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At least they're not peddling their readership to businesses by offering poorly-animated, humor-lacking Flash animations. Gabe has always done art for things other than Penny Arcade. His art is a regular staple over on the Gamespy Network. At the very least, Gabe's art is good enough that he doesn't have to whore himself out to get work.

I'm not a big User Friendly fan either. The thing that bugs me most, though, is not the rushed art, lame jokes, constant rehash of the "yay Linux/boo Microsoft" theme, overuse of the word "geek", or the fact that many hackers think that vague scribble called Miranda is hot.

No. What bothers me is that UF is now a commercial cash cow. As such, whatever quasi-rebellious, hackerly "edge" the strip may have had during its early days is now gone, and the strip now relentlessly panders to its readership, each joke carefully crafted to appeal to a market-demographic profile of the "typical geek". This is not the Illiad who brazenly stated that Microsoft products were three-coiled turds. This is the new, marketroid Illiad, determined to make his bland comic the perfect vector for sales pitches from large IT companies.

Maybe that is why Illiad is so cruel to Stef... he's rebelling against his very nature.

Not only does that dickhead get paid for it, he actually thinks it's good enough to whore it out for merchandising. Pathetic.

PLEASE tell me this is an April Fools joke too!

Pfft. "You're just not sophisticated enough to appreciate the depth of User Friendly.", huh? User friendly is NOT FUNNY. It gained some sort of fame because it was the first online comic that had 'slashdot' subject matter, and now it somehow manages to beat that sad horse for another strip week after week. But it would never, ever stand on it's own merit.

And don't even get me started on the most pathetic part of the site.

http://www.ufmedia.com/pressbox/pr-vast-jan15-01.h tml

(yes I know, offtopic)

-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!

First off, let me save a lot of quoting and redundant responses by asking this: Where do you get off assuming that just because the poster you responded to doesn't like User Friendly that they are a Windows bigot? You are demonstrating first-hand the poster's assertions about User Friendly's problem being with it's fans, and you're giving fellow Linux users a bad reputation, especially with that "burn in NT hell" line.

A bit of jealousy perhaps? We never hear about "Suprise, Suprise. With the sale of new distributions Linus is once again bringing his sub-standard kernel to the universe". Why is that? Is it because he makes no money off of Linux and Illiad does? Money != bad.

That's a total non-issue. Comic strip artists like Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance do not have this issue because they handle marketing in a tasteful manner, unlike Illiad's crass "branding" web site. Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame once wrote an article in his 10th anniversary special book about how marketing in the manner Illiad is doing devalues and cheapens the art of the strip. Illiad can only hope to be half the comic strip artist that Bill Watterson was.

Audiences can not be commodized, product can.

Ah, but is that really true? Illiad has a fanatically loyal following of techie fans. Illiad is selling the ability for companies like SuSE to target and market to his audience by using his branded characters. In effect, Illiad is selling his audience to interested companies. Of course, this is just dithering about semantics, so I'll leave it at that.

First of all, since when has CARTOONS been considered art? It's COMEDY, by definition it's going to be formulaic, get over it. If you're looking for high-brow technical humor read some April 1st RFCs or something.

My, my. It's a sad commentary when a fan of an artistic media doesn't even recognize it as art. Perhaps your satisfaction with sit-com style formulae has stagnated your appreciation of what truly innovative and creative artwork and comedy should be.

Once again, I refer to Bill Watterson's 10th anniversary Calvin and Hobbes book on issues of the artform of comics. The essay there, which delves into the history of the artform before it became wedged into its current limited panel layout and forced schtick format is very educational.

The rich and gentle satire of politics and day to day living, Pogo, and it's modern day successor, Ozy and Millie, certainly qualify as a some of the best of the 20th century. Who can deny that the Sandman series of graphic novels are art? Certainly not the people who awarded it the Hugo award for Science Fiction and Fantasy. Perhaps you should pick up the latest offering, The Dream Hunters, which features a return of Neil Gaiman's strong evocative writing with Yoshitaka Amano's etherial, otherworldy artwork narrating the tale. Then you may still attempt to deny to the world that comics are art.

Just because User Friendly and many syndicated sellouts like Garfield and Dilbert seem increasingly incapable of producing art and non-formulaic humor as their profits from merchandising increase, don't assume that comics cannot be art. You are only appreciating the most bastardised version of it.

And this would prove what? You might has well have said "The first person that compares Tux to MS Bob gets a sticker"

That makes absolutely no sense. It's obvious you aren't familiar with the character Opus from Bloom Count or you'd be able to see the ways in which the Dust Puppy and he share many, many similar personality traits. The Dust Puppy is at best a tribute to and at worst a rip-off of Opus.

Jezus...what did they do to you to rip your sense of humour out so completely?

Perhaps, he just doesn't think that all comedy by definition should be formulaic as you do. Making fun of something can be funny. Making fun of someone making fun of something rarely is.

The keys to comedy are spontaneity, creativity, timing, and relevance to the audience. In the world of comic strips, #1 and #3 are usually handled in the layout and pacing of when certain lines happen, with the comedic twist almost always happening in the last panel. User Friendly well appreciates its market and has #4 well in hand.

It's #2, creativity, that User Friendly is sometimes seen as lacking in. This is much the same as Odie getting punted off a table by Garfield or Dilbert's boss saying something really stupid. They're running gags that have been run into the ground. Since you think all humor should be formulaic, you probably don't have an appreciation for the importance of this. However, those of us who do see the complete lack of creativity in a spoof of a spoof.

Do some exploring. There are plenty of good web comics that break the formulaic mold. I read about 30 or so of them a day. It shouldn't be hard to find one to match your tastes that is better than UF.

What exactly did you intend to mod him down for? Expressing a valid opinion? I don't remember that one being on the moderation options. What you are admitting is that you were planning on abusing your moderator points to damage someone whose opinion you disagreed with.

What's this about him having to sellout to keep his people paid? I mean, cry me a river. Just look at Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance fame, and he does employ a staff of people to help him run the site and his business. I don't think he's having a problem getting by on banner ads, t-shirts, and book sales. The 30 or so other web cartoonist I read as part of my day don't seem to be having any trouble supporting theirselves economically. When you get as big as Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance, David Simpson of Ozy and Millie, Bill Holbrook of Kevin and Kell, or Scott Kurtz of PVP, book sales and ad banners seem to be more than enough to keep yourself solvent. That doesn't even count the many popular artists who don't have anything beyond banner ads to sponsor themselves, such as Zach Stroum of Etherlife, Gabriel and Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade, and Maritza Campos of College Roomies from Hell! -- all of whom are either college students or fully employed and do their strips as hobbies.

While I still find User Friendly mostly funny and still read it regularly, I lost a lot of respect for Illiad when I came across UF Media. The image he puts for on the site is one of someone whoring themselves out to corporate sponsorship. Illiad doesn't seem content with just selling t-shirts and books directly. He is actively calling to have his characters used as logos to curry favor with his fans for companies like SuSE. He wants the airline commercial spots, the suction cup animals, and co-branded food that syndicated sell-outs like Garfield have engendered.

I think this strip from Penny Arcade illustrates the opinions that many of us have for his ethics and credibility, in spite of or along with our opinions of his work on its own. It hurts his credibility because corporate sponsorship and co-branding are often the vicious monetary cycle that keeps comics going in newspapers long after they stopped being funny or original and sometimes even long after the creator of the strip has died. It's that we object to.

P.S. Slashdot readers should hopefully get a kick out of this strip. Just a friendly reminder for when talking to people who don't read Slashdot.

Anyway, lets say that you made a website. This is all you did to recive income. You added new content to this webpage daily and you where getting millions of hits a month. However, you just relied on banner ads to pay for your expenses as well as those of three or four other people who are working full time four you. Withing a month your website would be shut down and you would be out on the street.

Now, you may say the UF Media makes them a sellout. Well, almost every sendicated comic has sold out so why not an online one? And even if UFMedia is not entirely a good thing, so what? The comic strip is still funny and they don't have anything nagging you to go to that site or that of your advertisers. The only thing are a few advertisements along the tops and sides of the page. And if this a bad thing I suggest you don't watch television because you are in for a real suprise.

Apparently, you missed my point.

My point is that the quality of the strip has deteriorated into zippy, because he is drawing the strip/developing the characters in a way that he's trying to pimp to companies.

Tell you what. You go watch this, and afterwards, tell me if you don't feel robbed of 10 minutes of your life.

User Friendly has been around for years.. in most online comic strips you can see changes, whether they be artistic (as in, quality of art improving), or development (character development). It is awfully difficult to put together a case for UF showing either.

And I actually used to LIKE UF at one point, so I'm not some random UF-basher-slashdot-troll. I just find it sad that he is pimping his work like this.. ohwell.. hope he enjoys the $ that gets raked in, and when a company starts doing sitcoms based off of UF characters, I'll be busy turning in my grave.

The comics page would be cool. Actually, what would be cool is if the regular newspaper comics page carried some of the great internet strips out there. Actually, no wait, then the strips would have to be shrunk down into a little four by one strip. Well, I guess things are pretty cool as they are.

Hopefully, a collection of internet comics would not include the abominable User-friendly, and would get good work like PvP or the delicious Sinfest.

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So by my estimates, SlashDot could bring in anywhere from $12 million to $100 M per year.

That's enough to make me want to get in on the goldrush!