The Sticks Awards 531-535

[Nazzo, the 102nd]

Hi, and welcome to The Sticks Awards!

The Sticks Awards are given to the best strips of all times, chosen by the polls here in the Playground. Read the The Sticks Awards Results Compilation thread for more details and previous results.

To vote, simply post your favorite strip of the current 5 on the thread. You have 3 days to do it.

The poll will close on April 14th, 10:00 AM forum default time.


The Sticks Awards 531-535

531 Wake Up Call to Action
532 The Exposition Fairy
533 Open to Multiple Interpretations
534 Medium Creatures
535 The Cat Stays in the Picture

[Assassin89]

Errors in the titles. 532 is the Exposition Fairy, and 534 is Medium Creatures.

I vote 532 due to Celia's expository banter, and the sight of a possible conception of a half-elf

[CrimsonAngel]

533

[Lira]

I vote for 532.

[Mauve Shirt]

I think 533

[Heainnailo]

I'm gonna go ahead and vote for 532.

[Trizap]

I vote for 532

[Forealms]

533 for sheer awesometasticity.

[The_Void]

533, lots of good jokes.

[petersohn]

I vote for 533.

[Chronos]

Errors in the titles. 532 is the Exposition Fairy, and 534 is Medium Creatures.

And 531 is Wake-up Call to Action, and 535 is The Cat Stays in the Picture.

That said, I vote for 532, the Exposition Fairy. We waited a long time for that backstory.

[kirbsys]

532, easily. Good story, good punchline panel, good comic.

[David Argall]

I'll go with 533 tho its superiority over the others is not marked.

Now I will note that we are zipping thru these a lot faster than new strips are being posted, so extending the voting deadline another day is both feasible, and useful.

[Nazzo, the 102nd]

Errors in the titles. 532 is the Exposition Fairy, and 534 is Medium Creatures.

And 531 is Wake-up Call to Action, and 535 is The Cat Stays in the Picture.

Sorry, my bad. The titles in the comic list page are indeed on the inverted order (most recent at the top). Fixed.

Now I will note that we are zipping thru these a lot faster than new strips are being posted, so extending the voting deadline another day is both feasible, and useful.

I'm considering it. But it seems that the Awards are not having a good audience here, so the risk of this thread falling of to the second page (and never get noticed) is big. But it's something we indeed have to consider, since we'll finish this hundred very soon.

[Silverraptor]

Ugggg... Another hard choice. But this time because they're kind of average. But 533 is the one with the vote for me because of Belkar's last minute disappointment.

[dps]

534, mostly because of the dog in the last panel.

[Zerg Cookie]

532
blahblah10chars

[Morgan Wick]

I'm considering it. But it seems that the Awards are not having a good audience here, so the risk of this thread falling of to the second page (and never get noticed) is big. But it's something we indeed have to consider, since we'll finish this hundred very soon.

I agree with Nazzo - the length of the vote time doesn't seem to have done much good to the last group of five, the penultimate legal vote of which came halfway through the voting period. But we were never going to finish this hundred in a long enough time to be able to start on the Seventh Hundred anyway. I was actually starting to grow attached to the idea of more distinct "seasons" - the Fifth Hundred started on February 28th, and the Sixth on March 4th, suggesting a yearly "new round start time" - but we should at least try to avoid finishing the groups of five before the current book ends for full-perspective-on-current-strips purposes, assuming the current book ends in the 660s at least.

(It won't help slow getting there, but I like the idea of a longer vote time for the Best of the Hundred to help make it feel more special.)

We could hold a "halftime" of sorts after completing the 546-550 group, or we could extend the vote time and I could appoint myself semi-official bumper if the thread starts falling too low. That assumes, though, there's even a problem; certainly at the pace voting is going so far, this round should be on par with some of the stronger voting rounds, and other than last round no round has failed to reach the second page, which was a struggle for some rounds even before the hiatus. If this is the last post in this thread for close to twenty-four hours (unlikely given its bumping effect), then there's a long-term problem and we need to figure out what it is and fix it if it's fixable.

The real problem may well be Rich slowing down to about two strips a week. I don't know whether it helps by attracting people to the boards or hurts by creating a bunch of new threads and burying the Awards, but it's either a double-edged sword or causing two problems.

The voting so far is both pretty much what I expected, and completely unexpected, in that I don't think anyone could have expected almost literally ALL the voting to go to two strips...

[TerrickTerran]

Though this was a rather dull set, I'll go with 532 as it had the most amusement of the group.

[Aaron]

I vote for 532. Good punchline!

[T-O-E]

532. Because of the last panel.

[The Blackbird]

532, because it demonstrates the Cloister spell.

[Kareasint]

533 for the cat reference.

[DBear]

532. We see Celia's co-workers for the first time, and also Lirian and Dorukan together.

[BlueWizard]

532; the day Burlew and Erfworld had Subway on the mind.

[Deepkicker]

532. The explanation of the Cloister spell managed to kill some little niggles I was having about the plotline at the time.

[Illven]

I vote for 535 because it feels like it's wrapping up an arc and starting an epic jouraney

[Janmorel]

534, although it would have been more interesting if the medium had been channelling Rover's real thoughts.

[Yendor]

532. Summon Plot Exposition!

[Zed the Sharp]

Connecting the dots in 5 ... 3 ... 1 ...

And I also vote for extending the voting period. There have been quite a few times that I've missed it (or at least missed the pre-announced deadline, if not the late bell) due to not checking the boards often enough.