>>217416
Except that has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, why are you acting like it does?

The point is that King Radical is a fuckhead, and Old needs a good explanation if he is still following him.

>Except that has nothing to do with the discussion at hand,
I'm saying the discussion at hand is stupid. Or at least that part of it is. Whatever else can be said about Radical, him turning Cumberland into a giant robot is just one more thing they have to put up with. They put up with this kind of shit all the time. Their reaction to zombies was "When is the mayor going to activate the defenses, so I can go buy some cigarettes?"

>>217419
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
That has nothing to do with the issue at hand, that King Radical is a bad guy doing bad things, and Old has seemingly no reason to still be helping him carry out his goals any further.
It doesn't matter if crazy stuff happens in this world on a fairly regular basis, that has nothing to do with the fact Radical is the direct cause of all the current death and destruction.

>>217420
>That has nothing to do with the issue at hand

I'm saying the discussion issue at hand is stupid. Or at least that part of it is. Whatever else can be said about Radical, him turning Cumberland into a giant robot is just one more thing they have to put up with. They put up with this kind of shit all the time.
It's a place so weird a giant blue ox will show up out of nowhere just because a kid mutated into a Paul Bunyan because he/she was chopping wood.

>>217424
"putting up with things" beyond your control has no bearing on the person who is actually intentionally causing the incident being in the wrong... why is this beyond your comprehension.

>>217425
My point is that Dr. Radical turning the city into a robot is something that endangers the lives of people living there... only if you start applying rules of logic that the comic hasn't consistently adhered to. Yeah, people could get stuck in gears and shit, it's irresponsible, but this isn't the sort of book written realistically enough for that to sort of thing to be a serious possibility. Someone the Doc yells at for wasting his time with diabetes could leave their disease untreated and die from it. Someone the Doc randomly attacks in another case of mistaken identity could end up dead. He's killed security guards that were just doing their job and were in his way. His parents, hired killers, might have killed good people at some point... Archabald is a weenie and terrible mayor, but didn't deserve to die at Mitzi's hand. Did the Doc ever do anything about those vampires with the babies? These are not the things to get hung up on. It's not a serious enough book to think about that kind of unseen consequence. Radical turning the city into a robot is not a big deal, not in a book where McNinja can summon kaiju to try and treat someone's vision problems. Radical using it to attack the military? That's something you can point to as bad.

A penny for your thoughts Old.

>My point is that Dr. Radical turning the city into a robot is something that endangers the lives of people living there... only if you start applying rules of logic that the comic hasn't consistently adhered to.
Actually, it seems to be the reverse situation. You're forgetting that the majority of people aren't supercool in Cumberland. They get hurt. Sometimes people die in Dr McNinja. And Radical's doing this to EVERYBODY he doesn't approve of, which isn't just the worst people in the world but rather everybody he doesn't think is cool enough. There are bad extreme things that don't get picked up on of course, but that doesn't mean Radical doing extreme bad things isn't pretty evil.

>>217449
>Actually, it seems to be the reverse situation.

No, it's not. Look at the page you posted. Is that man dying? Being crushed by gears? No, he's having toilet water fall on him because the room is now tilted. And everyone's having a variation on that, apparently. It's silly, it's a crappy thing to do to people, but it's really no worse than things McNinja has done to strangers. Even Dr. McNinja himself was feeling a bit sheepish after the city turned into a robot and revealed the rough outline of his plan. It wsn't until Radical started fighting the military that he went "Okay, see? That's what I'm talking about". I'm not saying Radical's not a bad guy, but let's not start acting like this is suddenly a super-serious book where something like "turning the city into a giant robot" has realistic consequences like people dying during the assembly. Doc's world doesn't take "Rule of Cool" as far as it goes on Radical's world, but generally speaking unless there's a deliberate attempt to harm someone, the book treats it as okay. Turning Cumberland into the Radicalbot was a perfectly acceptable way to spend the afternoon by this book's standards.

>I'd play as Oddjob. I had no honor. I'll admit it.

Silly Hastings, everyone would play as Oddjob. To hell with honor.

Also, Poppy, you're the cutest.:3

Glad people post pages here, to remind, to expose people to new things, to get people talking... but I hope you remember to visit the webpages of the comics you like. With adblock off. And maybe once in a while click on an ad if you're interested in something. Because that's how the people that make webcomics make their living.

Sorry, I have an unholy vendetta against advertising and marketing in general. My ablock is permanently off.

*permanently on
excuse me.

>>217910
>>217915
>Sorry, I have an unholy vendetta against the artists who entertain me for free making money in general

FTFY

>>217910
You don't need to click the advertisements. :/ Most artists try to minimize the prescence of their ads as best they can, and often the ads are for other webcomics (Project Wonderful, Hiveworks, etc.). When you see ads they aren't there for the artist to make loads of cash off them, they are just there to keep the site up and running so the artist does not have to pay for you to keep reading their comic for free.

You aren't making a statement to anybody by keeping adblock on when you read webcomics that you enjoy. You are just being a dickhead. Good job.

>>217900
> With adblock off.
Nope. Ads the net over are incredibly annoying and I will not make a special exception for webcomics. If I find a comic worthwhile I will try to buy swag or donate to them, which is far more money than they would make off me through ads even over years of reading (especially if they have an RSS feed that includes the comic in-feed, which not all do.) I've donated $20 to Errant Story and purchased the first two volumes; I also pledged $60 to the Double K Kickstarter. I'd like to get something from Lackadaisy Cats or Minus (if they even sell prints for that anymore), but money has been rather tight these last few years so I haven't been able to contribute as much as I'd like. :(

However, many webcomics use lesser-known ad providers (like Project Wonderful) that are far less likely to host super-annoying ads or potentially malicious ones, or host their own, and I don't have those blocked by default at home (I do at work, but I use a super-anal block list here.)

(I also want to see the ad-funded net die a horrible death, with sites being either a labor of love, using minor advertising as an offset for costs, or a labor of subscriptions, which will take care of a ton of sites that serve no purpose except re-posting the content from other sites and throwing ads around it, like FunnyJunk.)

>>217918
>(I also want to see the ad-funded net die a horrible death, with sites being either a labor of love, using minor advertising as an offset for costs, or a labor of subscriptions, which will take care of a ton of sites that serve no purpose except re-posting the content from other sites and throwing ads around it, like FunnyJunk.
Almost every time anyone has attempted to put up a paywall for content LIKE that--pretty much any type of entertainment or news, for example--those sites have lost a huge portion of their readership and a big chunk of their income. It is completely unrealistic for webcomics to make money behind a paywall. You cannot build up a readership with a webcomic that requires a subscription, and convincing an internet audience that has been getting something for free to start paying for it later is like herding cats.

It sounds to me like you just consider your own comfort to be more important than making sure the people who make you comfortable get some sort of compensation for it.

It's really easy to talk about "Labors of Love" when the people laboring are people other than yourself.

>>217919
>those sites have lost a huge portion of their readership
Yes, there is usually less interest in something that is free vs. something that costs money.

>and a big chunk of their income.
But if they were already getting massive bucks, even with the proliferation of ad blocking software, why bother with a paywall? See my prior statement, which I hope is also a fairly obvious one to everyone. And, despite this, there are still plenty of sites using pay walls, especially porn sites whose content is often freely distributed through torrents.

Furthermore, enjoy this counterpoint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times#Web_presence
>In January, 2013, the Times' public editor Margaret Sullivan announced that for the first time in its history, the paper generated more revenue through subscriptions than through advertising

>It is completely unrealistic for webcomics to make money behind a paywall.
So don't put up one. There was a third option I forgot to mention: Swag. There are more than a few stores that will put any-freaking-design on any-freaking-thing and you get a cut from each item sold (not huge, but it's so easy to do in the beginning that it's not a cost center.) If you're big enough you can handle your own ordering and distributing to get an even bigger cut. Syndication. Compile your strips into books and sell those. (I've never heard anyone complaining about libraries making the funny pages available for free.)

>It sounds to me like you just consider your own comfort to be more important than making sure the people who make you comfortable get some sort of compensation for it.
I consider my own comfort to be more important than the time taken to track down which ad is making undesired noise, is keeping the page from loading because the page is waiting for the ad server to respond, or cleaning up after whatever virus found and exploited a new attack vector through advertising (and since this is almost always flash, it's why I have Flash disabled unless I explicitly enable it for a particular instance.) If I can compensate them, I will. If they have ads that are unobtrusive (I think I've whitelisted Google text ads at home) or from a smaller network and are properly placed, I will... not even give them a first look because I will skim right past them, but they'll still get the impressions (which are worth a fraction of a cent, if anything.)

If they want to put their content online without any kind of barrier, then I can look at it. I have no agreement with them that says I will look at or even download any ads they also have on their site, especially if those ads are from third parties. Should I cover my ears every time I walk by a venue with a live band since I haven't paid the cover charge to get in?

>It's really easy to talk about "Labors of Love" when the people laboring are people other than yourself.
While I've no webcomic, I do have shared hosting to the tune of $120/year. For a while it was used to host the forums for a website that had died but still had a small community (which has sadly since fallen apart.) Never had advertising on it, never asked for money, never sold anything. 100% paid out of pocket. Now I use it to host my own sites and my mom's small business website. I don't see a dime from it.

Right now I'm working on a nice Pokémon checklist that anyone can use to easily track which Pokémon they have over which games (Gen 3 forward.) You can print it out or use cookies to maintain the list online. It's going to go up with no advertising; if it gets popular I'll probably throw up an ad to help offset costs (especially if I incur any extra from popularity, but I'm not expecting that at all.) But it will be a simple banner ad, at the top, and if someone uses adblock IDGAF. I'm making this primarily for me to use (I have at least one version each gen since 3, and I want to catch as many as possible and import into Black to get as complete a dex in Black as possible, then sell off my games) and making it a bit more pleasant so others might find from it, as well.

tl;dr: They have no onus to put their content online without restriction, I have no onus to download ads to my computer when viewing said content. Sage for going offtopic.

>>217924
>Off topic

No, it's really not. This is the webcomic general. The ways that webcomic creators keep food on the table through their work is absolutely on-topic. As are the ways some webcomic "enthusiasts" prevent the creators from putting food on their table.

>>217916
>Sorry, I have an unholy vendetta against the artists who entertain me for free making money in general
No.
I like them, but I will not fund them in that way. I purchase their books. I sometimes donate. But I will not turn my adblocker back on. Period.

I religiously turn off my adblocker for webcomics. It's just the nondickish thing to do for artists, and I gotta raise my eyebrow in amazement at the claims that they significantly harm the reading experience. Looking at a sampling of comics I checked out today... yeah, not a problem.

>>217930
In half of these you can't even see the fucking ads on your screen unless you scroll down to see them or the comment section (and why the fuck would you want to read or contribute to a webcomic comment section I have no clue).

>>217931
I'm a blocker, but even I know that's nonsense.

>>217933
Uh... he's talking about screencaps.

Screencaps like these.

So it looks like King Radical's thing is gonna affect totally normal people too, and he's totally an asshole after all.

>>217942
Thanks, yeah... everyone sort of twigged onto that already. Its pretty much just the one guy with his fingers in his ears and accusing everyone of twisting the issue with dishonest arguments when they noticed Radical was a supervillain and his plan was going to be harmful to the people of the city.

AW YEAH

>>217926
> As are the ways some webcomic "enthusiasts" prevent the creators from putting food on their table.
So if I were to go to the library and check out a book by any artist at all, read it for a bit, enjoy it, then return it, I'm just a leech?

Or, more relevantly, if a guy was selling art on the street and I stopped to look at a few pieces of interest but didn't buy anything, am I just a leech then?

>>217930
> I gotta raise my eyebrow in amazement at the claims that they significantly harm the reading experience.
Never had one that did. But I'm not going out of my way to customize my adblocker to whitelist every webcomic I read (in part because I read half of them in my RSS reader, so there's nothing to block anyway) or whoever serves their ads. Primarily because the time it takes me to read their comics is far less than the time it would take to get that all set up properly.

In addition, from the shot of >>217930 it looks like most of those are something like Project Wonderful, which I don't have blocked at all (seeing as how +4 uses them.)

Actually, I don't even know why I'm arguing over this.

>>217953
> Primarily because the time it takes me to read their comics is far less than the time it would take to get that all set up properly.

What? It literally takes a fraction of a second to block or unblock ads on a specific website. There's nothing to set up.

>>217954
Oh yeah. Eh, if I remember, then.

>>217953

>So if I were to go to the library and check out a book by any artist at all, read it for a bit, enjoy it, then return it, I'm just a leech?

Technically, yeah. Since they're run by the government you're basically accepting government handouts you filthy disgusting socialist. #Obamabooks

>>217942

EAT IT, GUY WHO KEEPS TRYING TO SAY KING RADICAL ISN'T TOTALLY THE BAD GUY IN THIS COMIC WHERE THE PROTAGONIST IS A NINJA DOCTOR.

"But, GUYS, we don't know that Mr. Andrews isn't totally a bad dude! I mean, we only JUST saw him! Give King Radical the benefit of a doubt that also ignores that people are being totally tossed around a giant robot filled with malicious ghosts!"/strawman

>>217953
>So if I were to go to the library and check out a book by any artist at all, read it for a bit, enjoy it, then return it, I'm just a leech?

The library buys books. If you went to the library every, say, Monday Wednesday and Friday to read one page of a book, you'd be a bit of a twit for not just buying it. But, I mean, we're not talking about a library, or about having to physically buy a book. Clicking this sucker isn't a big deal, and it helps the artists keep money in their pockets, enabling them to produce better work. There's other things you can do, sure, but if you're saying you're too low on funds to be buying a comic's print copies and merchandise (or if they just don't have that stuff) then you should probably make sure try to read the comics on the creator's own site, and with the adblock off.

>>217961
Radical's very clearly the "bad guy" in this, and it's nuts to say otherwise. But I'd say it's also wrong to go too far in the other direction. The title of the chapter is "All the King's Dirtbikes and All the King's Men," which I'd say skews things more toward this being about Radical failing than McNinja winning. Chris has put some effort into portraying Radical as a guy that's incredibly lonely on an alien world, whose memories of his own world keep fading more and more, and who wants to save his people. Obviously he's still an asswipe with little regard for the lives of people in McNinja's world, but I do think Chris is trying to make him at least somewhat sympathetic. Your millage may vary.

please turn off adblock on webcomics you like :( please, as a webcomic creator i am begging you.
project wonderful ads are very small and nonintrutrusive and im lucky if a make 10 cents a week off of several hours of work. my comic right now is a labor of love.
its really super shitty to not support something you like that someone works hard to deliver to you, especially when the support takes literally no effort/money on your part

RIP
good boat, best vessel
forever missed

The art's gotten a little worse in Dr mcninja lately, static characters between different panels who speak with their mouths closed, poorly drawn characters like especially Hortense on one of the recent pages.

This guys...
THIS GUYS.

Also, that's totally not rad "dude".

>>217999
I haven't really noticed, though >>218001 does make your point. The art has always seemed to cycle in quality for me, especially when it comes to the face and speaking, but I'm only interested in the story so I never care much.

>>218000
>The spirit of America is literally a spirit.
I can't

>>217961
>we don't know that Mr. Andrews isn't totally a bad dude!

Well he is a murderer. Maybe.

Where the fuck did that skull come from?

>>218007
Werid ass antic store?
They do exist.
Bet it came with the snake of thats the case.

>>218007
See, I completely misunderstood that scene the first time. I thought Mr. Andews was saying that with no meals on wheels he had died, was really a ghost, and was haunting the place trying to guilt-trip Chuck.

Daily reminder that if you're not reading Paranatural, you proabably should.

HUMANITY FUCK YEAH!

DEVIL AIN'T GOT NOTHIN' ON US!

I really like Poppy's costume. :3

>>218156
That is the correct costume.
It is the costume that is correct.

WHAT

>>218156
I find it scary. And I seen some scary shit in my time.

Also, my current wallpaper.