[...] to keep the webcomics conversations around here as positive as possible, but the folks over at Comics Worth Reading have taken a special interest in Zuda winner, The Black Cherry Bombshells, particularly the [...]

http://www.shadowlinecomics.com/webcomics

But amazingly enough this is a trend that’s pervading the entire gamut of American entertainment (save the occasional independent movie or HBO series). In that respect, Zuda is right on target with the zeitgeist of mainstream America, of course this doesn’t make it right. But they aren’t trying to make it right, they’re trying to make money.

It’s up to sophisticated and informed readers like yourself, I, and a few others on this page to make the difference by choosing substance over suspect entertainment. With that being said, I would like to extend an invitation to all of those who read this article to explore Zuda further. Read the comics, post your opinions, and most importantly vote. That’s the only way the content of Zuda will diversify. I believe there is an audience for BCB, but that is not the only audience Zuda can reach.

If the site diversified its content it could attract an untapped market of the web and print comics spectrum.

I said earlier that I was Zuda reader; I’ve stuck with Zuda throughout several months of disappointing offerings because I see the potential. Currently, Bayou is the best thing I read all last year. High Moon is also a well-written and exquisitely drawn comic. Night Owls if a fun strip with entertaining characters. Street Code is a great memoir-style strip. Road has unfulfilled potential.

And there are a few more, but they get drowned out by the flashy colors and average to above average art of every comic fan-turned-artist who see this as their shot in the big leagues. As a result, we loose potentially great comics like The Crooked Man, Action Ohio, Sam & Lilah, Maxy J. Millionaire, Pieces of Eden, and Raining Cats & Dogs.

What Zuda needs is a fresh influx of input and creative ideas. If you are willing to provide that or would like to make a difference in some kind of way then please join the site, vote, and help even out the content.

–The Real Bishop

P.S.
We all get what you were trying to say. You wanted to make a big shit about DC’s supposed ’sexist’ marketing campaign.

None of us who frequent the site agree with you because we’ve got the benefit of context.

P.P.S.
I resent the implication that those who are dissenting are only doing so because we’re fans of Black Cherry Bombshells.
I voted for Sam and Lilah that month. I don’t know if you would have liked it. It’s a romance story but God forbid I suggest you’re into romance stories.

P.P.P.S.
Come to think of it I don’t want you at Zuda after all. Just keep lobbing grenades at people you don’t know and making assumptions. But try to assume correctly in the future, it’ll make you seem more credible.

This site reviews many types of comics, including webcomics, but not everything posted here is a review. I also post news and analysis, as it says in the site taglines (top of the page, under the site name).

Again, it’s the ad’s function to make me interested enough to “look past a press release”. It didn’t. It failed. That was the point of the post. I’m glad we could come to agreement on this.

In a blog titled “Comics Worth Reading” I was disappointed to see a review of a single page of promotional art instead of one that deals with the content of the strip itself. This seems like irresponsible reporting. If the title of the site is “Comics Worth Reading” I don’t feel we need reviews couched in a style of criticism that doesn’t look past a book’s cover. I also feel the tone of the review indicates that reviewer never actual read the comic in question. I could be wrong about that, but since the content of the comic itself is never mentioned beyond the detail one might find in a press release this still strikes as the most irresponsible kind of reporting. i suggest the reviewer would be better off on a blog called “Comic Press Releases I Hate,” or “Covers That Make Books Worth Reading.”

To some of the points you mention as rebuttal;
1) I believe its bait-and-switch to call this a review of anything other than your personal feelings about the promotional art. A brief glance at the meta tags below the article imply where the focus of your criticism here is going. This is clearly just a post about whether the cover is sensationalist and not about the content of the comic.

2) The job of any reviewer is to say what they feel about a work of art and what interests them about it. The job of a critic is to look beyond their own personal interests to understand how that art functions. reviewers get prime time talkshows. Critics are worth reading.

3) The Zuda interface is not subject of your review and not the fault nor design of the artists who’s work you’ve used as a centerpiece. If you hate the Zuda interface than say it, but don’t blame the guys making the comics.

I’m not actually championing the strip here so much as commenting on the irresponsibility of your own reporting and how the personal agenda you may feel against the Zuda, DC or their marketing strategies has negative fall-out on a couple of guys making comics. You may be correct that all of the worst elements of rampant sexism in comics can be found within the pages of THE BLACK CHERRY BOMBSHELLS, and I’d welcome such a review, but we won’t ever know if reviewers like yourself won’t look past a press release to write about the content of comics themselves. It seems to me that’s the only way to determine if a “Comics Worth Reading.”
-Rob

1. I think a comic ad should reflect the actual comic it’s promoting — in this case, having the art done by someone who’s not the strip’s artist who has a very different style is a problem. It feels like bait-and-switch to the prospective new reader who doesn’t know anything else about the comic.

2. I’m not going to try a new comic that features a woman’s naked butt as a prominent image in its ad. I’m not interested in that.

3. As a prospective new reader, it is the strip’s responsibility to get me interested enough to navigate the non-standard and annoying Zuda interface. It is not my responsibility to read the entire archive before commenting on the ad and the reactions it evokes. If the ad is aimed at or only appeals to existing Zuda regulars, then it fails.

Of those who want to champion the strip, I think Luc is doing the best job. He’s not attacking anyone; instead, he’s saying “this is why I like the strip and what I think it offers that’s appealing” while politely addressing the topic at hand. That’s the way to get people interested. Way to go, Luc. (And yeah, Rob needs an editor.)

If the only way you can plug your strip is by calling names at people who talk about it without drinking the kool-aid, that suggests that the strip doesn’t have very many strengths to recommend it.

You’re very much see-through.

There are no male characters in the BOMBSHELLS. This is a sci-fi tropism that people sometimes (too often, in my opinion) seem to forget. the reviewers comments later in this review about female stereo-types are groundless in a fiction that doesn’t have male characters. A character can’t be a foil to sexism in a world in which there is only one living sex. Now it would be easy to proclaim how this world is a fantasy constructed by sexists writers, sure (and it’s a tired and pathetic hand that I have typing a reasonable excuse to support ill-considered arguments by a reviewer who doesn’t bother to see past her own breakdown in critical logic), but that would also be an easy way of explaining the attraction of this series: “it’s sexist and prurient and beneath my respectful insight and, of course, that is the only reason it’s popular.”

BOMBSHELLS is an unforgivingly wild ride of “what if” fun. “What if,” after all, is a staple of comicbook fiction that has been around since the birth of the industry and seldom needs justification to the fans who support it. Nobody cares how how Spider-man gets to meet the Not-Ready for Prime Time Players, they just want to know what happens when you get these two worlds together.

BOMBSHELLS exists in a “what if” world of post-apocalyptic girl politics with no men involved. The main characters are focused on short-term goals like revenge, marriage, power, loyalty and booze. They’re sexuality, given the fact that the other sexual alternative has been turned into zombies, is moot. It’s the chemistry of these characters, now devoid of their relationship to men, that is important as a motivational force in the narrative.

Some critics and reviewers will claim that it is impossible to write a fiction outside of the indications it can have for contemporary culture. That Y, THE LAST MAN is a story about the last man in the company of women, an allegory, and, therefore, BLACK CHERRY BOMBSHELLS can only be appreciated as an idea of what men today think about women left to their own devices.

This is insipid and short-sighted criticism that fall well beneath the scope of our attention and misses the point of the BOMBSHELLS as good, escapist fun. There’s no agenda here. This isn’t a Michael Cimino film. It’s a world of strong survivalist characters (who happen to be women) living out their remaining days looking for booze and revenge among the wreckage of a dystopic world. Its set in Vegas, not Washington and, for chrissakes, the characters are drawn like BRATZ toys. The need to see this as a realistic picture of “not-yet-mentally outgrown adolescents” misses the point entirely.

God. I can’t wait to read your review of SECRET INVASION. Maybe you’ll say something really pithy about our post-911 society that will make the writers feel like they did something important there.
-Rob

Johanna you seem to lack the background information to speak on this subject. Are you a regular at Zuda or just an outsider making assumptions based on a piece of promo art?

If you aren’t a member of the community I hope you’ll consider participating. Strong opinions are welcome too.

Seriously, “strong female protagonist” has become twisted code for “my chick lead is stacked and half-naked, but I mean it in a good way, honest.”