Joe wrote:
Actually, Paul, William G. is a nice guy and a talented artist. I think you misread his critique of PvP and Penny Arcade. If he seems resentful now, it's because of the huge number of PvP and Penny Arcade fans who sent him hateful emails after the article.
Everybody has a right to express their opinion, and nobody should be subject to the kind of hazing Bill has gotten for doing so.
Thanks for writing in Joe.
William G. may well be a decent guy in real life, but his Internet persona is one of a hateful creep. I do recall seeing some of his art last spring, and it indeed was rather good.
However, as a critic he's a hack. His critique of PA and PvP was, to put it mildly, crap. If I recall correctly, he was saying that as an artist these comics were poor because they lacked good art. That was a rather weak point...Just because every frame isn't an infinite canvas fit for an HDTV that takes a week to draw doesn't mean the comic can't be a good comic, or a great comic.
For example: The reason Penny Arcade is a great comic is because of the writing and characterization. When you read a PA strip you have an instinctual feeling for who these people are. That's what great comedy is. Gabe and Tycho are like Abbot and Costello...They play established rolls and those rolls are central to what make the gags work. While PA and Garfield are both essentially gag comics, Garfield sucks because the characters are so bland that the gags become unfunny. The point is that the gags are the joke, the characters are the joke. While the art isn't mind blowing, it is crucial to the characterizations. Gabe and Tycho would not work as stick figures.
But none of that is why William G. got the hatemail. Most people can sluff off criticism of their favorite comics. He didn't get the hatemail because of what he said about the comics themselves. He became an asshole when he said this about PvP and Penny-Arcade:
If they came out today, they wouldn't be as popular as they are.
That's not a critique of those comics, it's a critique about their fans. It's one thing to criticize the comic itself, but he was insinuating that these thousands of readers are ignorant...That if they knew any better, they wouldn't be reading these comics. He personally insulted every reader of Penny Arcade and PvP Online.
That's why when he complains about the "fanboys", he's either an idiot or a liar. If he's an idiot, he can't see that there exist types of comics that don't merely exist on art alone. If he's a liar, than he's still insulting these audiences whenever he spews the word "fanboy", and he's insulting them because he loathes the type of person who reads webcomics for anything else than arthouse eliteism.
Personally, I think he's just an idiot. Remember, there is no such thing as bad publicity. He must have had a huge readership after the "PA/PvP Incident" and instead of doing anything useful with that, he closed the blog. Then he started showing up everywhere, leaving little bits of trolling wherever he went. The man simply has had nothing of any substance to say since the incident. He also hasn't produced any more art. Had he been smart, he would have made fun of PA and PvP in comic form, but I really think the man has no real sense of humor.
What William G. needs to do is apologize to the readers of PvP and Penny Arcade. Then he needs to drop the curmudgeon persona.
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