Okay, so this will hopefully be the last post talking about GU Comics for a while now. To recap, I gave a bit of a history lesson regarding GU and some of the problems plaguing the comic that, in my eyes, make it look unprofessional, lame and unfunny for someone whose primary job is to be working on the comic. I talked about how artwork has been recycled repeatedly, the reliance on guest strips in lieu of his own content and lazy-ass comics that feature literally no artwork or show that the cartoonist is too damned lazy to actually do his job. There’s more to it, though, that rankles me with regards to GU and its owner, so, let’s get into it, shall we?

To add to the problems with the comic itself, there’s Woody’s Garfield-esque tendency to overuse jokes in lieu of providing actual content. To use video game parlance, it’s the equivalent of a palette swap. That example? Not the only time it has happened, as it should be painfully obvious that he loves going to the well again and again. The sad thing is that I haven’t even touched on one of Woody’s favorite old standbys: the game zapper. A quick search shows that he’s made over 50 comics referencing “TEH ZAPPER”, with a good chunk of them being in the last couple of years. Another quick look shows that, over the course of 2008, guest strips, ‘poopy’ strips and zapper comics made up 12% of the GU’s content. That’s not including comics that were ‘written’ by someone else, strips that used recycled gags or artwork or were just speech bubbles with zero artwork.

Can I repeat that one more time? For a full calendar year of updates, GU Comics consisted of, at most, 88% original content. Again, not factoring in comics with recycled artwork or recycled gags. I’d imagine if one were to go through and catalogue all of that, that number could be brought down to roughly 75%, if not more so. I don’t have the time to pour through a year’s worth of comics, though, so bugger that.

And this is someone’s full time JOB? Amazing.

Yes, out come the knives. Speaking of original content, why is it that Woody loves drawing characters as though they are fans of the Rock? This is a silly criticism, perhaps, but it again indicates just how lazy Woody is when it comes to his artwork. Much like how Buckley’s artwork over at CAD consists of a vacant stare with a half opened mouth, Woody’s default facial expression for characters consists of pursed lips and a raised eyebrow. Once you see it, it is everywhere. What was that I saw in the last 3 strips? Gee, it looks like more recycled artwork.

Let’s stay focused on those last three strips for a second. Woody has come across as a prude more often than not, not wanting to use foul language and keep a ‘PG-13′ rating for his strip. He’s also highly sensitive about stereotypes, at least, when it concerns him. Yet it doesn’t stop him from making a cocked eyebrow strip using foul language or using prostitution as punchlines to his jokes. Look, I have no problem with wanting to have a ‘PG-13′ strip if that is what you want to be doing, but if you’re going to bitch about how ‘rednecks’ are portrayed or get on your moral high horse and look down upon people who are media pirates, you shouldn’t be using demeaning, dehumanizing treatment of women as a source of humour in your comic strip.

That’s not the least of the depths of Woody’s hypocrisy, though. While he himself hates being characterized as a redneck, because he grew up in the south, it doesn’t stop him from taking potshots at people who really don’t deserve it. Nice incredibly thinly veiled ‘censoring’ there, too. How risque! Let’s take a crack at someone who took the time to speak about a project they are working on and bash him because, I don’t know, Uwe Boll is a horrible director or something. Wonderful. But let’s also talk about how ‘great’ the film about Watchmen is while admitting you haven’t seen the original source material.

Does anyone else see the complete hypocrisy going on here?

It gets better, though. Woody HATES being criticized. The post I just linked is attached to the comic that I posted up above. The comic would have been funny enough and shown that Woody doesn’t let what anonymous people on the Internet have to say about his comic get to him. The subsequent rant where he runs down Wikipedia saying he doesn’t ‘like’ it (why, because they didn’t ‘check their sources’ like he whined about in his post?) and then runs down the vandal who made the original changes just screams insecurity and bitterness. Especially since this isn’t the only instance where this has happened. The rant that’s attached to that comic in particular (scroll down) starts off with praise, trying to show that, yeah, Woody’s not bothered by the comic, before going into a totally unfunny passive-aggressive rant against Yahtzee.

I guess Woody didn’t get the memo that Yahztee had his own webcomic, thus making his self-cognizant, self-depreciating stabs in his original rant all the more barbed? Okay, okay, enough mocking Woody’s own passive aggressive responses to criticism.

And all this from someone who makes a living from criticizing and making fun of developers, gamers and pop culture in general.

It gets worse, though. Make any sort of comment that gaming could have a negative connotation to some people and Woody’ll be there, histrionics at the ready. Don’t believe me? Here’s another cocked eyebrow strip with Woody working himself into a frothing rage over someone daring to insinuate that World of Warcraft has addictive qualities, a rage that’ll occur anytime someone speaks ill of gaming in general. If one were to speculate, I’d daresay that he’s taking such comments about gaming personally, which either speaks of a guilty conscience or…insecurities of some kind or another! It would help to explain why he decided to make fun of Yahtzee when his comic was blatantly targeting CAD in particular and not webcomics in general. You know, outside of trying to hitch his wagon to people who are actually funny.

Here’s another example of ANOTHER popular (and funny) gaming critic saying nothing about Woody or GU Comics, yet Woody still somehow takes it personally. Again, he goes on to say that ‘oh, no, I know he’s not talking about ME’ but then goes on to personalize it at the very end ‘we’re not all bad.’ Make up your fucking mind, alright?

Of note is the line “I don’t use a lot of symbolism or visual metaphors but I use my comics to poke at the very industry that supports me.” Yeah, continually using a bug zapper or representing gaming companies as pieces of paper aren’t modes of symbolism or kinds of visual metaphors. Suuuuuure.

In closing, I want to say that I used to read GU quite frequently, but started to cut down on how often I’d visit the site until I was no longer reading the thing at all. Someone linked one of Woody’s cartoons on another website, which made me think about why. So, these 2 blog posts are basically examining why I don’t find GU Comics to be all that particularly interesting or funny anymore. Woody is a talented artist, but his laziness, both with his work ethic and his creativity has led me to tuning out GU Comics. There’s no grudge, no blood feud, nothing like that, really. His comics are unfunny to me and these are in large the reasons why.