Guilty Pleasures Webcomics

[BRPXQZME]

As a sci/tech professional in training, I can say the popularity of xkcd gets in my face all the time, and that isn’t something I can just “not look at” when it’s all over my news, my facebook feed, my professors’ doors, my future cubeneighbors’ walls... it’s as ignorable as the Eiffel Tower is in Paris (and if you will recall, there was a vocal faction of people not very fond of it). Unlike the Tour, however, the typical strip is a Twitter-grade observation if you ask me. And if I wanted to see those, I’d have a Twitter account (on an aside: I don’t know who BRPXQZME on Twitter is, but he’s not me and that’s another reason I doubt I’ll be making up an account anytime soon. ohboy!).

So I’d rather it stay where I can block it. But I can’t, because people refuse not to repost it all over my everywhere, it seems. They simply assume that I’d like it. But I don’t. I don’t like it when people assume I share a particular religious or political opinion, either, and would find nothing objectionable with having to look at propaganda for said opinion over and over. There simply comes a point at which my tolerance is exceeded, and a number of xkcd fans whom I personally know have long abused my magnanimity.

The popularity of a thing I don’t like wouldn’t irk me if its popularity didn’t mean I’m practically forced to swim through a sea of it. That is a very practical difference. I can no more stay away from xkcd than I can get away from the din of the nearby air traffic. It’s doable, but the requisite cost is too great. Meanwhile, I have little trouble escaping, say, the discography of Glenn Gould, to give an example of something that is popular among certain peers but I can’t stand.

Incidentally, it was only in doing research for this post that I found that I could have just linked to an article titled “No One Is Forcing You To Read It” on the blog “xkcd sucks”, if I wanted to sound like a nastier person than I try to be. So while I have merely rehashed that argument, it is a rehash worth making. I am not trying to be nasty, or force people to change their avatars and stuff to make me like them better, no! Especially not in a no-judgment zone like this! Of course there is no need to thank me for not flipping tables everywhere I go! But it would still be doing me a favor if others could minimize their expression of it in my presence. It is at this point, my friends, that I will refrain from telling you about Homestuck.

[Dentrala]

My guilty pleasure regarding xkcd is xkcd sucks sucks.


There is no lower form of entertainment.

[Doc Sportello]

I dunno if you count Sinfest and Sister Claire as guilty pleasures...

Sinfest is great. Tatsuya has evolved a really cool and unique visual language in his strip. Starting with abstract ideas made into characters and things (like they do in political cartoons), he's played around with his own tropes and gags so much they now are their own little world with it's own logic. For example, Squigley's flying couch, it was at first just a good visual metaphor, but now he often flies around on it for real.

I think it's a really neat strip.

[SkaianRedeemer]

I used to not like Aaron Diaz but continued to read the comic even through long, extended hiatuses. The author's attitude (not "attitudes", "attitude") wasn't bothering me. But once Diaz started inserting his attitude into the comic itself, and the characters became his mouthpieces for his attitudes-plural, there was nothing left worth reading. The fact that he's (or at least, he was) pretentious about it, in the comic just as bad as out, was just the salt in the wound. Dresden Codak was like the guy gloating every time he made a point off of his assembly line of high-quality strawmen, and when the characters were just speaking with his voice, the problem is definitely not restricted to the author alone.

The funny thing is, I agreed with him much of the time, but there are some people you just don't want speaking for you. But I can't really say why I stopped reading him in particular. There are people I don't like whose content I do sometimes consume, and people I don't like and whose content I don't consume, but the line is very thin and completely arbitrary.

On a related note to this thread and my original post, I've given up on Evil, Inc. Sorry, Brad, I endured your puns to read your good, extended stories that came up from time to time, but you really struck out on this pirate thing. Forget it not feeling like an important storyline - I didn't realize it was more than one of those series of barely-related pun strips like you do sometimes until three weeks in!

@Dentrala: We have to go deeper.

[subjectDisavowed]

I read Two Guys And Guy.
Beat THAT.

@Tren: TGAG is hilarious.

Flaky Pastry?

Really all of the comics I read are a guilty pleasure. Mostly, because it interferes with SERIOUS BUSINESS.
Homestuck is my guiltiest. I've spent much more time reading the damn thing, than any other comic. But I 3333333 it.

I'll try anything, but If I don't like it for some reason, I won't continue to read or waste precious cycles thinking about it.

[Kocel232]

Too many to count for me, but I recently started following Supernormal Step. The art is GREAT but the plot is... Well... I want to say 'bad', but it's more "endearingly cheesy." There's a lot of stuff there I like (and a lot I don't), and for me it's been an enjoyable read.

I've got other guilty pleasures but I won't put 'em up here quite yet.

[xeroticDeceiver]

That dude's power is unma-.

[ForeverBDC]

i read The Devil's Panties, Looking for Group, Romantically Apocalyptic, LOLDWELL, Ctrl+Alt+Del, AmazingSuperPowers, VGCats, Super Effective, and used to read 8-Bit Theatre before it ended. O and also Cyanide and Happiness (though not in a long time... I really need to find where I left off and catch back up)

[xeroticDeceiver]

i read The Devil's Panties, Looking for Group, Romantically Apocalyptic, LOLDWELL, Ctrl+Alt+Del, AmazingSuperPowers, VGCats, Super Effective, and used to read 8-Bit Theatre before it ended. O and also Cyanide and Happiness (though not in a long time... I really need to find where I left off and catch back up)

One of these things is not like the others...

[dragonpaul99]

One of these things is not like the others...

Nah, I totally agree with her. The Captain is one of the most annoying characters even written and RA's fantastically good art is basically the only thing saving it from being an unreadable, meme-saturated dreck.

Just do what I do and skim past all the awful text bubbles that are blocking out the pretty pictures.

[ForeverBDC]

if you read the stuff at the botton of most of the strips, the story itself make at least a little more sense xD the art work is gorgeous though

[sonic3535]

I think a lot of people on here are subject to at least some of those
...
Subnormality (and other Virus Comix)

Hey! I feel no guilt in loving Subnormality. Well, okay, not very much guilt anyway. It's mostly pleasurable reading!

I read XKCD too, and honestly, I never think of the comics I read as guilty pleasures. Maybe that's a good thing?

[Yogapig]

Whaaaaat. You guys are being silly. You shouldn't feel guilty about reading comics like XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness, A Softer World, Romantically Apocalyptic, or SMBC! If you like them, like them! Don't be ashamed of it! Seriously, i can't speak for any of the others, as i've never read them, but i've read all these and don't get why you would feel guilty about reading them! XKCD is personally one of my favorite comics, and I AM NOT GUILTY, I AM PROUD! I WILL SCREAM IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS! Seriously though, y'all, just like them, don't judge yourself.

[josephkarg]

XKCD has just become my new guilty pleasure. Fantastic.

[ForeverBDC]

GAH! Now I can't stop reading XKCD

[glub]

xkcd has progressed into the stage of "if you post a strip on Facebook, you earn +10 geek cool points" for the majority of my friendgroup. Same with A Softer World and Penny Arcade. xkcd is the only one I still keep up with, though Penny Arcade occasionally makes valiant charges when I'm heavily procrastinating and want to catch up.

I enjoy these (or did at a point in life), but wouldn't bring them up in conversation
Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space
Inverloch. Archive-binged it once after it was finished. Four years in retrospect, that was probably the most embarrassingly anime thing I have ever exposed myself to, but it was a cheap romance/adventure(?) thrill for a high schooler.
The Phoenix Requiem
Avengelyne, which is as hypersexed and gory as you can expect a pulp comic to be, but the pacing and art are good.
Curvy. Neat art.

Comics I read more out of obligation to stick with the plot and because they're familiar, reliable standards: Looking For Group and Least I Could Do.
- and The Dreamer, Vampire Cheerleaders, Rival Angels until recently when I decided that they weren't enriching my life at all! and deleted their bookmarks.

And I took a look at Romantically Apocalyptic because of this thread and while a lot of the jokes seem trite and directionless, I might bookmark the site as a reference for wasteland/post-apocalyptic images.

[zombieTroll]

wired

[CapnCourage]

Cyanide & Happiness (even though I hardly read it anymore).
"Beer Run" always leaves me laughing.