Dead Days ~ THUMBS DOWN!
DEAD DAYS by John Rios is a black and white college newspaper strip - slice of college life, sometimes featuring the cartoonist as a cartoon himself. This sort of comic (the newspaper strip in general, but also the college newspaper strip) is never funny and is always less amusing than not reading the comic. Thats the trouble with strips and newspaper strips - they are just kind of cute at their best, at their worse they are boring, not funny, and they try too hard to be as generic as possible. So John Rios followed the formula perfectly.
I read page one through page thirty. Page one begins cutely with John Rios’s brain apologizing for a crudely drawn comic… that sucks. Those are the artists words. I agree, the comic in its earlier days did suck, it was amateur, it read like every other college strip about college I’ve ever groaned at for its awfulness. The artwork was crude, generic, no style. The only thing it had going for it were the greytones. And the comic itself did suck, too much exposition for instance. In strip number eight, for example, a character talks about falling down an escalator that was going up for a number of hours. The artist could have shown us this cartoony scenario with his pencil as a drawing, instead he penned it as dialogue. In strip number nine, a rapist and a superhero college undergrad get into a fight, but rather than show us the fight, we get a text box that makes fun of itself for not showing us the fight. This sort of amateur exposition in a visual comic is annoying.
The strip established within its first thirty pages a pattern of showcasing the character based on John Rios as a homophobic biggot. Just thought I’d throw that into the review for kicks, but its true. He goes out of his way in one strip to disavow his first gig as a cartoonist, which was drawing gay pornography for the first John who came along and asked him to draw something for him. Check it out, strip number 15. Way to burn your bridges John Rios, you’ll never work in the gay pornography business again.
So I decided i didn’t care about the cute observations John Rios was making about his college, about the different kinds of soft drinks or liquours that different majors sucked on. I moved on, i skipped to the very last strip. And it was very different. Not good or anything, as this kind of strip can only be horrible in my opinion. But it was better. The artist from strip 30 to strip four hundred and whatever it seemed, had improved.
First of all the drawings were refined, had a unique professional feel to their style. The backgrounds were soft, blurred and exhibited sophisticated atmostpheric perspective. Even the word baloons had style with their thick outlines. and sometimes two word baloons were connected at the hip, not seperated by borders. and the artist pulled off two characters having dialogue with each other within the same baloon, and it made sense. that is a feat that has merit in itself. And rather than general slice of college life garbage so generic that who cares - the final strips focused on greek life. maybe the greek system cared. the later comics read more like a formulaic sorority sit com web comic than they do like a college comic strip. so for the artists character arch from generic amateur to polished professional (in the dumb field of strip comics), I game him a few stars just for improving.
I read backwards, strip by strip, until I came to strip that was basically the same lame joke as one of the first thirty that i read, the title character in the comic based on John Rio mistaking a college student for the wrong gender. and then I realised I still didn’t care about the comic. I had been tricking myself into giving it a shot merely because it was better than it was ten years ago or whatever. too bad it was the same thing, just drawn with a little more style.
Altogether I read a sampling of about 45 of the strips out of 400. I never would have read that many of this strip just for fun, but I’m reviewing it, so i forced myself too. of course I’m terribly biased against strips. It has to be a pretty phenomenal strip to make me laugh or to amuse me or whatever a newspaper strip’s supposed function is supposed to be. But I bet nobody ever laughed at DEAD DAYS by John Rio. I bet everybody just kind of fake laughed or whatever. Thats the function of newspaper strips, i just decided, to help the readers practice their fake laughing.
Two thumbs down. And three stars, because I’m in a good mood.
It should also be noted that I’m mad that Mike Perridge doesn’t review on comic fencing anymore, and I’m taking it out on John Rios.
Rating: 
comic title DEAD DAYS
www.deaddays.net
by John Rios
review by Rudy Guara
(4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
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November 14th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Yeah, what’s with Mike Perridge?
Anyways - it seems like you thought less of Dead Days than I did, but you rated it higher. I agree with you about the homophobia. It was really off-putting. I don’t appreciate the kind of humour where the writer assumes you have the same biases as they do. Because OF COURSE we all agree that there’s nothing lower than drawing gay pornography, and sitting in a bar taking to a guy in a dress is just SO EMBARRASSING that you don’t even need a punchline.
But as a reader of webcomics, I have learned to let things like this wash over me. Without editors, many webcomics creators take us to strange and personal places that we don’t get to see very often in traditional media. Many of these opinions are unsavory, or outright offensive; but the number one rule of webcomics reading is that escape is only a mouse-click away. If you don’t like what you’re reading it’s easy enough to hit the ‘back’ button.
I suppose that’s not so good. I should probably make a point of taking issue with things like homophobia and sexism lest my silence be considered a form of approval. Especially since I’m writing a review. I’m still relatively new at this.
The thing for me was the non-funny quality of the gags. The few things that I thought were a bit funny came accross as recycled things I remember hearing on Family Guy and Futurama.
What can I say? I like the drawings. I’m glad that the strip has a loyal following. I would have loved this when I was fifteen years old.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
One of the interesting things about having multiple reviewers cover the same comic is that if you neglect to mention something important, someone else will. Or they’ll have a totally different take on the comic under discussion.
I’m not sure exactly who the targeted audience is for Dead Days, but I would imagine that teens and college folks would find it especially amusing.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Granted, the review is your opinion, and it’s great you express it so openly - but I will ask this - on what basis do you condemn the person as homophobic? Jokes of this nature can be found in TV shows, comic routines, and a plethora of other venues, and people laugh right out loud at them. Doesn’t homophobia, like racism, take intent? When last I knew, it did. If a gay web comic were making fun of straight people, would that also cause outcry on your part? Also, are you as passionate about jokes made at the expense of Christians, women, disabled people, Muslims, Jews, blacks…..or is it just a one sided bias on your part as to what’s acceptable and not, or to what groups are “ok” to make fun of, while others are off limits?
And to speak on one point - I will say openly (if I went to bars, which I don’t as a general rule) that I would feel uncomfortable talking to a man in a dress, the same as I would speaking to a woman in a 3 piece business suit. Does that automatically make me either homophobic or misogynistic?
The point? I’m leery of condemning or labeling people with negative labels just because they do something we may not like - it still takes intent, and at this point (unless he mentioned it and I missed it, which I’ll concede if that’s true) you don’t know his.
Mr. Moderator, how about a comment from you on the subject?
November 16th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
DOCTOR
Please understand that this is my first published web comic critique, so you have not been audience yet to a pattern in my critiques of pointing out slurs, innuendos, racist remarks, etc against target victim groups such as native americans, mexicans, black people, and other groups which are constantly joked about on televison, in movies, and other places - all of these jokes are hurtful to the target groups. and no, intent is not a qualifying factor. the jokes are hurtful, and the only place for them is to portray a flawed character or a bigoted character, a villain.
If i were critiquing television, rest assured, the simpsons would get it for a pattern i’ve noticed where they disrespect and joke and slur and slam native americans on average three times per episode, look for it, it is there. and i suppose in your point of view that is fine, just a joke, right? nevermind that in our culture, native americans are holocaust victims and we american settlers are victorious nazi germany, cracking jokes about our historical victims on our hilarious cartoons. i would say there is intent there, whether the creators realise it or not, to degrade and make fun of our victims. and it isn’t just the simpsons, sample my name is earl or jerry springer, watch tv for twenty minutes and you will see terrible racism against native americans, which is very hurtful. Our society, our american settler culture inherited a society built by white serial killers. so it is no surprise that the simpsons just keeps at it, week after week, kicking dirt in the eyes of the defeated.
There are victim target groups in our society with very real feelings, doctor.
In fiction class at Oklahoma State Uni, where i attended, the professor during critiques never allowed one slur, racist innuendo, homophobic slam go by unadressed. I was guilty of writing homophobic jokes into my prose years ago, but i was confronted during critiques in front of a class full of my peers, some of whom were gay. i don’t forget looking at my gay classmates and it was clear that my little jokes were indeed hurtful. intent or not ( There is a subtext to jokes, and if you are making a joke about a target group of historical victims, then there is de facto intent to be hurtful to those in that group, to make a joke at the expense of the human beings targeted by your joke ). at critiques end, i did apologize to the class. so part of it is my indoctrination, but i will continue to harshly critique racism and homophobia during my critiques.
I’m sorry if you cannot understand that doctor, but i disagree with every point you made in your response to my critique, and i don’t think you have one valid argument.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I didn’t notice anything particularly original about the “gay porn” or “man in dress at bar” strips, and I guess I stopped taking offense at those particular bug-a-boos ages ago. And I’m particularly sensitive to those kinds of gags. Now, if there were more than a handful of strips out of the 400 that showed some kind of gay-bashing, I’d absolutely be decrying it in my review.
Of course, the fact that I skipped a portion of the archives because of my internet problems, concentrating on the beginning and the end, could mean that I missed some gay-bashing in the middle. It doesn’t seem, though, that Rios makes any more fun of gays than he does women (in that latest storyline, with the hooker becoming a lit major) or other stereotypes.
However, Rudy, I absolutely agree that overall, I just didn’t find the strip funny despite the nice art towards the end.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Wow.
That’s all I can say after a vitriolic rant like that one, which was just a BIT in excess, given my question to you.
You assume a lot, my friend, both about me, about what I consider funny and don’t, and a great many other things, not the least of which is “what I understand.” What I definitely understand is that you prefer to stand on your soapbox and howl condemnation rather than answer a question rationally or in anything resembling an adult manner. When I have time, I’ll clap for you and all the work you do to champion the downtrodden. However, while you’re at it, perhaps you could answer the next person who asks you a question, especially one who bothers to ask it politely as I did, without quite so much fire and self-promotion, eh? Thanks.
One thing is still true, however, which you did not address - when all is said and done, UNLESS YOU KNOW the person’s mind, thought processes and intent, you can make one hell of an assumption of their motives, but you cannot say for certain why they did what they did. All your chest beating rhetoric can’t change that - and THAT, my friend, was the point of my question. Not whether or not what he did was right or even tasteful, but whether or not you were justified in automatically slapping the label of “homophobic” on him because you, personally, didn’t like the jokes. A pity you couldn’t have just addressed it without all the drama and over-acting, and certainly without getting on your self-righteous horse and being demeaning. That’s the sign of a zealot, not a rational person.
And this, I can assure you, will be my final word on the subject. Arguing with hyper-emotive persons is definitely not my cup of tea - as a matter of fact, it’s served to remind me why I gave up Comic Fencing to begin with.
I’ll be waiting for the Moderator to come in with his “Now, now, can’t we all just get along?” stuff any old time now.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
i don’t know what you are talking about anymore. you should give examples. your critique of my critique sucks. you get one star.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
WOAH! Talk about rash judgments! Now, I’m not debating the review of my strip mind you. That’s a totally fair and valid opinion, but where the HECK did all that “homophobia” talk come from? Sorry if you found 2 strips I wrote back in 2001 offensive (it was not my intention), but if you read any of my recent stuff, I think you’d find it far from homophobic. Hell, I’d go as far as to call it borderline homoerotic!
Partly due to the goofy ass frat storyline I’m wrapping up…
Anyway, if DEAD DAYS is about anything, it’s innocent fun. If I ever meant to offend, I did so in as non-offensive a way as I could imagine. If that makes sense. Thanks a bunch for the review where you WEREN’T calling me a bigot, though. Hope you got at least a little something out of it. I’d hate to hear you found your time with DD a complete waste.
-John “Voted NO on Prop 8″ Rios