he's gotten the Tom Preston seal of approval, so he's doing something right. While the comic is mostly spot on with it's insights, the art could stand to be improved.
Writing
To
anyone who doesn't know, Andrew Dobson AKA Tom Preston, is fairly
infamous in the webcomic community. He responds to criticism with
either derision or blocking the critic's DeviantArt account. His
comic is his personal soapbox where he complains about exchanges he's
had with customers at conventions, and the customer is always
strawmanned into confrontational jerks so Dobson can shoot them down
with well placed jabs. There's more to it than that, but this is an
article about a Preston parody, not an article just bashing Preston,
so for more information, check out this video
and this site
which explains why people hate him.
Evil Tom Preston is
a parody of Dobson's various comics (such as SYAC, Alex
Ze Pirate, and Danny
and Spot, though SYAC is the
focus), which isn't new considering that just typing “Tom Preston
Parody” into Google gives you multiple results that are edits of
the comic or making fun of his flaws. Instead of doing that, Evil
Tom Preston redraws his comics,
but instead of being caustic and egotistical, this one is more down
to earth and capable
of self-reflection. He knows he's not perfect, but willing to
work at it and uses the negative
and positive
advice he's given to drive him forward instead of wallow in self
pity. The comic also features a link to the original for comparison
or citation of things that Dobson has actually said, so for those who
don't get what he's referencing aren't completely lost. With the
exception of his non-SYAC parodies, the parodies aren't hilarious but
that's not the point. The point is more instructional than
entertainment. Later, he does a couple Goofus
and Gallant
comics and I'd say that all the
comics before it felt like that reading them side by side with the
originals.
While
the comic is mostly effective in its goals, the author could approach
some of the comics differently. For example, in one comic, Evil Tom
Preston is shown being bullied in high school, but later receives a
friend request on Facebook from one of his former bullies. Rather
than reject it like his alter ego, he accepts
it in hopes that his bully has changed since then. It makes him
come off like a pushover, not to mention that it overlooks other
reasons that people had problems with the comic. I don't have a
problem with Preston turning down a friend request, but the whole
comic itself is so overdramatic that it's clear that Preston still
nurses a grudge enough to make a comic about it at all. In another,
he's shown debating between letting his avatar win a comic argument
or letting the opponent win, fearing he'll get backlash either way,
before scrapping
the idea completely. While I applaud him for calling out
strawmen, I wish he had said something about the false dichotomy
Preston set up in the first place. Preston defines him winning as
“using logic to make a point,” and his opponent winning as “using
the strawmen argument card.” First, it sets him up as being in the
right and everyone else as being irrational and stupid. Second, he
completely misunderstands how a strawman
works. Strawmen are used against opponents, not make it easier for
them to win. Both of these cases come from the format, copying the
dialogue of the panels in the beginning then doing the positive spin
for the final panels instead of correcting the problems that exist
throughout the page.
The
art is penciled and inked by hand, and then most likely colored
digitally. Instead of trying to copy the style of the originals as
part of the parody, the author draws in his own style and using a
human avatar that more likely reflects him (even when Preston later
decides to depict himself as a Care Bear in a fedora). He also tries
to be more ambitious than the person he's parodying, drawing desks
and
tables
in perspective instead of drawing them as rectangles, drawing someone
swinging an axe
correctly and not messing up the face when it's in different angles,
and attaching
the legs on a table correctly and in perspective instead of
plopping them on randomly.
Additionally,
there's some nice sight gags in the comic that aren't essential to
get, but are a nice touch. Instead of the paint bucket in brush in
the original comic, the orange background in the
parody is done with the marquis tool and fill tool in Photoshop,
a joke about how Preston has made tutorials advising artists to not
use antialiased lines so it's easier to use the fill tool on
the same layer instead of coloring on another layer. In panel 3
of this
comic, the opponent being flipped is making the same smug face as
Preston does in the original. In this one, the author makes fun of
Preston's need to put artsy
movie posters in the background to make himself look smarter than
he actually is. And this one gives a cameo to the infamous fedora'd
teddy bear in the third panel.
However,
as much as I dislike Preston, I have to admit that the originals have
better lineart and look more expressive than in the parody. Evil Tom
Preston uses a thick outline on people and thin lines on interior
details and objects. While the thick outline gives a clear
indication of what's important in the panel, the line weight doesn't
do a good job indicating what's in the foreground and what's in
the background. In that page, the table would be closer to the
viewer or on the same layer as the characters, but is inked with thin
lines, suggesting it would be further back. When he experiments with
a brush pen, it looks
much better. Additionally, the poses of the characters tend to
be stiffer and their expressions aren't
as
exaggerated
in the originals, which on one hand makes the strawman characters
look less aggressive, but it also make the art look less dynamic than
they originally looked. Though unlike Preston, Evil Tom Preston
looks more likely to work hard and improve, and could possibly
overtake him eventually.
Evil Tom Preston
is a parody of Andrew Dobson with a unique gimmick that not only
calls out Preston but acts as ideal for how amateur artists online
should behave. It could be more ambitious on problems in his writing
and the art could be better, but it isn't bad.
PS: I drew a giraffe on your DeviantArt page in Goggles.
2.5/5
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