Questionable Content XIX: Give Jeph Just A *Little* Credit, Here

[Ionathus]

On sort of a coincidental opposite of that, I'm actually wishing for more panel variation. I just did a short archive binge yesterday from the "Faye/Sven breakup" era and there's a ton of extra work put into the perspectives. One memorable one is Hannelore's internal monologue where it gets really weird and warped and the camera starts to do a curvy fish-eye lens thing -- very fun effect. I miss when there was a bit more playfulness and creativity in panel composition. I don't think Jeph is consciously recycling backgrounds but it does feel like a comfort zone thing.

Also the pacing, dear heavens above the pacing: things just rocket along in the old stuff, you get maybe two strips at a location and then bam, jump-cut to another scene (or at least much further into the conversation). It really makes it obvious how dragged-out the scenes are in recent arcs.

Not that any of this is actually disagreeing with you Wraith, I agree with your critique, it just made me pick up on something that was bugging me.

[Errorname]

Honestly Jeph has never impressed me with panel layout or scene construction in any of his comics, even that sci-fi action comic he did. Dude has basically no interest in it, and even in the 'golden years' of QC I found any attempt to vary up the framing or perspective noteworthy. It's definitely gotten sloppier but he's never been interested in it I don't think. He wants to write dialogue and the visual component needs to be bare minimum functional and nothing more, he's not going to vary up the framing unless a scene absolutely requires it.

I don't even hugely begrudge him that. There's comics that do more visual gags and are technically better constructed that in practice I like a lot less.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Ah, we're back on Bembo. Putting the filler back in filler.

[geoduck]

Ah, we're back on Bembo. Putting the filler back in filler.

Way better than the turkeys or the yelling bird.

[Errorname]

Ah, we're back on Bembo. Putting the filler back in filler.

Gotta be honest, I enjoy the Bembo comics more than the average QC these days.

[Gez]

I will give Jeph some credit if the Bembo strip after this one has him with a tiny little baby arm.

[Beelzebub1111]

One thing that bothers me about bembo is that it's trying to be a parody of the sword and sorcery genre but it's all surface level observations of tropes. Like originally it was trying to make a joke of the half-naked woman warrior in a chianmail bikini. like "Haha wouldn't it be ridiculous if it were a DUDE dressed like that?" and then people pointed out how Conan is usually dressed.

Parodies are usually better when you love or at least understand the source material than when you've never even touched it in your life.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Way better than the turkeys or the yelling bird.

One thing that bothers me about bembo is that it's trying to be a parody of the sword and sorcery genre but it's all surface level observations of tropes. Like originally it was trying to make a joke of the half-naked woman warrior in a chianmail bikini. like "Haha wouldn't it be ridiculous if it were a DUDE dressed like that?" and then people pointed out how Conan is usually dressed.

Parodies are usually better when you love or at least understand the source material than when you've never even touched it in your life.

Don't get me wrong - the occasional Bembo page is funny, and there are one or two amusing Yelling Bird strips.

But on the whole Bembo's "parody of fantasy" misses with me - I've seen this thing done far better (on this site, no less). Yelling bird was mostly crude, and while that amuses some people it doesn't amuse me.

Also, the Yelling Bird strips tended to be one-offs, while Bembo tends to hang around for a week at a time.

While I've never found the turkeys amusing, I've never found them to be particularly offensive, and they were at least directly seasonal.

[Pax1138]

Meh, it's low effort content for essentially his holiday vacation. Most of the other webcomics on my list won't even be back until January, so I'll take some silly, low effort fantasy nonsense and move on with my day with a little more of a smile than I had before.

[DavidSh]

+2 enchantment to bridge building

That's a kind of magic you don't see too often, and surprising in a weapon. More fitting for an organization like a Roman legion that does both combat and roadbuilding than for an individual barbarian, but if Croglor can afford it, why not?

[Wraith]

This is clearly just blatant anti-mace bias. If it were +2 to bridge building on a scimitar, they'd be all 'omg how cool is that in the right hands?' without any trace of irony.

[Radar]

That's a kind of magic you don't see too often, and surprising in a weapon. More fitting for an organization like a Roman legion that does both combat and roadbuilding than for an individual barbarian, but if Croglor can afford it, why not?

Mace like that might be more of a sceptre. A bridge building bonus would be handy for someone in a higher-up command position.

[Cikomyr2]

This is clearly just blatant anti-mace bias. If it were +2 to bridge building on a scimitar, they'd be all 'omg how cool is that in the right hands?' without any trace of irony.

There's nothing wrong with anti-mace bias. Lets be honest Bembo has the intellectual honesty to try maces before deciding they are objectively the worst weapon. There's no cutting and bleeding involved, its a waste.

[Gez]

There's nothing wrong with anti-mace bias. Lets be honest Bembo has the intellectual honesty to try maces before deciding they are objectively the worst weapon. There's no cutting and bleeding involved, its a waste.

A flanged mace like this will definitely inflict cutting, and even a smooth and spherical mace will cause bleeding if you hit hard. Anyone who fell on pavement hard enough to have their skin split at the point of impact would know that...

[Rodin]

As a certified Bonkies fan club member, I have to agree. This anti-mace bias has gone too far! Do swords give that satisfying THUMP when they hit the skull? I think not.

[Beelzebub1111]

Everyone is all for swords until the skeleton gang comes around. Then it's "Oh please, let there be something like a table leg or tree branch I can swing on these things?"

[KillianHawkeye]

Where the morningstar stans at? It does both piercing and bludgeoning damage!

I mean, sure, slashing is the sexiest damage type, but two for one ain't bad!

[diremage]

Where the morningstar stans at? It does both piercing and bludgeoning damage!

I mean, sure, slashing is the sexiest damage type, but two for one ain't bad!

There's a weapon so powerful, so flexible that it was removed from D&D. It does slashing, it does piercing, it does bludgeoning, it slices, it dices, it juliennes. Meet the poleaxe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poleaxe

[Traab]

Poleaxes are too heavy and bulky. Im a fan of the flanged mace. It crushes with half the effort of a club due to the vast shrinking of the impact surface cranking up the psi on the area smacked. Plus the bong sound effect of smashing armor until it turns inside out is pleasing to the ear and makes keeping score easier. And a man bleeds plenty when the shards of bones from whatever part of his skeleton got crushed explodes out the opposite side of the hit.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Jeph tried social commentary again.

It didn't work.

[Beelzebub1111]

I am confused as to what he is social commenting on. Like...is the internalized misoginy wanting companionship? That doesn't seem right.

I feel like he's trying to tell us something, but I don't understand anything about the point he is trying to make, who he is speaking at/for or why this is being said.

Is he trying to say "Oh Karlach isn't actually a strong female character because she's afraid of dying and wants companionship"? Is it a statement about a recent shift in the depiction of muscular women in general? WHAT ARE YOU COMMENTING ON, JEPH?!

[Rodin]

He screwed up Bembo.

HOW DO YOU SCREW UP BEMBO?

[Cikomyr2]

I am confused as to what he is social commenting on. Like...is the internalized misoginy wanting companionship? That doesn't seem right.

I feel like he's trying to tell us something, but I don't understand anything about the point he is trying to make, who he is speaking at/for or why this is being said.

Is he trying to say "Oh Karlach isn't actually a strong female character because she's afraid of dying and wants companionship"? Is it a statement about a recent shift in the depiction of muscular women in general? WHAT ARE YOU COMMENTING ON, JEPH?!

I think he just wanted to make a joke about this fake boss lady and how she is usually presented in media.

I know you guys thought Karlach comparison, but i thought it was closer to Brienne of Tarth.

[Ionathus]

I am confused as to what he is social commenting on. Like...is the internalized misoginy wanting companionship? That doesn't seem right.

I feel like he's trying to tell us something, but I don't understand anything about the point he is trying to make, who he is speaking at/for or why this is being said.

Is he trying to say "Oh Karlach isn't actually a strong female character because she's afraid of dying and wants companionship"? Is it a statement about a recent shift in the depiction of muscular women in general? WHAT ARE YOU COMMENTING ON, JEPH?!

I think he just wanted to make a joke about this fake boss lady and how she is usually presented in media.

I know you guys thought Karlach comparison, but i thought it was closer to Brienne of Tarth.

Yeah, given what I know about Jeph's worldview I'm sure it's just good-natured mocking of Hollywood's perceived idea of a "strong female character" -- that basically the only way mainstream media knows to make a woman "strong" is to make her as masculine as possible, which is insulting to both masc and non-masc women.

I certainly don't think he intended anything misogynist by it. But I agree with Beelzebub: the satire is just muddled enough to be confusing, and it doesn't help that the joke itself isn't funny even in the best light, thanks to lazy delivery.

Meanwhile, under the least charitable interpretation possible, this could seem like Jeph whining that modern female characters aren't feminine or sexualized enough for his tastes, which honestly wouldn't be that huge of a leap if you just look at how male gaze-y his comic has been over the years and you didn't know much about his worldview.

I mean, I know it's not that. But because the satire wasn't clear enough, it can kinda be read like that unfortunately.

[Wraith]

I'm not a big fan of Blembo at the best of times, I'm just not that big a-fan of the 'lolrandom' style of humour, but even I have to admit that some of them have been pretty good. The time he defeated the Winter Queen by rubbing her tummy, or when he rescued the Helpless Maiden™ who offered him 'anything he wanted'... which turned out to be an accountant who was amazed at how many swords he would get through. That one was two punchlines and a subversion of fantasy tropes all at the same time, with some funny visual gags (the Helpless Maiden had a tie taped to her cleavage since she didn't have a collar to attach it to, for example) it was pretty great.

At risk of too deeply interrogating a silly filler comic that's irreverent even by QC standards... This is closer to straw-manning someone we don't know, in a way that isn't particularlyclever or funny, for reasons that aren't very clear. Like, even if this was a Game of Thrones reference, that hasn't been relevant since about 2018 or something. Who is this for?

[Mechalich]

I know you guys thought Karlach comparison, but i thought it was closer to Brienne of Tarth.

Yeah, it definitely felt like Brienne of Tarth, and specifically Brienne of Tarth in the final season of GoT, to me.

The problem, of course, is that basically everyone agrees that GoT totally messed up Brienne's character and story in the final season. It's not useful social commentary to say 'that thing they messed up was messed up, dude,' nor is it funny.

[Shadow of the Sun]

I think he just wanted to make a joke about this fake boss lady and how she is usually presented in media.

I know you guys thought Karlach comparison, but i thought it was closer to Brienne of Tarth.

I don't think Karlach has existed in the public consciousness for long enough for her to have percolated into Jeph's radar.

It seems like things kinda take a while for him to learn about.

[Shogo]

And he doubled down on it. Thus Bembo Week ends with a whimper.

[Rodin]

And he doubled down on it. Thus Bembo Week ends with a whimper.

Wow, you weren't kidding.

Writing Bembo is like writing Garfield. It's simple, stupid comedy riffing on really simple ideas, like turning in wolf pelts that are still attached to live, angry wolves. The joke is super basic but it makes me smile.

Going on a long strawman rant about gender toxicity is about as far from that kind of comedy as you can get. There's a reason you don't see Garfield getting up on a soapbox and delivering a wall of text about the culture war.

[Beelzebub1111]

Yeah I feel like straw-manning fantasy tropes Jeph doesn't like is where Bembo is the weakest, because I feel like Jeph doesn't read or like fantasy enough to understand 1) how common these tropes are and 2) when they are and aren't appropriate to the character.

If you asked him to show you a specific example of a "Fearsome Ashlee" in media you can point to and say "This is the kind of thing I'm talking about" he probably couldn't name one that is actually like that, or if he does you could prove that she isn't like that at all through references in the work. Because he doesn't consume the media, all he can do is wave his arms vaguely in the direction of the genre and go "you know, that thing, you see it all the time or at least people complaining about it on social media all the time. That means it's real"