🎨 Artcow Iconoclast / Jonathan Mack Sweet - The Chris-Chan of Arkansas

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What the fucking hell? Adding random 1950s racist slurs to elementary-school jokes?

I am honestly surprised that Mr. Sweet was able to finish (or come close to finishing) college. His executive function seems sorely lacking.
 
Issue number 20's cover looks pretty racist (the parody of "Head-On"). And using the J-word to describe the mime? I'm surprised Sweet doesn't just straight up use the N-word (at least as far as I know). Remember, Sweet apparently tried to sell this stuff at the failed store, and the manager wouldn't let him.

MrsFrizzle said:
His executive function seems sorely lacking.
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And Sweet thinks we're the ones who have "tiny, backwards brains".

Really, I would like it if Sweet would learn to get over his past grudges, develop a love of learning, learn how to get along with others better, and do something to really contribute to society (even if it's just volunteer work).

But I fear that, from Sweet's perspective, that's a leftist* ploy, and is asking too much.
*(I'm more or less in the center of the political compass, by the way. Not really leftist.)
 
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Sweets never made it into grad school. I am 100% certain of that because of his age, living in the dorms, still going to the same school as undergrad, needing to pass the GRE, and needing things like letters of support from professors. That's just the short list. I think the grad school thing just comes from poor wording on his part.

Now, as for the college degree, I'm of the mind he was kicked out before he could graduate. The timeline of him being kicked out fits to when he would have completed his undergraduate degree. Without knowing how many hours he was taking each semester, it's impossible to know how close he was graduating at the time, but since he was living in the dorms, we can probably safely assume it was at least the minimum to be considered a full time student. Without knowing his actual degree it's hard to say how the Herald event effected it. If he was majoring journalism, part of its requirements is to put so many hours into a publication. If he was journalism, getting kicked off the Herald for plagiarism may have serioisly derailed his degree and explain some of the crazy that followed. The fact the school required a mental health evaluation for his return and Sweets doesn't bring up his degree makes me think that the ban happened before he earned the credits to graduate.
 
About the mental health sessions, I recall Sweet saying he didn't take it because it cost $500, and angrily noted that the person telling him to get one didn't tell him about the price.

The_Iconoclast said:
I went in for a preliminary appointment and quickly realized it was a ploy to palm me off on someone else [...] I was then told I needed to pay for the real session [...] Even if I'd shelled out the $500, they would have come up with more hoops for me to jump through.
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Sweet said:
I was sent to "Dr. Greer", who said my records were frozen and he'd lift the flag if I undergo a counseling session. I did as told. Then he tells me it was just a prelim and the real session would cost $500, and until I went the flag would remain in place.
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I'm wondering, did it really cost that much, or was there a way to get it without paying that much? Was Sweet misinterpreting the situation? Is it another case of nobody told him? Or is it really as Sweet said - the session really was $500, so Sweet said "screw this" and had no choice but to leave?

It's also interesting that Sweet's termination involved having to see a mental health professional in the first place. It's reminiscent of CWC getting kicked out of community college and having to see a mental health professional for his confrontation with MLW in her "quarters".
 
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ToroidalBoat said:
I'm wondering, did it really cost that much, or was there a way to get it without paying that much? Was Sweet misinterpreting the situation? Is it another case of nobody told him? Or is it really as Sweet said - the session really was $500, so Sweet said "screw this" and had no choice but to leave?

It's also interesting that Sweet's termination involved having to see a mental health professional in the first place. It's reminiscent of CWC getting kicked out of community college and having to see a mental health professional for his confrontation with MLW in her "quarters".
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Misinterpreting social situations is also a very common issue for individuals with autism. At this point, it's like we could just take the points from the "Autism" section of the CWCki and see how much they apply to Sweets.
 
ToroidalBoat said:
About the mental health sessions, I recall Sweet saying he didn't take it because it cost $500, and angrily noted that the person telling him to get one didn't tell him about the price.




I'm wondering, did it really cost that much, or was there a way to get it without paying that much? Was Sweet misinterpreting the situation? Is it another case of nobody told him? Or is it really as Sweet said - the session really was $500, so Sweet said "screw this" and had no choice but to leave?

It's also interesting that Sweet's termination involved having to see a mental health professional in the first place. It's reminiscent of CWC getting kicked out of community college and having to see a mental health professional for his confrontation with MLW in her "quarters".
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If Sweets is on a tugboat, he should have coverage under Medicaid, which will cover mental health costs.

He really has no excuse.
 
Ruin said:
Whats the consensus on Sweetie having a college degree? I see some people saying he graduated and others saying he got kicked out over the Herald incident before he could graduate.
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I haven't seen any evidence that he graduated. I did read most of the thread like a week ago, but it definitely seems like he got kicked off of campus before graduating and I don't recall any information about him getting a degree by taking remote courses or transferring after that.
Just based on my own experience it seems like he got kicked out fairly early, imo. All of his recollections are very limited in scope and seem like freshman year stuff. I actually think he got kicked out freshman or sophomore year. If he got kicked out senior year I can see them letting him finish up a few classes but if I'm right it's even less likely he graduated.
It wouldn't be too hard to verify though would it?
 
Meowthkip said:
If Sweets is on a tugboat, he should have coverage under Medicaid, which will cover mental health costs.

He really has no excuse.
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Medicare, but yeah, and it would cover treatment for his vision and throat problems.

But no one told him about...
 
Meowthkip said:
If Sweets is on a tugboat, he should have coverage under Medicaid, which will cover mental health costs.

He really has no excuse.
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Did he have Medicaid at that time, though? Idk. My timeline of all of his stories basically looks like the timeline for Lost. What year is it?! Half past 1997?
 
Jon-Boy posted another amazing page of comic art over at the Patriot Brony forums:

24.jpg


This page really highlights to me how completely and utterly Sweet fails at sequential art. I'm just going to do a panel by panel breakdown, because I haven't in a while.
Panel 1: Actually looks okay at a first glance, but the more you look at it the more fucked up it becomes. Okay, there's some guys sitting on a couch in the background, laughing. Then there's somebody sitting next to the coffee table in the foreground, facing the sofa but not interacting with the stickperson seated on it, for some reason. Said stickperson's body becomes an incomprehensible mass of lines blending in with the sofa so that the only really clear thing about her is her seemingly disembodied head floating amidst the chaos. Then you notice that the guy you thought was sitting up is actually probably supposed to be lying down on the floor, but because Jon fails at perspective it looks completely wrong, and also there's someone behind Stickgirl because this panel wasn't crowded and nonsensical enough. There's a random speech bubble at the bottom of the panel that looks like it wasn't intended to be connected to this panel at all and actively disrupts the visual flow of the page.
Panel 2: What the christ is wrong with Alfichu's legs? Seriously, he looks like his pelvis should be splitting in two the way they're drawn.
Panel 3: Speed lines to indicate the characters' movement because Sweet apparently can't portray motion in any less obvious way. The speech bubbles should be switched if he wants the dialogue to make any goddamned sense.
Panel 4: I presume that the characters and set-pieces in this panel are meant to be the "fleabag dorm" described in the caption, but if so why is there a small child and a hulking gorilla-man there?
Panel 5: Not too bad, all things considered, except how is that stickperson forming such a substantial mass underneath the bedclothes? And why is half this page drawn in black and half in blue?
Panels 6-???: Everything goes to hell in the center of this page. What order am I supposed to read in? Where is the viewer's eye meant to be drawn? Is there any sense of logical progression that the author intends his audience to follow? Obviously the answer to that last question is "No" because the dialogue slops out of one panel into another and back again with no rhyme or reason. Just as the eye gets accustomed to moving in one direction across the page the progression of the scene demands it jump back up to another position entirely and then down past material that it's already looked at.
Center panel: I think Jon is supposed to be surprised or stunned, but he looks horrified. His expression doesn't so much say "My girlfriend has just given me an amazing and unexpected present" so much as "Kevin Spacey has just given me my loved one's severed head in a box."
Panel X: There is so much wrong with the panel of the dog smooching the cat that I can't even deal. That dog's anatomy is completely fucked in every way imaginable. I'm unreasonably bothered by the fact that they have human-looking feet.
Panel Wet-Nap: Bunch of Alfichus standing on a bed, I think, with a random stickperson lounging near them and two more stickpeople in the foreground of the panel.
Pemble Tuberson: Awkward overhead shot of two stickpeople, one of whom is dressed appropriately and the other of whom is apparently bare-ass naked.
Dread Cthulhu slumbers: Two misshapen lumps mashed together with "The End" barely legible and shoved off to the side.
Fucking baby Jesus what a goddamned mess. No doubt Sweet will start huffing about how I don't understand his genius or he never had no formal edjamacashun or it looks better colored, but the truth is he's just a shitty artist. That in and of itself isn't the problem, though; the problem is that he's a shitty artist who doesn't even want to try to get better.
 
That page... this is so poorly laid out, that I'm not even sure how to read it at times. I've been reading comics for over half my life and his layouts still boggle my eyes. If I have to try to read it, it isn't done right. Looks like there is enough information on this page that if could've been broken up into two pages and arranged to read a lot better. And look, black ink, blue ink, pencil lines and some computer text dropped in, Sweets is truly a master of mixed media.

Also, how come Sweet's self insert gets to wear clothes, but the rest of the stick figures don't?
 
Shadow Fox said:
Jon-Boy posted another amazing page of comic art over at the Patriot Brony forums:

24.jpg


This page really highlights to me how completely and utterly Sweet fails at sequential art. I'm just going to do a panel by panel breakdown, because I haven't in a while.
Panel 1: Actually looks okay at a first glance, but the more you look at it the more fucked up it becomes. Okay, there's some guys sitting on a couch in the background, laughing. Then there's somebody sitting next to the coffee table in the foreground, facing the sofa but not interacting with the stickperson seated on it, for some reason. Said stickperson's body becomes an incomprehensible mass of lines blending in with the sofa so that the only really clear thing about her is her seemingly disembodied head floating amidst the chaos. Then you notice that the guy you thought was sitting up is actually probably supposed to be lying down on the floor, but because Jon fails at perspective it looks completely wrong, and also there's someone behind Stickgirl because this panel wasn't crowded and nonsensical enough. There's a random speech bubble at the bottom of the panel that looks like it wasn't intended to be connected to this panel at all and actively disrupts the visual flow of the page.
Panel 2: What the christ is wrong with Alfichu's legs? Seriously, he looks like his pelvis should be splitting in two the way they're drawn.
Panel 3: Speed lines to indicate the characters' movement because Sweet apparently can't portray motion in any less obvious way. The speech bubbles should be switched if he wants the dialogue to make any goddamned sense.
Panel 4: I presume that the characters and set-pieces in this panel are meant to be the "fleabag dorm" described in the caption, but if so why is there a small child and a hulking gorilla-man there?
Panel 5: Not too bad, all things considered, except how is that stickperson forming such a substantial mass underneath the bedclothes? And why is half this page drawn in black and half in blue?
Panels 6-???: Everything goes to hell in the center of this page. What order am I supposed to read in? Where is the viewer's eye meant to be drawn? Is there any sense of logical progression that the author intends his audience to follow? Obviously the answer to that last question is "No" because the dialogue slops out of one panel into another and back again with no rhyme or reason. Just as the eye gets accustomed to moving in one direction across the page the progression of the scene demands it jump back up to another position entirely and then down past material that it's already looked at.
Center panel: I think Jon is supposed to be surprised or stunned, but he looks horrified. His expression doesn't so much say "My girlfriend has just given me an amazing and unexpected present" so much as "Kevin Spacey has just given me my loved one's severed head in a box."
Panel X: There is so much wrong with the panel of the dog smooching the cat that I can't even deal. That dog's anatomy is completely fucked in every way imaginable. I'm unreasonably bothered by the fact that they have human-looking feet.
Panel Wet-Nap: Bunch of Alfichus standing on a bed, I think, with a random stickperson lounging near them and two more stickpeople in the foreground of the panel.
Pemble Tuberson: Awkward overhead shot of two stickpeople, one of whom is dressed appropriately and the other of whom is apparently bare-ass naked.
Dread Cthulhu slumbers: Two misshapen lumps mashed together with "The End" barely legible and shoved off to the side.
Fucking baby Jesus what a goddamned mess. No doubt Sweet will start huffing about how I don't understand his genius or he never had no formal edjamacashun or it looks better colored, but the truth is he's just a shitty artist. That in and of itself isn't the problem, though; the problem is that he's a shitty artist who doesn't even want to try to get better.
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You know, the horror vacui is usually most prominent by outsider artists. Outsider artists that are usually mental patients.

Just sayin'.
 
I think his comments on the recent page are interesting.

  • Panel 2. Flunger wears a crudite as a helmet and sings a few lines from the "Captain Vegetable" song.
  • Panel 5. Molina has been on strict bedrest while recovering from her ordeal in "Strange Bedfellows".
  • Panel 7 & 8. Hawley Pratt was a background designer at Warner Bros. in the forties and fifties. He later directed many of the Pink Panther and Roland & Ratfink shorts at De-Patie-Freleng.
    There actually was such a plastic toy ring sold with certain He-Man action figures back in the eighties. They sell for quite a chunk of change at eBay. The story behind the ring (andthetwelve cents) was told in "Belch Blanket Bingo".
    Panel 9. That running gag of Buddy downing everyone's leftover drinks is about to pay off... now.
    Panel 10.     The only same-sex kiss you will ever see in this series.
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Why do you hate gay people, Sweet?
 
atomik fyre said:
I've been reading comics for over half my life and his layouts still boggle my eyes
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Same here, except replace "1/2" with "2/3".

But remember, according to Sweet, things like proper "layout" and "composition" would be "boring", and the way the comic is - it has it's "charm" that conservatives supposedly love. Even with the obviously deliberate racism, apparently.
 
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