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Are you kidding? xkcd is total shit. Let me sum it up for you: whimsical stick figures white knighting on the internet!!!!! But with pop culture references!!!!! LOLOLOLOL. Penny Arcade is better, but the blogs are frequently better than the actual strips. PhD comics is alright, but it's not exactly what I'd call great.

Let me introduce you to a real webcomic: The Parking Lot is Full.

Honorable mention to Gone with the Blastwave, Sexy Losers, and Perry Bible Fellowship, even though PBF is a pretty much a ripoff of PLIF. Still, it ripped off the best, so it gets an honorable mention.

If you're into insipid, warmed-over Monty Python references and "internet culture", then SMBC is probably what you're looking for. It's alright. It's shitloads better than xkcd, at least. And there's no desperate, low self-esteem white-knighting, which is a huge bonus. There's also Bob the Angry Flower, if you crave nerd humor that's got more substance than someone making fucking graphs.

I could mention a few others, but I was never that big a fan of Ghastly's Ghastly Comic (maybe you need to be a weeaboo to really love tentacle rape jokes... and Sexy Losers did it all first). There's also Subnormality, if you don't mind preachy, TL;DR strips about the totally wacky and off-the-wall adventures of a sphinx that -- get this -- likes to EAT PEOPLE!!!! LOL. What craziness!

But, really, xkcd is total shit.

Hey, don't knock it, they can come in handy!

Oooh, I wonder if he'll sign my print-out of Uncle Ghastly's picture of Alan Moore angrily fucking Alan Moore.

LINK NSFW!

http://www.ghastlycomic.com/d/20080809.html

http://www.ghastlycomic.com/

Dude, be a real man and break your own taboos for a change, not that of people thousands of miles away.

I do, frequently. Or rather, those of my society.

Really, try it now and do what many cultures find an entirely natural (and harmless) form of freedom of expression: go for a walk in the street, entirely naked.

Personally? No. We have laws against it, for one. But I don't actually have a problem with that, and I have considerably less of a problem when it's not a public street, but a public website. If someone doesn't want to see me naked, or the Prophet Mohammed, it's a lot easier to avoid a website than a street.

It's roughly akin to the difference between, say, drawing Mohammed with spray paint on someone else's property, and drawing Mohammed on a website which no one is even forcing you to view.

The thing is, pretty much every western culture has taboos that run deep, and if you break them, you should expect a counter reaction.

Indeed, but the only taboo I've seen which actually results in censorship is child pornography, and the rationale there is that anyone who purchases child pornography is supporting people who abuse children. At least, that's the more rational rationale -- it seems to be a kneejerk reaction against "perverts", and I see no reason possession should be a crime.

Think boob-gate, which showed nipples for a few seconds. All the major channels introduced a 5 second delay into their live broadcasts to give the operator a chance to censor out any embarrassing scene.

In other words, they didn't want to broadcast nipples. And this is coming from independent organizations -- there are plenty of alternate sources of nipples, including Naked News if you want a serious program.

Note that, while there was a bit of an overreaction, there also wasn't a single word of legislation introduced, nor a single government action taken.

Or think how your politicians would react to a huge Facebook campaign depicting Jesus as having good sex with his wife

You mean, like this? Or maybe like this?

You still don't get it, do you? That would get a lot of people angry, yes. Worst case, Facebook would self-censor and remove it. But no laws would be passed, no government action would be taken, no websites would be blocked, and no one would die. In fact, I think the above comic shows that pretty much any amount of blasphemy is allowed, so long as you do it on your own website.

Of course, the other point you're missing is that the vast majority of Americans would shrug at even this -- sure, it would offend them, but it wouldn't drive them into a mindless rage. They'd just close that page and never come back.

The Islamic world has many taboos as well, one of them is to not depict Mohammed, because his teachings were to not idolize.

Which makes this all the more hilarious. None of these actual drawings were likely to be something anyone would idolize. While I agree with what this guy is doing, he's idolizing that name (in calligraphy) a hell of a lot more than anyone's idolizing the pedobear-in-a-turban illustration. And to be fair, there was clear idolatry, to the point of turning Mohammed into a god, without the need for any drawings whatsoever.

Arguably, from a purely scientific point of view taboos are both silly and are harmful, because they inhibit rational discussion.

I'm glad you agree.

Ignore

Dude, be a real man and break your own taboos for a change, not that of people thousands of miles away.

I do, frequently. Or rather, those of my society.

Really, try it now and do what many cultures find an entirely natural (and harmless) form of freedom of expression: go for a walk in the street, entirely naked.

Personally? No. We have laws against it, for one. But I don't actually have a problem with that, and I have considerably less of a problem when it's not a public street, but a public website. If someone doesn't want to see me naked, or the Prophet Mohammed, it's a lot easier to avoid a website than a street.

It's roughly akin to the difference between, say, drawing Mohammed with spray paint on someone else's property, and drawing Mohammed on a website which no one is even forcing you to view.

The thing is, pretty much every western culture has taboos that run deep, and if you break them, you should expect a counter reaction.

Indeed, but the only taboo I've seen which actually results in censorship is child pornography, and the rationale there is that anyone who purchases child pornography is supporting people who abuse children. At least, that's the more rational rationale -- it seems to be a kneejerk reaction against "perverts", and I see no reason possession should be a crime.

Think boob-gate, which showed nipples for a few seconds. All the major channels introduced a 5 second delay into their live broadcasts to give the operator a chance to censor out any embarrassing scene.

In other words, they didn't want to broadcast nipples. And this is coming from independent organizations -- there are plenty of alternate sources of nipples, including Naked News if you want a serious program.

Note that, while there was a bit of an overreaction, there also wasn't a single word of legislation introduced, nor a single government action taken.

Or think how your politicians would react to a huge Facebook campaign depicting Jesus as having good sex with his wife

You mean, like this? Or maybe like this?

You still don't get it, do you? That would get a lot of people angry, yes. Worst case, Facebook would self-censor and remove it. But no laws would be passed, no government action would be taken, no websites would be blocked, and no one would die. In fact, I think the above comic shows that pretty much any amount of blasphemy is allowed, so long as you do it on your own website.

Of course, the other point you're missing is that the vast majority of Americans would shrug at even this -- sure, it would offend them, but it wouldn't drive them into a mindless rage. They'd just close that page and never come back.

The Islamic world has many taboos as well, one of them is to not depict Mohammed, because his teachings were to not idolize.

Which makes this all the more hilarious. None of these actual drawings were likely to be something anyone would idolize. While I agree with what this guy is doing, he's idolizing that name (in calligraphy) a hell of a lot more than anyone's idolizing the pedobear-in-a-turban illustration. And to be fair, there was clear idolatry, to the point of turning Mohammed into a god, without the need for any drawings whatsoever.

Arguably, from a purely scientific point of view taboos are both silly and are harmful, because they inhibit rational discussion.

I'm glad you agree.

Ignore

Dude, be a real man and break your own taboos for a change, not that of people thousands of miles away.

I do, frequently. Or rather, those of my society.

Really, try it now and do what many cultures find an entirely natural (and harmless) form of freedom of expression: go for a walk in the street, entirely naked.

Personally? No. We have laws against it, for one. But I don't actually have a problem with that, and I have considerably less of a problem when it's not a public street, but a public website. If someone doesn't want to see me naked, or the Prophet Mohammed, it's a lot easier to avoid a website than a street.

It's roughly akin to the difference between, say, drawing Mohammed with spray paint on someone else's property, and drawing Mohammed on a website which no one is even forcing you to view.

The thing is, pretty much every western culture has taboos that run deep, and if you break them, you should expect a counter reaction.

Indeed, but the only taboo I've seen which actually results in censorship is child pornography, and the rationale there is that anyone who purchases child pornography is supporting people who abuse children. At least, that's the more rational rationale -- it seems to be a kneejerk reaction against "perverts", and I see no reason possession should be a crime.

Think boob-gate, which showed nipples for a few seconds. All the major channels introduced a 5 second delay into their live broadcasts to give the operator a chance to censor out any embarrassing scene.

In other words, they didn't want to broadcast nipples. And this is coming from independent organizations -- there are plenty of alternate sources of nipples, including Naked News if you want a serious program.

Note that, while there was a bit of an overreaction, there also wasn't a single word of legislation introduced, nor a single government action taken.

Or think how your politicians would react to a huge Facebook campaign depicting Jesus as having good sex with his wife

You mean, like this? Or maybe like this?

You still don't get it, do you? That would get a lot of people angry, yes. Worst case, Facebook would self-censor and remove it. But no laws would be passed, no government action would be taken, no websites would be blocked, and no one would die. In fact, I think the above comic shows that pretty much any amount of blasphemy is allowed, so long as you do it on your own website.

Of course, the other point you're missing is that the vast majority of Americans would shrug at even this -- sure, it would offend them, but it wouldn't drive them into a mindless rage. They'd just close that page and never come back.

The Islamic world has many taboos as well, one of them is to not depict Mohammed, because his teachings were to not idolize.

Which makes this all the more hilarious. None of these actual drawings were likely to be something anyone would idolize. While I agree with what this guy is doing, he's idolizing that name (in calligraphy) a hell of a lot more than anyone's idolizing the pedobear-in-a-turban illustration. And to be fair, there was clear idolatry, to the point of turning Mohammed into a god, without the need for any drawings whatsoever.

Arguably, from a purely scientific point of view taboos are both silly and are harmful, because they inhibit rational discussion.

I'm glad you agree.

Ignore

Dude, be a real man and break your own taboos for a change, not that of people thousands of miles away.

I do, frequently. Or rather, those of my society.

Really, try it now and do what many cultures find an entirely natural (and harmless) form of freedom of expression: go for a walk in the street, entirely naked.

Personally? No. We have laws against it, for one. But I don't actually have a problem with that, and I have considerably less of a problem when it's not a public street, but a public website. If someone doesn't want to see me naked, or the Prophet Mohammed, it's a lot easier to avoid a website than a street.

It's roughly akin to the difference between, say, drawing Mohammed with spray paint on someone else's property, and drawing Mohammed on a website which no one is even forcing you to view.

The thing is, pretty much every western culture has taboos that run deep, and if you break them, you should expect a counter reaction.

Indeed, but the only taboo I've seen which actually results in censorship is child pornography, and the rationale there is that anyone who purchases child pornography is supporting people who abuse children. At least, that's the more rational rationale -- it seems to be a kneejerk reaction against "perverts", and I see no reason possession should be a crime.

Think boob-gate, which showed nipples for a few seconds. All the major channels introduced a 5 second delay into their live broadcasts to give the operator a chance to censor out any embarrassing scene.

In other words, they didn't want to broadcast nipples. And this is coming from independent organizations -- there are plenty of alternate sources of nipples, including Naked News if you want a serious program.

Note that, while there was a bit of an overreaction, there also wasn't a single word of legislation introduced, nor a single government action taken.

Or think how your politicians would react to a huge Facebook campaign depicting Jesus as having good sex with his wife

You mean, like this? Or maybe like this?

You still don't get it, do you? That would get a lot of people angry, yes. Worst case, Facebook would self-censor and remove it. But no laws would be passed, no government action would be taken, no websites would be blocked, and no one would die. In fact, I think the above comic shows that pretty much any amount of blasphemy is allowed, so long as you do it on your own website.

Of course, the other point you're missing is that the vast majority of Americans would shrug at even this -- sure, it would offend them, but it wouldn't drive them into a mindless rage. They'd just close that page and never come back.

The Islamic world has many taboos as well, one of them is to not depict Mohammed, because his teachings were to not idolize.

Which makes this all the more hilarious. None of these actual drawings were likely to be something anyone would idolize. While I agree with what this guy is doing, he's idolizing that name (in calligraphy) a hell of a lot more than anyone's idolizing the pedobear-in-a-turban illustration. And to be fair, there was clear idolatry, to the point of turning Mohammed into a god, without the need for any drawings whatsoever.

Arguably, from a purely scientific point of view taboos are both silly and are harmful, because they inhibit rational discussion.

I'm glad you agree.

Ignore

But I don't see how any of those works are threatened by the definitions.

The South Park episode I linked to shows a child performing the act of masturbation (of a dog), and other children present in the scene. That would seem to come under:

(b) an act of masturbation by, of, involving or in the presence of a child;

A BBFC version would be exempt, but a screenshot or clip would not be exempt. As for Lost Girls and Watchmen, I was quoting the Independent article. For Lost Girls, they say:

Certain pages in the novels could fall foul of the new law because it currently defines a child as under 18-years of age. This is problematic because many of the women's sexual experiences in The Lost Girls occur in their late teens when they are above the age of consent but still under 18-years-old.

If the book depicts them during sexual acts, it would come under the definitions. For Watchmen:

There are even fears that Watchmen, one of the industry's most critically acclaimed graphic novels, could risk being banned because one of the main superheroes sees his mother having sex when he is a young child.

Since the law states this is illegal, I don't see how this is incorrect or alarmist.

If this law simply means possession of child porn is illegal regardless of how it was produced, I'm fine with it.

And how on earth do you define the difference between "porn" and "not-porn" - are you sure your interpretation will match up with the police, and jury of random people?

Do you think it would be alarmist to suggest that joke Simpsons porn will be made illegal too? Because that already happened in Australia. Or do you think it's right for that to be illegal to possess?

And what do you have against porn? Another problem with this law is images that are intended to be porn, but are not pedophilic, but could still be caught by the law, since it explicitly covers images of people over the age of consent (16-17 year olds, and any adults with a "predominant impression" of someone under 18). Add to that the difficulties of judging age from a cartoon or sketch, then things such as Hentai, or BDSM porn that features school room scenes (even if it's intended to be a drawing of adults role-playing schoolgirls, a pretty cliche fetish, it might be deemed illegal because the school scene and uniforms give the impression of someone under 18).

In practice, I suspect that a copy of Watchmen owned in book form would be fine, but a screenshot or your computer out of context, who knows. And everything from joke simpsons porn (or how about this scene?) to hentai would be taking a grave risk to possess, or view online. Even if we agree that pedophilic pornographic material should be illegal to possess (and even there, I see no justification for doing so), this law is far broader than that, catching material - whether or not it happens to be porn - is clearly not about pedophilia. That's not "alarmist", it's exactly how the law's written.

And no - this law doesn't say that child porn is illegal. We're talking about cartoons, not child porn. It doesn't cover real children, and the definition of "child" isn't restricted to even depictions of children, but includes those over the age of consent.

Indeed. In response to the UK's "consulation" on criminalising possession non-realistic sexual images of under-18s, I raised the issue of anal sex with the Rice Krispie Elf "Crackle", and asked them if the Government was planning to introduce an age of consent for elves and other non-existent creatures... (Needless to say, the Government's consultation response document doesn't answer this question - it's full steam ahead with the legislation, ignoring the many flaws and problems pointed out to them.)

http://www.ghastlycomic.com/d/20040418.html

I agree, even if I conceded that some law on cartoons was required, an age limit of 18 makes no sense, and catches far too much. I raised this issue when I responded to the Government "consultation", but needless to say the issue was not addressed in the consultation response.

Talking of Ghastly's Ghastly Comic, there's this (NSFW) image where Rice Krispie Elf Crackle is bum-raped with a dildo. Crackle is in fact a child (according to Kellog's website). I did ask the Government if there'd be a separate age of consent for Elves and other mythical creatures...

[I do take consolation that the phrase "anally penetrated with a dildo" now exists in official Government records...]

As you say, there is the problem when a characters age does not match up with their apparent age. Another example is Bleach, which features a character who appears as a teenage schoolgirl, but in fact is over 100 years old.

Now, the Government would claim it was an obvious loophole if you could draw babies being raped, but claim they were really babies that were 5,000 years old in your story. But consider it the other way - e.g., I've seen Harry Potter fanfictioners drawing sexually explicit images involving Harry Potter, where he's intentionally been aged (though still ambiguous, and possibly could be 17), yet people will claim it's still underage, because Harry Potter was underage in the books. So which is it - is it apparent age, or intended age of the character? They can't have it both ways - but they probably will.

Well, I guess Ghastly's Ghastly Comic is ok then, 'cause he says Chibi Sue is 36 and only looks like a little girl.

But seriously, how would one provide records to prove the the age of a drawn character?

And I'd worry more about judgments based on what it _looks_ like, in the context of a law where 17 years old is still considered paedophilia. Now I'm not saying one should look for naked 17 year old girls, just saying how it applies to a drawing. How do you prove that you had in mind a 18 year old girl, and not a 17 year old one, when you drew t.

I actually personally knew someone who looked like she was maybe 13 or 14 by the time she finished college and got married. No bloody kidding. Not only her face was that of a child, but she was really short too, so basically she was as close to a "chibi" drawing as it gets. She looked like she's probably not even in high school yet.

So what I'm saying is, basically this:

1. noone objected to her marrying and presumably having sex, unless a bright star appeared in the East again when she got pregnant ;) Because she was well over 20, looks be damned.

2. she could probably even star in a porn movie, if she wanted to, because proof can be provided that she's well over 18

3. but if you drew some character based on her, you're essentially fucked because it looks like you drew a child. And you can't provide any proof that the character you had in mind isn't really a kid in disguise.

And actually, depending on the country (e.g., I _think_ in UK that's the case already) probably even #2 might be illegal, because it _looks_ like fucking someone underage.

Again, I'm not arguing for allowing actual paedophilia or child porn. But when the law gets into the murky domain of what it _looks_ like, it gets very funny indeed. Especially with an age like 18 as a cutoff point. Girls get their puberty and get breasts quite a few years earlier than that, and from there it's just a very slow and gradual transition to young adult, and there's considerable variation in how fast it happens. There are people well underage which look like they're 20 already (e.g., Traci Lords didn't raise any alarm bells when she claimed to be 18 and was actually 15), and there are people who look a lot younger than they are.

When looking at a photo or movie of Traci Lords, or even interacting with her in person, pretty much noone could tell that she's 15 not 18. How do you tell if a drawing looks like 15 or 18 then? How about whether she's 17 or 18?

There are no major morphological changes that happen abruptly at 18. It's not like they sprout a tail or horns at 18, so you can look at the drawing and see if the character has them or not.

Yes, it is sexylosers.com (formerly "The Thin H Line").

While Clay (Hard) didn't come up with "Fap", he is responsible for its popularity.

As for being offended or amused, Sexy Losers is hands down the greatest web comic evar! Clay is a comic genius. The only comic that comes close to being as great is Ghastly's Ghastly Comic.

Saddly, Sexy Losers is "completed" and Ghastly's Ghastly Comic on hiatus.

Bah! I only read Slashdot and Ghastly's Comic. And Ghastly hasn't been updating lately. I have no life.

This one?

Six appendages should be enough for anybody.

http://www.ghastlycomic.com/d/20020505.html (NSFW)

Not only Kenny, one of my favourite Ghastly Comic Strips, where Crackle is ordered to shut his sissy mouth and take a big rubber cock, would now surely become illegal to possess. Up until now, I thought the only thing that might be violated other than Crackle's behind was trademark law.

Whilst Crackle's age is unclear, he is certainly described as a child - "the good-hearted, fun middle child".

Rape Rape Revolution

You wouldn't be able to play Google Seppuku

Tentacoo wape? http://www.ghastlycomic.com/

[NSFW] ghastlycomic.com [/NSFW]

If Natalie Portman gets stripped naked and covered in hot grits or some Japanese schoolgirls get raped by a giant tentacle monster I suspect a number of suspects could be found right here on /.

in a similar vein...

Also, there's Ghastly's Ghastly Comic [DNSFW] which was inspired by Sexy Losers.

Funny, because this is still a known fact (or myth?) among the fansub community. As soon as something gets licensed in the US, most fansubbers stop subbing it and delete all their releases. But until then, it's one big party.

And yes, it's all from Japan. Much of it airs on Tokyo TV.

And I will bother to mention that it doesn't hurt anyone -- Naruto is where it is today because of piracy in the US.

Seems kind of like the myth that videos of any kind of genital exposure is illegal in Japan -- and why so much Japanese porn is mosaic'd/censored. That was true once upon a time, but no more, putting The Hentai Game Guy out of a job.

Funny, because this is still a known fact (or myth?) among the fansub community. As soon as something gets licensed in the US, most fansubbers stop subbing it and delete all their releases. But until then, it's one big party.

And yes, it's all from Japan. Much of it airs on Tokyo TV.

And I will bother to mention that it doesn't hurt anyone -- Naruto is where it is today because of piracy in the US.

Seems kind of like the myth that videos of any kind of genital exposure is illegal in Japan -- and why so much Japanese porn is mosaic'd/censored. That was true once upon a time, but no more, putting The Hentai Game Guy out of a job.

Funny, because this is still a known fact (or myth?) among the fansub community. As soon as something gets licensed in the US, most fansubbers stop subbing it and delete all their releases. But until then, it's one big party.

And yes, it's all from Japan. Much of it airs on Tokyo TV.

And I will bother to mention that it doesn't hurt anyone -- Naruto is where it is today because of piracy in the US.

Seems kind of like the myth that videos of any kind of genital exposure is illegal in Japan -- and why so much Japanese porn is mosaic'd/censored. That was true once upon a time, but no more, putting The Hentai Game Guy out of a job.

Funny, because this is still a known fact (or myth?) among the fansub community. As soon as something gets licensed in the US, most fansubbers stop subbing it and delete all their releases. But until then, it's one big party.

And yes, it's all from Japan. Much of it airs on Tokyo TV.

And I will bother to mention that it doesn't hurt anyone -- Naruto is where it is today because of piracy in the US.

Seems kind of like the myth that videos of any kind of genital exposure is illegal in Japan -- and why so much Japanese porn is mosaic'd/censored. That was true once upon a time, but no more, putting The Hentai Game Guy out of a job.

These scare tactics are exactly what Nazi Germany (and even SCO lol) used to gain power.
Perhaps you should contemplate the meaning of the word "exactly." The meditation may help you gain some perspective.

Somehow that reminds me of the Buck Cake storyline of Ghastly's Ghastly Webcomic. Long story short, one of the main characters receives an accidental (perhaps) gift of a bukkake video from his brother who (supposedly) thought it was a cooking video.

Still, it's not as bad as anal sex. That really makes baby Jesus cry. Actually, in my experience, it makes all babies cry. (Acknowledgements to Ghastly.)

...google is ghastly!

Dear God, I hope not!

With all due respect, you're wrong.