As I noted on my twitter yesterday, Steve and I predicted that posting a Phil advertisement on the Something Awful forums would lead to a series of angry comments about how much Phil sucks. Its hard to be particularly thin skinned about a comic that pretty much everyone hates, but for a few hardcore fans (and ourselves who unabashedly love our own comic even though its unseemly). Only two comments exist now, but there will surely be more:
this fucking sucks
and
The only use I can find for this comic is as a reinforcement for suicide, because reading this will want to make you take your life.
Steve and I got a lesson in how thick our skin should be in the strip’s early days before the comic had its own website and ran on two different student publications, UCONN’s newspaper The Daily Campus and George Washington University’s student blog The Colonialist. Through both we received regular reminders of how unfunny and horrible we were, and fortunately, The Colonialist is still around for me to copy and paste a few favorite comments from a pissy past. These aren’t in chronological order, and I didn’t break them up into separate block quotes. Deal with it.
So, I’m sorry if you are offended by what I have to say, but: Rarely does Phil make sense, let alone make me laugh. It just isn’t funny.If everyone that didn’t have something nice to say decided not to say anything at all, there would be no such thing as “constructive criticism.” That’s precisely what this is: an attempt to make the Colonialist better by weeding out the parts of it which simply don’t, uh, make the cut.
“Phil” is a comic strip. Comic strips should be funny. “Phil” is not funny. Therefore, the Colonialist should get rid of “Phil.” If thinking (and saying) this makes me an asshole in your eyes, maybe you do belong back in Kindergarten.
Speaking as the individual who started this “controversy” by simply being the first person to point out how boring Phil is…Saying something is funny just to seem edgy and avant-guard does not make you cool.
Do not pretend you are special and in “the know” by understanding Phil. There is nothing to understand, that is why it sucks.
Anyone can string together 6 lines of dialog. Watch me do it!
Me: I read the Colonialist everyday
Friend: But that comic Phil sucksMe: Yes, but I find the other article funny, honest, and insightful.
Friend: I hate collegeMe: That is awful, you should attend the University counseling center
Friend: Good point.LOOK AT ME!!!! I strung six sentences together, they mean nothing and are boring.
Should I write my own comic strip too?
still not funnyStill sucks.
While the two something awful comments might be a bit more spiteful, I pine for the old days, when people debated how pointless we were.
