New Subnormality Posted

New comic available in the usual place.

New Subnormality Posted

The new comic can now be seen, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Redesign of Subnormality Website

Okay, so I went ahead and made the Subnormality main page a bit less awful. Much more straightforward, and no more of that “comic too big–click here” crap. And I only took down that Calvin & Hobbes picture by Mark Poutenis because it was his idea to do so. I’ll have to find somewhere else to stick it. Mark’s comic, The Thinking Ape Blues, has just reached its 350th comic, so go read it before he poisons your dog or something. Read a few of them, because it takes a few comics to get the tone of the strip, but once you do it’s muy enjoyable. MUY! Plus he really will poison your dog if you don’t read it. He’s out of control. Seriously, though, it’s a fine comic.

–Rowntree

New Subnormality Posted / Mega Rant

Early update for this week’s comic, which you can read in the usual place. Remember to tip your server!

This week’s strip is a good example of something that’s the exact opposite of the “comics” you’re going to see in newspapers. Let me explain. If you’re going to submit comics to the newspaper syndicates who control which comics are available to the major newspapers in North America, you’re going to have to make them in a certain way. The syndicates will tell you to make comics with simple, “uncluttered” art, with an absolute minumum of dialogue, thus allowing for large empty spaces in the panels because the eye is drawn to areas of blank space. This is what they want–empty spaces. People, they will tell you, don’t have the patience  to read a bunch of dialogue, nor the energy to filter a series of detailed images. People want to read the thing in 3 seconds and then move on, so it has to be “snappy” and simple and otherwise “inviting.” Besides, newspaper comics are printed so small that there’s not much room for detailed art or extraneous dialogue. It has to be go, go, go, and on to the next comic, week after week, month after month, until your strip becomes unprofitable. Oh, and let’s not forget about the content restrictions you must obey–restrictions that are based on what you could or could not say on TV in about 1951.

Now then. Personally, I don’t believe a word of what the syndicates say about people’s tastes. People aren’t so lazy as to refuse to read a comic with more than a rudimentary level of dialogue, and they sure as hell prefer good art as opposed to “uncluttered” art (ie: shit. Here’s a good example–a comic “written” and “drawn” by a man who I assume is illiterate and holds the pencil in his off-hand. Simply embarrassing.). I think I have a lot more faith in readers than the half-retarded money apes who run the syndicates and dare to call themselves “comics editors.” What it boils down to is cowardice. The complete absence of initiative or forward-thinkingness or any love at all for the medium that they claim to represent. Any syndicate editor who says he loves comics is like a factory farm owner saying he loves pigs. The pigs that are inhumanly kept in tiny boxes, week in, week out, to maximise the number of pigs that can be crammed into a warehouse. See what I did there?

So are they right? Do people want a minimum of challenge and effort when it comes to comic strips? I sincerely doubt it. I think they want quality, and you’re not gonna find it in newspapers. But you tell me! Am I right?

Cheers,

–Winston Rowntree, comics lover

PS: I could go on all day about this stuff, I really could. Fight the power! Support your local webcartoonist!

Subnormality Update Pt. LXXXVIII

Okay, so I have the internet again and the website is back on track for 2008. The holiday/moving disruptions being at an end, you can expect a new comic every Sunday as usual. February will be the giddy, earth-shattering, galactically ultrasignificant First Anniversary Of Subnormality, and I’m very gradually working on a special comic to mark the occasion (you heard it here first). I hope to have it finished by the end of February, but it might take longer. But that’s quite enough about that. As you were.

–Rowntree

Subnormality Updates Update

I’m not gonna have internet at my new place for about another week or so, so there won’t be any updates to viruscomix.com for a little bit. However, there will be a new Subnormality for next week, so you’ll have to go over to my Drunk Duck webcomics page to read it (I maintain a page there for situations such as this, as well as it’s a nice place to get feedback from people and a good all-round community in general). Things should return to normal by next weekend, but that might be optimistic so let’s say February. Subnormality is back on schedule though, and can be seen at the aformentioned venue until I am able to update my website again. Cheers, and happy new year!

–Rowntree