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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.