As a warm up, Fesworks responded to my last review in an out-of-canon comic this week. I’ve appreciated his humor about his review which actually was pretty positive outside of the anti-furry tirade I went on.

Now then: Welcome to double standard hour. I’ll do my best to explain my review criteria, as I often do. Not for self-defense, but to express how I can still shit on a beautiful, yet poorly-written comic like World Break, while lauding F4E. It’s important for people to know these things. Ahem:

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE FUCKING EXECUTION.

[/caps lock]

There are entire artistic genres devoted to shitty art for the sake of humor. It can be hit or miss. It can suck balls. It can be totally awesome. When I think of Stick, Paint, Pencil-on-loose-leaf, Sprite, Photo, and Cut&Paste, I think of shitty art. And I smile—then I giggle a little.

Hand-drawn elitism runs rampant in the webcomic community, and I understand why. We have artists who take their craft very seriously, working daily to improve in hopes that they’ll someday publish, win Tokyopop’s Rising Stars of Manga, or simply be recognized as a quality artist who creates quality projects. There’s hundreds of work-hours, years of effort and frustration, monetary sacrifices, and other cry-me-a-river artist angst. I’m a writer, I get it, I’ve been through it.

Then in the other corner we have the Shitty-Art Conglomerate (SAC) laughing over the whole medium, chanting my favorite tag-line, “LOL~Webcomics.” No, this isn’t serious business to them and there are no illusions of grandeur. It’s honest fun. It’s simple, unassuming creative purity. That’s why I love those who can make their concept work on a visceral level, without the humdrum pretentious artist bullshit. Is it art? Let’s not ask the artists.

To close this rant off, there’s little reason to resent the SAC. Chin up, emo-kids. While there is a double standard where the SAC gets a free ticket on art, both sides are held accountable for writing and entertainment value. To balance the art free-ticket, know that the SAC are niche subgenres that will never generate the rabid fanbases of popular hand-drawn titles like Penny Arcade, PVP, Megatokyo, Van Von Hunter, or a dozen others. Dinosaur Comics and Toothpaste for Dinner are top-tier SAC, but rarely crack the top 50 and probably live on the poverty line like the rest of us. They’re not stealing your readers or ‘haxxoring ur monies.’ The elitists should really be focusing on their own shit and making sure they avoid becoming walking clichés.

Here we go: Friends 4 Ever!!!!

I’ll hijack the description Q sent me, as I appreciate a creator’s own sale-pitch: F4E is a sprite comic featuring Valtiel from Silent Hill 3, ArchVile from Doom, Voldo from Soul Calibur and Carpenter from Hunter: The Reckoning. It’s about a bunch of videogame monsters acting like innocent 12 year olds.

So that pretty much explains it with far less words than I could. We have my first Sprite comic with a quartet of VG baddies being silly. This project rides on the sense of humor of the writer and the audience. That’s Sprite. At 90 strips, I think this one has been running forever, updating infrequently, but it’s still active and has an enjoyable archive.

Unusually three or four vertical panels, the non-posable video-game sprites are superimposed over photographed locations. The speech bubbles are crude and the words hump the outlines making reading an adventure. The comedy itself focuses on short gags where our misshapen protags gush over flowers, ice cream, and the women’s restroom girl with terribly misspelled internet shorthand. Besides mini-arcs in space or auditioning for I-can-be-an-Idol, it’s short and random. Each takes less than a minute to read with instant gratification or at least a smirk.

There’s no real depth to speak of, crap art, nonsense writing and funnies, and half the geek-culture references are hyper-specific. A. This is a shitty webcomic. B. This is the most fun I’ve had with an archive in weeks. There’s a time to leave your brain at the door, and F4E!!!! is one of those times. This is what it means to have fun making and reading a webcomic. Zero pretense, absolute gold. It was made with these goals in mind. It isn’t retarded so much as satire.

Try the SAC webcomic. Even if it’s 30 minutes of your life you’ll never get back, you’ll have gotten a dose of raw stupidity, which is priceless in a world of all-too-serious drivel. Keeps a person smiling. Keeps a heart light.

My sample is the start.