Sorry for the double post, but there are 3 new Belchblogs up.
The 1st is the 2nd part of the Christmas series. Sweet uploads a screenshot, classifying it as a "customization" or "desktop screenshot." Sweet talks about children and flatulence.
Geez, all the time.
All the time. Dude's got a cloud of methane where his brain should be.
Okay, so, I was looking at more of that
Sweetart travesty. For those with enough good taste not to have looked at it themselves, Sweetart is a ripoff of several concepts that Jon saw on TV, from Batgirl to Sailor Moon. The artwork is terrible, the writing is terrible, the composition and word-balloon placement is often confusing and dumb, and the story, as ever, centers around Jon's pathetic attempt to make his getting booted from
The Herald into some kind of unfair conspiracy against him.
Actually, a lot has already been said about this story, so I'll just point out some highlights I found interesting.
The character on the right is Kitty Tartakoff [sic]. the alter-ego of the eponymous Sweetart. Her athletic frame is hidden under her frumpy clothes, unkempt hairstyle, and big glasses. Look familiar? She should. It's Daria. Let's not even pretend. Jon ripped off Daria here. This can be seen even more clearly when you consider her detached attitude, tendency towards snark, and other traits. As we can see in the following image ----
Aaaaaaa
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!! KILL IT! KILL IT! DON'T LET IT EAT ME!
Cripes! Da hell is that thing?! Geeeeeez. Looks like Col. Toht got a job as a murderous drag queen after the ark melted his face off.
Okay, well, anyway, the above pic is the face (best guess) of Kitty after seeing Jon's super-avatar in action. Her friend, the Jane Lane analog, has just made fun of her for her instant attraction to the superhero.
It turns out, interestingly, that that's not actually what happened. Kitty was impressed, but not attracted to Jon.
Yeah, she just compares seeing him in action to seeing God. Sheesh....
Her feelings are further clarified here:
She must've drawn a dozen pictures of him in her sketchbook. Which she then must have burned and tossed from a moving car, because, as you can see on the right, that is not a pic of of StickJon.
And so the story churns on. Of course, as I said, it just wouldn't be a Jon Sweet story if it didn't jam its nose up the rectum of a dead horse once again, so here we meet Jonny Tewes (ffs), who works at the local high school paper, The Harbinger. Turns out Jonny (self-insert B) couldn't cut the mustard as a reporter, so they made him a columnist. Yeah, see, this is called a demotion. Anyway, Jonny, too dumb to realize that he's just lost his arguably more skill-intensive position for one that a lobotomized lamprey could do, "becomes the top columnist on The Harbinger within a month" with his "kicky combination of political savvy and ribald wit," which makes him "the controversial and beloved writer on staff. He has fans everywhere."
Yup. Kicky.
Anyfinger, things go south when the head of the department, Ms. Borstein, collaborates with staffer Tom Little to have Jonny discredited and dropped from the staff.
Jonny reacts with the maturity and cool-headedness that you'd expect:
Look, say what you will, I'm not going to lie: If this reflects reality, if Jon actually acted like this after his firing, if he truly was this destroyed, this miserable, crumpled and in tears at the realization that all, all of his dreams had been shattered ... Then I have to admit, this is probably the most richly satisfying thing Jon Sweet has ever drawn. Seriously. I am thoroughly enjoying this portrayal of utterly inconsolable emotional agony. Yes, yes, yes. The sound of his miserable heart breaking is like a lullaby. Cry, Jonny, cry! Yes!!! Let loose the tears of horror and utter despondency! I bathe in your pain! I bask in your despair! Every shudder of your sob-wracked, hunchbacked body fuels me!
Ahhhhhh, that felt good.
Dat anatomy, though. What the-?
Still, not without his perpetual stupidity, Jonny plots in darkness:
So, Jonny has "gone from god to idol in a breath." Once again, Thumbster's trying to anoint himself with divinity for having written some op-eds for a college newspaper. This panel, and a few that follow it to the end of Jonny Tewes life, are interesting in that, in classic Jon Sweet fashion, they do more to prove the case of his so-called enemies than they do him. Jonny opines that one of the head staffers "made me sign that paper, ending my journalism career. I should 'a [sic] wadded it up 'n [sic] thrown it back in her ugly stupid face. (Sob) Stupid me for ever writing that got-dang [sic] column t' [sic] begin with."
The two thought bubbles on the right, from which the above quote came, begin the long tirade that really leads to Jon's self-incrimination. In real life, Jon apparently had to sign some kind of confession saying that he had plagiarized his column. He bitterly thinks that he should have wadded the paper up and thrown it in the face of the person firing him. My question is, why did he sign it? If it meant the end of his "career" as a "journalist", what harm would there have been in not signing the paper? The result would have been the same. My guess is that Jon was caught red-handed at the time, and signed the paper in compliance with the rules at the time. He just no longer wants to accept things the way they were (or remembers them accurately).
Three things of notice:
Jonny takes a swing at liberals out of nowhere. I don't recall any point in the comic where liberalism was brought up, except when he refers to a friendly supporter as a "hard-leg leftie."
He describes his room as a "trophy and offering bedecked shrine." Count with me: two water bottles, one piggy bank, one cylindar of some sort, and two porno mags.
Those porno mags? See them? On the upper-left corner of his drawing board? The title reads, "
Joyboy."
I'll leave you to your own conclusions.
But then, Jonny comes up with a scathingly brilliant idea:
"A
letter! A thoughtful, well-worded epistle with
clear this whole misunderstanding up and convince
ol' Diarrhea and the Ed Board t' [sic] rehire me! Heehee!"
"Ol' Diarrhea," incidentally, is a nickname for Rhea Borstein that apparently took hold around the office because of his influence. Yeah, she's gonna be in a
real receptive mood.
I made an attempt to transliterate the letter here, and folks, let me tell you, I did my best. Here's the letter:
Here's the best I could do:
Dear Ms. Borstein:
First off, let me say I realize that I was not the perfect employee. I could be difficult to get along with. I foolishly allowed my newfound popularity get to my head. I could be self-aggrandizing, piggy [sic], and rude at times. That said, I am completely innocent of all charges against me.
I never saw the Nate Josten sketch Tom Little cites, and furthermore do not believe it exists. I suspect that Mr. Little is either a liar or a moron, and either way it makes your paper look very bad.
The hearing against me was nothing more than a sloppy, poorly executed kangaroo court [this part was really hard to read. The caption background ends before the text, which is printed over the illustration of Borstein's head] perpetrated with circumstantial evidence and bald[sic]-faced lies.
Furthermore, I must solemnly request a second hearing, to be properly conducted, with Little present, so I may cross-examine him as procedure dictates. Once I am declared innocent, reinstate me as a columnist with full privilages [sic] and rights thereof. If this is denied, I will
[At this point, the text once again falls over art with no background, and, for whatever reason, gets blurry to boot. It becomes virtually impossible to make out] have no choice but to [illegible] my [garbled blimblim] to a higher authority - - possibly to the [principal? popsicle? I just can't tell; half the line is fuzzy squiggles] if it comes to that, the local news pa[something, yadda yadda, more fuzz] radio.
Sincerely,
Jonny Tewes
You know one of the perks of the First Amendment, the concept of free speech, and the US legal system? These things are accessible enough that any idiot can get a basic idea of what they're about, but, being idiots, they only work out these concepts as far as they think will benefit them. Thus, it's fun to watch these people talk about getting lawyers and going to the press, etc., without realizing they don't have a keg's chance at a frat party of succeeding.
Jon's doing the same thing here. He's promising to do what they do on TV: he's gonna get "higher authority" involved, possibly even the media, because of course, doing these things will work out for him perfectly. Does he know anything about the legal system? No. He demonstrated that at late as 2015. Does he have the money to hire a lawyer? No. Does he know anyone at any news outlets, other than
The Herald? No. But somehow, all of this is supposed to go his way.
What demonstrates Jon's incompetence even more clearly is his wording of the opening lines of the letter. "First off, let me say I realize that I was not the perfect employee. I could be difficult to get along with. I foolishly allowed my newfound popularity get to my head. I could be self-aggrandizing, piggy [sic], and rude at times."
Okay, yeah, see - BOOM. Done. Jon's blown it here. This is more than enough reason to fire someone. Now, of course, this is not the reason presented as to why Jonny Tewes was canned - in fact, I'm hard pressed to find any direct evidence of Tewes being self-aggrandizing, difficult to get along with, casually rude, or 'piggy.' But even if that behavior was apparent, the problem remains that
this is a prime example of the type of disruptive behavior that results in justifiable termination. In trying to excuse his own terrible behavior, Jon has painted Jonny as a truly immature nuisance. If the plagiarism was indeed a trumped-up charge, bringing up his past behavior would've been entirely beyond the point.
Obviously, Jon was accused of acting like a childish cretin, and it stung. It seems that he's trying to minimize one accusation and emphasize the more demonstrable one, which he then goes on to try do discredit by insulting his accuser and saying that he hasn't seen the evidence in question, thus it doesn't exist. Not a smart way of disproving something.
Ultimately, Jon paints a picture (very poorly) of himself as being just as guilty as if the staff had written this comic themselves.
I've already given this more attention that Jon Sweet would ever deserve, so let me go ahead and finish on one last inspiring image:
Heeheeheeheeheeheeheehee! Ah, that just tickles me. 
