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Not funny.

Really not funny. Which is strange, because I think I actually remember Sean coming up with a much funnier rant about this same subject a year or so ago.

Jokes are supposed to have punchlines...

i liked it, better than last weeks if I recall

I loved the line

So for doing such a great job keeping Superman's world serious and real..

I like the line about Superman greiving over the body of a dead loved one quickly becoming more iconic than the cover of Action Comics #1...

Maybe jokes need punchlines, but since when does funny need a punchline. A comic can be funny without housing a joke. Look at most of XKCD or Penny Arcade or Questionable Content. As far as wry commentary on a comic goes, I found it humourous. Maybe not as funny as other episodes, but still not not-funny. And who says a comic has to be funny anyway?

It doesn't HAVE to be funny unless it's TRYING to be funny.

Maybe today's installment was trying harder to be wry than it was trying to be straight-up funny? I'm just saying.

Except Penny Arcade is the only comic you listed that is remotely either funny or good. I mean, XKCD and the concept of "funny" occupy 2 completely separate galaxies. The only thing funny about XKCD is how much of a creepy sperging manchild Randall Munroe is, and Questionable Content doesn't have jokes because Jeph Jacques can barely write coherent or believable characters to begin with. Jacques's writing is on the level of Tim "B^U" Buckley, except instead of occasionally referencing Fallout, he'll occasionally namedrop TV on the Radio or something.

Sorry for the derail, as I largely find QC inoffensively bland (apart from the fact that Jacques has absolutely no fucking clue what OCD is despite making it the defining trait of one of his main characters,) but XKCD is seriously the worst.

XKCD is pretty damn awful.

I'll grant you that none of the comics I mentioned are Dinosaur Comics. BUT! All three are enduringly popular and people find them funny. Which of course does not necessarily mean they are funny (my wife and I sat in a theater that laughed the entire way through Pirates of the Caribbean II, which was not even ironically funny). Merely that a whole lot of people like what those comic-creators are doing.

QC is obviously more about the story than it is about the joke, pun, or quasi-humourous situation, but I still find it refreshingly humourous. Not hold my ribs so they stop aching funny, but enjoyable regardless. PA is sometimes funny, but usually more just interesting as it offers commentary on gaming life. XKCD, despite your protests, is sometimes quite funny. Sometimes it's not at all. And sometimes I don't get it.

I think my point is that even comics whose ostensible purpose is to be some level of funny don't have to be funny all the time. Sometimes they can be wry or witty or critical or whimsical or even sentimental. We who read comic books should be among the first to recognize the diversity of the form and not be ones to pigeon-hole a five-panel strip into some sort of genre that requires a punchline in the final panel.

There are people that don't think QC, PA, and XKCD are funny? Crazy.

I loved it. And the commentary was right on the money. Enough with the wussified Superman already. And let's de-Wolfman Dick Grayson too and butch him up finally.

It was going well til the final panel

Quit while you're a(talking)head.

As long as we're critiquing the Critics, I'll agree with Scavenger that the comic would probably be better minus the final panel.

I concede that there are comics that I appreciate, like XKCD, that don't need a punchline to be great.

The point I was attempting to make with my off-hand comment earlier is that is strip has been at it's best when it follows the formula, setup/punchline. The Ninja Turtle/Ice box costumes was solid gold. Unfortunately, this installment, in my opinion, rambles through the setup, picks on something that I have no real interest in, and then fizzles out at the end.

Now that I have seen that the creators can be good, I would like to be able to expect them to be good. I do not, and I think that it is falling at the feet of the writer here, because visually, I think the presentation has gotten better every comic, so my kudos to Hanvey there.

loved it.

I liked it, though I agree the last panel didn't do much for it. But I've liked most of them except for the Bat-porn ones. It seems like people have awfully high expectations for a comic strip. Maybe publishing less than 3 times a week invites more criticism. I'm almost tempted to look at all the other strips to see if anyone has bitched in the comments for 23 straight weeks instead of, you know, not reading the strip anymore.

I agree the last panel didn't help, but I don't think it actually hurt it either.

Is the girl character perpetually pissed because she's not getting laid?

Very funny. Nobody should be exempt from being made fun of for making bad writing decisions and that includes Geoff Johns

I don't think that the web-video format gimmick does anything to improve the strip, make it funnier, or get the message across any better. It's actually more of a pain to read in that one-panel-at- a-time-scrolling-down-a-page-for-each-one format.
Unless the use of the video format is an intrinsic part of the gag, or is essential to get the joke across, which I really don't think is the case here, I'd say drop it.
The only reason for it I can think of is that it was deemed necessary to provide an excuse for the character addressing the "camera", but I dismiss that notion utterly as just plain silly.
Could have been the usable germ of an idea for a joke here, but the vertically-arranged-series-of-video-panels format just put me off & annoyed me.

Hee hee hee.

This strip is a good idea that struck me as not quite finished yet-- like it was one or two rewrites from being really hilarious. Instead I smiled at it a little, but more because of how sick I am of weepy whiny Superman than anything the strip was doing to really amuse me beyond saying something I agreed with.

I find XKCD funny. I find it very funny. I think this strip is hit-or-miss.

I liked this one, but as others have said, the last panel wasn't as strong as the rest.

You know, before this installment, I was kind of wondering if the "Comics Critics" cast itself was bringing down the strip; I loved "Green ego monster" and it didn't feature the main characters until the last panel. But this latest installment makes me think there's hope for them yet. Maybe they just need to be fleshed out more?

Is the girl character perpetually pissed because she’s not getting laid?

That confused me a bit until I realised that "pissed" doesn't mean the same thing in America.

A bit of a weaker one this week for me. I like the change of format though.

I second the change in format. Scrolling down a comic makes more sense on the web, rather than sticking to a traditional book format. This seems to suit the medium more...

@ Jack Norris: I thought the point of the Web Video Format, was what "Comics Critics" was about. Two criticise comics online... In a video...

Perhaps funny is not an objective quality?

It's Earth Two funny.

Or perhaps comic strips don't need jokes about lasagna, tepid sitcom dialogue, or stupidly obvious puns to be funny?

Okay, any comic strip that causes T to rant some more about Marv Wolfman's New Teen Titans gets points deducted...but I have come today to praise this strip, not bury it. What actually works for this is that it does just enough panels to make the joke work. Often times I think Comic Critics is undone by the 5-or-so panel grid it's normally locked in. It needs either more, but usually less, panels, to make it funny.

Getting rid of the grid altogether is a very good thing. It can only improve the pacing. Now try telling some jokes in 3 panels for a change.

I'm going to say that I enjoyed this comic, too. I'm also tired of the sobbing Superman that we occasionally get. Plus, as has been argued over regarding Spider-Man and Aunt May, it's not like Pa Kent hasn't died before; he just came back again as comic book characters are wont to do.

The last panel, though, wasn't really necessary. I felt that the end after the end didn't really work, and the snark seemed to lessen the impact of the rest of the comic.

I wouldn't normally insinuate that someone doesn't find something funny because they aren't smart enough, but XKCD does usually require some background in metaphysics, computer programming, physics, advanced math, or some combination thereof. It's not that you aren't smart enough that with some study you could get XKCD, it's that you don't have the knowledge base. Plus, there are some not meant to be funny, just contemplative.
@Xander: The snark doesn't lessen the impact, the snark is the impact. It wasn't supposed to be a joke for people who don't like to see Superman cry, it was a joke against people who get mad about Superman crying.

Blackjack:
Well, only two or three so far have used the format and used the video window as a panel frame, and in each case it's added nothing to the joke (if anything the opposite; the format has weakened the joke). The best ones have all been "behind the scenes" with the characters. If they were to abandon the conceit and shift all character rants to ones addressed at one another, I wouldn't miss it in the least (if anything the opposite...). The title would still be just as applicable if we were never (or hardly ever) the in-story web audience.

"Jokes are supposed to have punchlines…"--Not necessarily. But readers of a comic are supposed to stop reading it if they perpetually hate it and the only compliments they can occasionally muster up for it are "It didn't suck as much as I expected it to."

Regarding XKCD: His problem is that he doesn't know how to structure a visual joke. His material's funny, if you're intelligent enough to get it, but he often hamstrings himself by not structuring the visual joke very well. The "Reverse Bel-Air" strip is probably the best example of that failure.

Okay, any comic strip that causes T to rant some more about Marv Wolfman’s New Teen Titans gets points deducted…

no, seriously, there are people who don't love XKCD. Sure, I don't love all of his flights of fancy, but that's some seriously good comicing there.