Comment on What If...Parody by *ChrisMcJ

I... you... that... whoa. Awesome.

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Read Bulletproof!

That's amazing...

(I think I just wet my pants in awesomeness)...

Great job!

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LOL. Thanks.

-Chris

Heh. Thanks, bud. I love some insomnia.

Incidentally, I've had the opposite problem today in that I can't stop sleeping. I love sleeping though so it's all good.

-Chris

Heh heh heh. One of the things which always gets me about the superhero genre is the way something so inherently ridiculous spends so much time and effort on taking itself so very, very seriously. (Of course, every other internet humorist also spends almost as much time and effort in pointing this out, but I'm still cackling to myself so you clearly did something right).

Lessee... there's a gigantic amount of text. Which is to be expected. Funny tends to get verbose, but there's probably a few paragraphs I'd cut - the politics-and-religion gag is fairly weak, and the recapping-Spidey's-origin paragraphs could stand to be pared down a touch (since the whole point is that everyone knows the story). Cut the phrase 'dork out at the library' and I will cry, however.

I kind of like what hand-lettering you've done - the panels which use it generally seem a lot more stylistically coherent - but I can see how it'd be a gigantic pain to do the whole thing. (Also, is it me or does the default talking-normally font go bold about halfway through? It's a lot less jarring in the first half).

The thing everyone bangs on about in Website Design is not to make people read too much in white-on-black font. Generally in comics this isn't such a massive issue - comic fonts are designed for easy legibility - but when you've got multiple big paragraphs of text it becomes a bit of a pain. Where you do it's generally a good choice in terms of layout and balance and yadda yadda, but it does strain the eyes.

Visually strongest panels: narrator in the swivelly-chair, Spidey DRAMATIC FLIP-OUT ACTION FOR NO REASON splash panel, "oh crap". Anyway, awesome stuff;

The exposition and the heavy handed narrative was something I was really striving for in the attempt to contrast the old school Stan Lee/1960s style of comic writing with something that was rather sarcastic, cynical and crude.

I think I'm in agreement with cutting out the politics and religion thing since it doesn't really add anything to the flow. It also kind of steps outside the spirit of the rest of the strip.

Yeah, there's a few phrases that I think sell this as funny including "dorking out at the library", "I'm going to nail that red head slut", the Aunt May/Uncle Ben line "We're old...Yeah, one of us is probably going to die before this is over" and a few others that I'd be an idiot to cut out. And the overly repeated line "he deserved it" in its various forms has to stay because it's a big inside joke amongst me and one of my oldest friends who laughed his ass off and probably wanted to punch me at the same time when I showed him the strip.

Hadn't considered the reversed white/black issue with the type but I'll take it under advisement for future stuff and try not to overdo it.

And yeah, I think the font did get bigger halfway through due to the fact that I did the first and second half of the story at different points and probably didn't reference the size and style of the first half when starting the second half as well as I should have.

And I'm just glad you found any of the panels to be visually well done since I was doing more of the bad comic strip art style for this.

Thanks for the feedback and the fav.

-Chris

The "He deserved it" thing is funny when Uncle Ben gets shot, even if you don't the injoke, just because it's cruel and random. In the shooting panel it comes across as more moralistic. I missed it as being a repeated element, somehow.

It's strewn about in there. When Peter gets bitten by the spider someone yells off panel "you deserve it" and when Uncle Ben's killer gets shot by the cops he yells "I deserve it" or "I deserve this." My buddy didn't catch it 'til Uncle Ben was shot either.

Incidentally, John Lovitz had a small part in Little Nicky where he had a similar thing going on. I can't remember if it made the final cut or if it was in the special features. But he's a peeping Tom and he falls out a tree, dies, and goes to hell. He's heard yelling something to the extent of "I deserve this" as he's falling into hell.

God, that was such a bad movie. Can't believe I just brought it up.

Fortunately, I've never seen it, so I can't condemn you for your bad taste on the matter.