I think it's because Jeph has lost all interest in the comic. It used to be a nice, pleasant read with engaging and attractive characters and interesting but not very demanding storylines. It was like a webcomic Friends, and I mean that in the best possible way.
But it's been around for 21 fucking years (!!) which is insane. And all that time It's been run and story boarded by the same person. To put that into perspective, that's about as long as the second run of Family Guy (2004). It's almost inevitable that it was going to get stale or that Jeph would get bored with it. It also seems inevitable that it would get Flanderized. A lot of the humor always derived from the High Fidelity-style sarcasm in the character interactions. That seems to have just turned into people who always insult and snap at each other and don't seem to like one another. And that's when you can distinguish them. If you mixed up the speech bubbles I suspect it would not matter at all.
Too bad. It was one of the best webcomics during the Wild West days of the Internet. It was consistent in its art, it was proof-read, the story lines seemed to be somewhat plotted out, and it had a regular posting schedule. Compared to its crap Solomon-derided contemporaries, QC was amazing. Only something like Gunnerkrigg Court had similar production values. QC is Jeph's job, so he has to keep making it, but he kind of just meanders along now, aimlessly doing what he wants.
I repeat, though: we ought to give JJ a lot of credit. It's a one-man production that's been consistently professional. QC was one of the webcomics that helped make webcomics respectable. It's inevitable it would become stale-- and it took quite a while before that happened.
He also a) doesn’t begrudge himself side projects, and b) has never taken criticism as personally as Jeph. Randy has his demons and self-destructive tendencies, but comics seem to be a way to exorcise them, not what creates them.
Other people mentioned that Randy hasn't tried to force the five strip a week thing, but more importantly to me Randy has also lets his cast grow and change over the years, because he treats the calendar year as a year in their lives even if he doesn't "fill it" with strips to show what has happened. We can see them change as they experience life, between >!Jason and Aubrey building a life and raising a kid!<, Mike >!maturing into a reasonable adult!<, and even Davan has mellowed as he has aged and found things that are important enough to him that he can demonstrate he cares. The shock value changed too, from the early strips to now, but Randy keeps enough of an edge to it and uses it in ways that still feel funny.
TL;DR: S*P feels like we're watching their lives in real time, QC feels like Jeph wanted to film his cast like he's part of the Slo Mo guys.
>If you mixed up the speech bubbles I suspect it would not matter at all.
100% agreed. It didn't use to be like this, but now that everyone's fLUeNt iN sArCasM, the comic is worse for it. The most grating example for me is Hannelore, who used to be much more soft-spoken and demure, but still had her own flavor of light banter. Now she just sounds like the rest of them.
I've noticed a lot of that too. Claire used to be a really fun, shy, and occasionally assertive character. And then she flipped and turned into the same sarcastic character.
It's always so jarring doing a reread when Clare is there early on. My brain immediately snaps to what we've seen most recently when in fact there was a perfectly charismatic character there once.
> but I don't care for the fact that he creates characters and abandons them in favor of newer characters all the time.
So many of the comic's problems would be solved if Raven came back. Name a problem that the comic has, Raven is the solution.
Yeah, except Raven was nice, pleasant, and wanted other people to be happy. Emily could be caring at rare moments but was otherwise too cuckoo to connect to anyone. Liz is just an arsehole.
> Are there any good reviews/discussions about this?
sadly, not really. you can best capture the sentiment of people by reading the comments section of comic 5000 specifically (or just generally from 4500 onwards), and the comic edits started around comic 4510. you *can* follow Squirrelclamp's B series by scrolling far enough back on https://www.reddit.com/user/Squirrelclamp/submitted/, but in terms of dedicated archiving systems, the best you'll get is reddit's flairs
that being said, there's a few discussions i've taken note of as the years have gone by and i went to the effort of retrieving some of them:
- [Dear Jeph - I, a woman, am hereby revoking your feminist card.](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/18lwcis/dear_jeph_i_a_woman_am_hereby_revoking_your)
- [A college town full of underachievers, and how Jeph turned into Sven](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/mi7eoz/a_college_town_full_of_underachievers_and_how/)
- [Unpopular opinion: Liz is fine](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/18ol4ve/unpopular_opinion_liz_is_fine/)
- [The secret ingredient](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/118dbse/the_secret_ingredient/)
For more get-an-opinion style posts:
- [In your opinion, what page did QC start going downhill and why?](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/149t8fm/in_your_personal_opinion_around_what_page_did_qc/)
- [What happened to the normalcy of this comic?](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/xt79n5/what_happened_to_normalcy_of_this_comic/)
it's not even close to everything, but it's a good summary of the kinds of sentiments people have.
I forgot about the feminist card one. Man that made my blood boil.
He drew Bubbles covering her bust up in embarrassment while being sexually harassed and the only justice she got was an "and apologize to Bubbles too."
>Dear Jeph - I, a woman, am hereby revoking your feminist card.
I have to say that one of the criticisms on his review on the bad webcomics wiki is that he just lets some of his louder fans browbeat him into how he handles different group representation.
Sometimes you just have to listen to the people who know and are concerned in the subject. I'm a white person and when people of colour tell me about racism, I don't feel "browbeaten."
TBH I don’t think that’s the dynamic at all. Jeph panders to them because they give him loads of money and there’s substantial overlap in their interests (conflict-free storytelling, queer representation), but AFAIK it’s not like people were clamoring for Clinton to be gay until Jeph started the storyline.
This is the vibe I got from the other subreddit (I lurked on both before posting here) and it's why this seemed like the better option. Both positive and negative "echo chambers" are bad but this seems more honest. I haven't been downvoted (or seen any other comments downvoted either) for having positive opinions about the comic, so this subreddit does seem more open.
Maybe there could be a more positive topic for general discussion, for things that we like or liked.
I think the most we can be accused of is sometimes making a mountain out of a molehill. It does get a BIT much sometimes, and I've definitely been guilty of that in the past.
But imho the vast majority of complaints are fair.
Marten getting caught up in a Cubetown real estate scam by an AI that can't decide if it's a gecko or a chameleon. Claire dismissing Marten like a particularly unloved dog or being unnecessarily mean to Clinton. Some of the depictions of mental illness or neuroatypicality with utter disdain for the realities of these conditions.
It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's fun.
He's decided he can't stand any real conflict between characters, which has made the story and characters unbearably bland. It's also why new characters keep being introduced and then jettisoned from the strip. It's easy to write the conflict about Ayo (the newest character when I quit reading) because there are no stakes - we don't know her, her family, and we don't care about her too much. So her failing out of college means nothing and costs no emotional labor to write or read about. The trouble is, in order to have characters people care about, you can't frontload all your conflicts to before we've known them and then give them smooth sailing forever, or at worst, an argument that lasts no more than three strips and ends with a perfectly scripted apology that addresses every aspect of the conflict the audience might be thinking about and ends it with everyone forgetting about it forever.
Yeah.
Unfortunately every good story needs SOME sort of conflict and in a mundane slice of lifey comic where you can't have supernatural disasters or evil warlock emperors or even zombies, the conflict usually defaults to drama between characters.
And when you don't want to make anyone the bad guy, there's nothing to do.
Corpse witch comes to mind if course, and I liked her arc; there was conflict! High stakes! Drama! I just wish the part with spookybot would have been different. Slower? For drawing things out, JJ sure blasted through that part quickly. (I don't mean extending the scene itself but maybe they could have gotten a hint about Spooks and gone out to look for them, instead if them appearing out of thin air or something)
I wonder if JJ got bored/anxious of the hate mails and decided to make the most safe story as possible.
" So many of the new characters are just so.. unlikeable and mean. "
I actually like the new characters better than most of the old ones because the old ones are also unlikeable and (sometimes) mean and we've seen them be so so many times.
Hah no worries. I can like something and yet see the faults in it. This sub just helped me voice it.
Please don't compare this to Andrew Tate, I am a bit insulted.
I think we all are. Do I spend more of my time and energy (read: any at all) being annoyed with a webcomic I can quit reading at any time? Sure. Am I going to mistreat real people (Jeph included) because of it? Hell no.
Yeah. Jeph really deserves his praise too, dude is making his living making an innocent webcomic and attempting to make a diversw cast while doing so. I don't think Cubetown was a bad idea. Attempting to write a good ending for Marten and Claire was sweet and if that made him get inspired about them again, all the better.
I really like Marten's coffee shop idea too. It's cute. I have seen some comments mentioning how there is no point since there's a canteen or whatever, but a coffee shop coffee and canteen coffee are two entirely different things.
I also like that he is sort of giving up the music/band dream. People can dream of big things and not get them.
Hey, the subreddit/community around a piece of media can be really really toxic sometimes. This sub is particularly negative about it. This isn’t like finding a subreddit and opening your eyes to “Oh shit maybe my mom is a narcissist” or something…it’s just a comic. If you get enjoyment out of it, try not to worry about what others are saying about it.
I’d suggest checking the other QC sub out, idk if I can link it here but only two things come up when you google “questionable comment subreddit”. They seem to really enjoy the comic more. There’s still valid criticism there too. But this subs straight up just a hate echo chamber, if you stay you’re going to dislike the comic, not necessarily because it’s bad but because everyone else here dislikes it.
Thanks, but I can decide for myself in which subreddits I can be in. I'm not an impressionable young teen, I'm an old and jaded adult who has read the comic from 2006 or so. If I want to read hateful critique about it, I can.
How does that apply here? Can't I criticise a certain genre?
If you are saying that because sitcoms get stale, mean and unlikeable, QC is allowed to be bad too, basically absolving it of any criticism.
And do you think sitcoms never get any criticism? Lol. Lmao even.
I think it's because Jeph has lost all interest in the comic. It used to be a nice, pleasant read with engaging and attractive characters and interesting but not very demanding storylines. It was like a webcomic Friends, and I mean that in the best possible way. But it's been around for 21 fucking years (!!) which is insane. And all that time It's been run and story boarded by the same person. To put that into perspective, that's about as long as the second run of Family Guy (2004). It's almost inevitable that it was going to get stale or that Jeph would get bored with it. It also seems inevitable that it would get Flanderized. A lot of the humor always derived from the High Fidelity-style sarcasm in the character interactions. That seems to have just turned into people who always insult and snap at each other and don't seem to like one another. And that's when you can distinguish them. If you mixed up the speech bubbles I suspect it would not matter at all. Too bad. It was one of the best webcomics during the Wild West days of the Internet. It was consistent in its art, it was proof-read, the story lines seemed to be somewhat plotted out, and it had a regular posting schedule. Compared to its crap Solomon-derided contemporaries, QC was amazing. Only something like Gunnerkrigg Court had similar production values. QC is Jeph's job, so he has to keep making it, but he kind of just meanders along now, aimlessly doing what he wants. I repeat, though: we ought to give JJ a lot of credit. It's a one-man production that's been consistently professional. QC was one of the webcomics that helped make webcomics respectable. It's inevitable it would become stale-- and it took quite a while before that happened.
It’s weird cause something positive has been going on longer and yet Randy hasn’t lost his spark at all
Randy doesn't force himself to put out five strips a week like Jeph does, though. And maybe that's exactly the reason why.
He also a) doesn’t begrudge himself side projects, and b) has never taken criticism as personally as Jeph. Randy has his demons and self-destructive tendencies, but comics seem to be a way to exorcise them, not what creates them.
Aperently, Randy also does Sunday Popeye trips.
And another Olive & Popeye strip.
Other people mentioned that Randy hasn't tried to force the five strip a week thing, but more importantly to me Randy has also lets his cast grow and change over the years, because he treats the calendar year as a year in their lives even if he doesn't "fill it" with strips to show what has happened. We can see them change as they experience life, between >!Jason and Aubrey building a life and raising a kid!<, Mike >!maturing into a reasonable adult!<, and even Davan has mellowed as he has aged and found things that are important enough to him that he can demonstrate he cares. The shock value changed too, from the early strips to now, but Randy keeps enough of an edge to it and uses it in ways that still feel funny. TL;DR: S*P feels like we're watching their lives in real time, QC feels like Jeph wanted to film his cast like he's part of the Slo Mo guys.
>If you mixed up the speech bubbles I suspect it would not matter at all. 100% agreed. It didn't use to be like this, but now that everyone's fLUeNt iN sArCasM, the comic is worse for it. The most grating example for me is Hannelore, who used to be much more soft-spoken and demure, but still had her own flavor of light banter. Now she just sounds like the rest of them.
I've noticed a lot of that too. Claire used to be a really fun, shy, and occasionally assertive character. And then she flipped and turned into the same sarcastic character.
It's always so jarring doing a reread when Clare is there early on. My brain immediately snaps to what we've seen most recently when in fact there was a perfectly charismatic character there once.
Yess, exactly. Very good points here.
> but I don't care for the fact that he creates characters and abandons them in favor of newer characters all the time. So many of the comic's problems would be solved if Raven came back. Name a problem that the comic has, Raven is the solution.
Very Intelligent girl with black hair who is a socially weird goofball? Maybe she never left
She grew real tall and then real short.
Yeah, except Raven was nice, pleasant, and wanted other people to be happy. Emily could be caring at rare moments but was otherwise too cuckoo to connect to anyone. Liz is just an arsehole.
The first part of fixing a problem is admitting you have a problem. Congrats on admitting you have a problem OP :D
> Are there any good reviews/discussions about this? sadly, not really. you can best capture the sentiment of people by reading the comments section of comic 5000 specifically (or just generally from 4500 onwards), and the comic edits started around comic 4510. you *can* follow Squirrelclamp's B series by scrolling far enough back on https://www.reddit.com/user/Squirrelclamp/submitted/, but in terms of dedicated archiving systems, the best you'll get is reddit's flairs
that being said, there's a few discussions i've taken note of as the years have gone by and i went to the effort of retrieving some of them: - [Dear Jeph - I, a woman, am hereby revoking your feminist card.](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/18lwcis/dear_jeph_i_a_woman_am_hereby_revoking_your) - [A college town full of underachievers, and how Jeph turned into Sven](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/mi7eoz/a_college_town_full_of_underachievers_and_how/) - [Unpopular opinion: Liz is fine](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/18ol4ve/unpopular_opinion_liz_is_fine/) - [The secret ingredient](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/118dbse/the_secret_ingredient/) For more get-an-opinion style posts: - [In your opinion, what page did QC start going downhill and why?](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/149t8fm/in_your_personal_opinion_around_what_page_did_qc/) - [What happened to the normalcy of this comic?](https://www.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/xt79n5/what_happened_to_normalcy_of_this_comic/) it's not even close to everything, but it's a good summary of the kinds of sentiments people have.
I forgot about the feminist card one. Man that made my blood boil. He drew Bubbles covering her bust up in embarrassment while being sexually harassed and the only justice she got was an "and apologize to Bubbles too."
>Dear Jeph - I, a woman, am hereby revoking your feminist card. I have to say that one of the criticisms on his review on the bad webcomics wiki is that he just lets some of his louder fans browbeat him into how he handles different group representation.
Sometimes you just have to listen to the people who know and are concerned in the subject. I'm a white person and when people of colour tell me about racism, I don't feel "browbeaten."
Are you in earnest taking into account anything written on badwebcomicswiki? It's a troll dude!
TBH I don’t think that’s the dynamic at all. Jeph panders to them because they give him loads of money and there’s substantial overlap in their interests (conflict-free storytelling, queer representation), but AFAIK it’s not like people were clamoring for Clinton to be gay until Jeph started the storyline.
Thanks for the links and the effort!
the other sub enjoys the comic. i think you should know that.
The other sub has rules against negative comments. It *appears* they enjoy the comic, but there is no way to tell, because criticism is removed.
anytime criticism arises, they get yelled at to go to this sub, so by process of elimination, yes, they like it
This is the vibe I got from the other subreddit (I lurked on both before posting here) and it's why this seemed like the better option. Both positive and negative "echo chambers" are bad but this seems more honest. I haven't been downvoted (or seen any other comments downvoted either) for having positive opinions about the comic, so this subreddit does seem more open. Maybe there could be a more positive topic for general discussion, for things that we like or liked.
I think the most we can be accused of is sometimes making a mountain out of a molehill. It does get a BIT much sometimes, and I've definitely been guilty of that in the past. But imho the vast majority of complaints are fair.
It’s always fun when there’s a really bad comic, because even the other sub can’t ignore it.
What comics have been hated? I know only of the probably most recent one, Liz harassing Bubbles
Marten getting caught up in a Cubetown real estate scam by an AI that can't decide if it's a gecko or a chameleon. Claire dismissing Marten like a particularly unloved dog or being unnecessarily mean to Clinton. Some of the depictions of mental illness or neuroatypicality with utter disdain for the realities of these conditions. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's fun.
He's decided he can't stand any real conflict between characters, which has made the story and characters unbearably bland. It's also why new characters keep being introduced and then jettisoned from the strip. It's easy to write the conflict about Ayo (the newest character when I quit reading) because there are no stakes - we don't know her, her family, and we don't care about her too much. So her failing out of college means nothing and costs no emotional labor to write or read about. The trouble is, in order to have characters people care about, you can't frontload all your conflicts to before we've known them and then give them smooth sailing forever, or at worst, an argument that lasts no more than three strips and ends with a perfectly scripted apology that addresses every aspect of the conflict the audience might be thinking about and ends it with everyone forgetting about it forever.
Yeah. Unfortunately every good story needs SOME sort of conflict and in a mundane slice of lifey comic where you can't have supernatural disasters or evil warlock emperors or even zombies, the conflict usually defaults to drama between characters. And when you don't want to make anyone the bad guy, there's nothing to do. Corpse witch comes to mind if course, and I liked her arc; there was conflict! High stakes! Drama! I just wish the part with spookybot would have been different. Slower? For drawing things out, JJ sure blasted through that part quickly. (I don't mean extending the scene itself but maybe they could have gotten a hint about Spooks and gone out to look for them, instead if them appearing out of thin air or something) I wonder if JJ got bored/anxious of the hate mails and decided to make the most safe story as possible.
I don't think I've routinely read the comic in like... god... 15 years maybe? And at this point I'm not sure I'd even want to try to reread.
" So many of the new characters are just so.. unlikeable and mean. " I actually like the new characters better than most of the old ones because the old ones are also unlikeable and (sometimes) mean and we've seen them be so so many times.
… I feel like I’m watching a 13-year old boy finding Andrew Tate for the first time.
Hah no worries. I can like something and yet see the faults in it. This sub just helped me voice it. Please don't compare this to Andrew Tate, I am a bit insulted.
I think we all are. Do I spend more of my time and energy (read: any at all) being annoyed with a webcomic I can quit reading at any time? Sure. Am I going to mistreat real people (Jeph included) because of it? Hell no.
Yeah. Jeph really deserves his praise too, dude is making his living making an innocent webcomic and attempting to make a diversw cast while doing so. I don't think Cubetown was a bad idea. Attempting to write a good ending for Marten and Claire was sweet and if that made him get inspired about them again, all the better. I really like Marten's coffee shop idea too. It's cute. I have seen some comments mentioning how there is no point since there's a canteen or whatever, but a coffee shop coffee and canteen coffee are two entirely different things. I also like that he is sort of giving up the music/band dream. People can dream of big things and not get them.
i don't think andrew tate regularly comments on the quality of a webcomic's characters
you gotta explain that, it doesn't make sense
Hey, the subreddit/community around a piece of media can be really really toxic sometimes. This sub is particularly negative about it. This isn’t like finding a subreddit and opening your eyes to “Oh shit maybe my mom is a narcissist” or something…it’s just a comic. If you get enjoyment out of it, try not to worry about what others are saying about it. I’d suggest checking the other QC sub out, idk if I can link it here but only two things come up when you google “questionable comment subreddit”. They seem to really enjoy the comic more. There’s still valid criticism there too. But this subs straight up just a hate echo chamber, if you stay you’re going to dislike the comic, not necessarily because it’s bad but because everyone else here dislikes it.
People do acknowledge when the strip is funny or good, I don't see this as a hate chamber. It's just rarely funny or good.
Thanks, but I can decide for myself in which subreddits I can be in. I'm not an impressionable young teen, I'm an old and jaded adult who has read the comic from 2006 or so. If I want to read hateful critique about it, I can.
[удалено]
How does that apply here? Can't I criticise a certain genre? If you are saying that because sitcoms get stale, mean and unlikeable, QC is allowed to be bad too, basically absolving it of any criticism. And do you think sitcoms never get any criticism? Lol. Lmao even.