Critiquing the Burgundy

“I chartered one of the superb vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, and invited several parties to go along with me, twelve hundred in all. I shall not take so many next time. The fewer people you take with you, the fewer there are to grumble. I did not suppose that any one could find anything to grumble at in so faultless a ship as ours, but I was mistaken. Very few of our twelve hundred had ever been so pleasantly circumstanced before, or had sailed with an abler Captain or a more obliging baggage master, but yet they grumbled. Such is human-nature. The man who drinks beer at home always criticizes the champagne, and finds fault with the Burgundy when he is invited out to dinner.” – Mark Twain, in a letter to the Chicago Republican

 Ah, webcomics. Like Twain’s steamship, you are invited along for the ride, free of charge, for a venture beyond the bounds of the usual. And doesn’t it also seem to hold true that the more people along for the ride, the more grumbling occurs?

I’ve touched on this subject before, and while there’s always the possibility of commentary that’s just outright trolling, the majority probably comes from the idea of being helpful. That we care, so the criticism we are providing will make things better somehow, particularly if we’re pointing out what seem to be mistakes.

Now in looking at the issue from the other side in the case of Zombie Ranch, there has been more than once that we missed filling in the colors of a certain spot, or in the case of last week’s comic forgot altogether to put the bolts and brands on the zombies that should have been there. Truth to tell I woke up the next morning suddenly realizing it and expecting to log on to find someone questioning the lapse, and yep, there it was in the very first comment. There was nothing to be done there but go “whoops” and make the correction as soon as we had the chance. Thank heavens for a digital age that makes that easy. Sooner or later we’d probably notice these mistakes ourselves (hopefully before going to any print version), but I have no problem with people bringing them up. I do wish we were perfect enough it never happened, but occasionally there’s going to be a fly landing in the Burgundy glass and it’s legitimate to politely point that out.

But all that said and done, there are limits. There is a line where constructive criticism just crosses over into nitpicking, and the artist(s) who invited you along on this trip might justifiably become a bit frustrated. Now I still don’t think it gives an artist the right to have a public meltdown and go crazypants on someone, but my “inspiration” for the current post came from moseying by one of the latest pages for the always gorgeously drawn and composed Next Town Over.

NTO has a big audience, no doubt far bigger than ours… I don’t think we’ve ever gotten 20 or more comments on a single page, for instance, while Erin Mehlos gets them on a regular basis. But then I look at some of those comments and see things like “The wound has moved” or a discussion of how the rain shouldn’t be slanted a particular way. Now I’m no artist, but rain is not a particularly easy thing to do well, and I find the fact she’s including it at all to be rather impressive, particularly since she now has a newborn child to take care of.  She spends a few posts going back and forth on the idea of viewer perspective before the frustration bubble bursts: