Our intrepid, undaunted reviewers will tackle another fan-favorite entitled Paradigm Shift.

See what you think and check back here next Friday. Did we understand PS or not?

Gordon McAlpin’s “Multiplex”
reviewed by Anthony Cardno

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I like many of the jokes in this series. I’m a huge movie and pop culture geek after all. I never worked in a movie theater, and only briefly in a video store, but my mind works very much the way the character Kurt’s does: I don’t troll the internet for movie info as much as he does, but I do geek out over a lot of what I find. And like Jason, I am a fount of little bits of trivia that most people would rather not clutter their brains with. Of course, I’m a good twenty years older than most of the cast of Multiplex (okay, maybe I’m only ten years older than managers Neil and Allan), so I’m not sure if being able to identify with them is a good thing or not.

Multiplex’s major strength is also its’ greatest weakness. It is not one kind of story, but several. It’s pop culture referential comedy (most of the time the references are current as well), it’s teen dramedy, it’s situation comedy. Mix Dalton Ross’ snarky old “Hit List” Entertainment Weekly feature with “10 Things I Hate About You” and stir in a large heap of the workplace portions of Nickelodeon’s “Drake And Josh” and you come pretty close to Multiplex. The strength of this is that if you’re bored with a particular portion of the story you can rightfully assume that the focus will shift eventually. The weakness of this is that sometimes McAlpin lets the drama spin out a little too long and the comic starts to drag (for example, the sequence that starts here.)

The cast is well-rounded and all-inclusive: we have white movie geeks (Kurt and Jay, neither of whom are “creepy Tarantino wannabees”); we have Pan-Asian characters (Jason and Angie); we have black characters (Franklin and Calvin). We have Christians (goth girl Angie and bubbly blond Sunny); we have atheists (Jason). We have straights (most of the cast) and gays (Neil and Chase). And we have the girls who love the geeks (Melissa, Becky, Davi). If you start at the beginning and read through, almost every race, creed, and orientation is represented either among the main cast or the supporting cast. It’s nice to see a series that really does attempt to be representative of all of society. McAlpin occasionally gets bogged down in trying to dispel stereotypes, but most of the time that doesn’t get in the way.

McAlpin’s not afraid to go for the broad joke or the gross-out either. Plenty of the workplace practical jokes revolve around horror movies. Most of the really comedic bits come from the friendship between Kurt and Jason, who have that classic comedy team rapport. And of course he’s not afraid to poke fun at ye olde reviewers / bloggers either.

The art may be occasionally repetitive (especially when you scroll quickly through the archives looking for a particular page), but the characters are all distinguishable from each other and the consistent backgrounds become familiar enough after a while that you notice things like what movie posters are hanging in the background.

I give it 3.5 stars. I enjoyed it, I’ll keep reading it … and keep hoping that the comedy that was so prevalent in the early archives will assert itself and regain equal ground with the teen drama. Rating:

Multiplex

by Gordon McAlpin

http://www.multiplexcomic.com/

review by Anthony Cardno

(7 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)

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It’s refreshing to have a web comic, for once, that shows people earning a good day’s wages instead of wasting the day away playing video games. We’re introduced to an eclectic group of low level employees who deal with pushy customers and jerk wad co-workers. There’s one who’s unrepentantly cruel, another who is a white guy co-opting the mannerisms of another culture, and another who would be a hot girl if not for her glasses and her mousy demeanor. Yet, by, being generally good-hearted to each other, they manage to make it through the day. The story can get awfully dramatic at times, yet it goes down easy with all the humorous geek references that are chuckle-worthy for outsiders, gut-bustingly hilarious for obsessive nerds.

I’m talking, of course, about David Willis’ Shortpacked! Unfortunately, us Comic Fencers were asked to review Gordon McAlpin’s Multiplex, which is like Shortpacked! without the Batman jokes, the likable characters, the creativity, and the humor. In other words, it sucks.

Now I’m no The Doctor, so you’ll not get from me a diatribe so eloquent that it’s suitable for mounting. Nonetheless, I shall vent: I hated pretty every single one of the characters in Multiplex save one. The ones who aren’t depicted as cruel d-bags (sorry, got to keep this site clean for the kids) are witless morons … who happen to be Christian — edgy! They show affection toward each other by pranking each other with grisly costumes or playfully tossing racist remarks at each other. Which is well and fine if the readers were introduced to any redeeming value behind that. Instead, we see these guys denying customers access to movies based on their personal whims or goofing on how stupid the movie-goers are. It’s like watching a bunch of crybaby, over privileged 12-year-olds who act like cruel jerkholes when given the tiniest notion that they might know something the adults don’t. Am I supposed to enjoy reading about these hateful cretins? Seriously, flipping through the archives was like getting a tooth extracted with a shrimp fork. The only likable character is Angie, the crew’s resident goth girl. It’s a shame that she’s also quite bland when not dressed as Go Go Yubari.

The shrimp fork only twists exposed nerve endings in a tight, rope like braid when Multiplex tries to get dramatic. It’s as if McAlpin suddenly realized that everyone was a spiteful stereotype and threw everything from the John Hughes book of character development to flesh them out. Remember that brainless Christian idiot? That person might actually turn out the be smarter than they appear, and not nice at all! How about that goth girl who’s crying all the time? [EDIT: It looks like I was mistaken. The author has informed me that the “brainless… idiot” was not a Christian.] Why, deep down inside she’s a strong Christian who likes to engage other co-workers in discussions on faith! Look, I have no problem with character development. It’s just that the developments come out of friggin’ nowhere and are bizarrely jarring when compared to the gag-heavy portions.

Last month, the webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del ran a story where its unlikable, one-dimensional gamer characters were thrust in a situation involving a miscarriage. The strip was roundly mocked, for the most part because the sudden turn to maudlin was actually funnier than any of the gag strips run previously. Multiplex is like that strip all the time … only instead of laughing at the characters, I wanted to reach into the computer screen to crumple and stomp on the strip, its denizens, and the stupid, stupid multiplex that by all rights should have gone out of business a long time ago.

Rating:

Multiplex
by Gordon McAlpin
http://multiplexcomic.com

review by Larry Cruz

(18 votes, average: 1.83 out of 5)

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Multiplex is about the behind-the-scenes drama at your local movie theater. I say local, but according to the About page … “The Multiplex 10 Cinemas is a (fictional) theater located in an unknown Chicago suburb.” I guess that means it is based in Chicago but I can sure imagine it being the local theater with no problems.

As you might expect, jokes and storylines about current movies abound. The nice thing is that they don’t steal the thunder and overpower what is going on in the comic. There are character moments and other things to enjoy, so Multiplex is not a one-trick pony. Sometimes characters even leave Multiplex which can cause lasting consequences.

The characters are all very individual with their own thoughts and point of view. You can learn all about them on the Cast page and I even recommend you do so. Usually, cast pages have a little blurb about each character, plus a picture. Each Multiplex character has a short history, date of birth, ‘candid photos’and their job title. They also list their favorite movies. While it not required reading to ‘get’ Multiplex, it is great fan service.

Multiplex has some other features. There are movie reviews offered to the reader, so you get double your payoff for the time it took to check for the latest Multiplex comic. On the forum, there are some lively movie discussions. I also enjoyed the FAQ where the artist answers questions about his inspiration and process. Some of it was surprising.

In the FAQ, a question was asked about the use of movie stills and posters - does it violate copyright? You can read the artist’s answer there, but I sure hope he’s right. The posters are just one of many details you’ll see in the backgrounds.

And sometimes there are moments of movie whimsy. I thought this humorous movie-meld was great! Noooooo! Rating:

Multiplex
by Gordon McAlpin
http://www.multiplexcomic.com/
review by Delos Woodruff
(8 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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Hmm…

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I read this comic, to be honest. Was it going to be a non-stop run of movie jokes? Was it going to be edgy, engaging in socially impacting humor or biting satire, a la Doonesbury? Was it just going to be witless and juvenile, rehashing the same tired adolescent sex/bathroom “humor” that’s become an inseparable part of most web comics out there? All of the above, or none?

I’m sorry to say that unfortunately, it’s all of the above.

To be honest, I can’t really say the strip is terrible, although I can say that for different reasons I really don’t think it’s very good, but I also can’t say it’s great and I’d go back and read it again, or recommend it to everyone to run right out and read. This one, kids, is going to be more your call than ever. I can, however, give you The Doctor’s take on what I saw and let you go from there.

Some of the comics were funny. I’ll give them that. Two stick in my mind - #23, in which a group of children is surprisingly well behaved in the movie theater, for reasons I WON’T tell you here, and #248, in which every person’s fantasy comes true who has dealt with very annoying children in public. No, I won’t spoil it. Go read it!

The artwork, unfortunately, really wasn’t anything special. It looked as though still frames from South Park were used to design the characters, honestly. I kept expecting some foul mouthed little beggar to appear or someone to yell about someone else having killed Kenny. The gags, as I have said of other comics, is really where the letdown came in.

I couldn’t call the comic family friendly, since as seems to be prevalent these days, the comics trotted out the same old sex jokes (such as the typical “woman hiding under the desk and another worker seeing her” joke) and were entirely too willing to be off color or use crude humor for the sake of a punchline. Other jokes were just obvious, at least to me; the female co-worker talking about sword fight scenes having hidden homoerotic meanings and not understanding why the men liked them (silly me - my wife enjoys a good sword fight scene as much as I do - go figure); the “racism is only funny when a minority does it” jokes - although I give them kudos for touching on a territory most avoid like the plague; the terminally happy, clueless blond (what a surprise) co-worker - I could go on but I’ll digress. Some of the gags were ok, but most really weren’t. Most seemed to be re-hashes of standard sitcom jokes and formulas, except done in the context of a movie theater. Nothing, really, that stuck out or stood out to make this a cutting edge comic, I guess, when all is said and done.

So for all those reasons, I give it 2 stars. Rating:

And that’s my opinion.

The Doctor

Multiplex

by Gordon McAlpin

http://multiplexcomic.com

review by The Doctor

(14 votes, average: 3.14 out of 5)

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