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

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*facepalm*
That layout. THAT LAYOUT.

Sweetysweets, I'd like to talk a bit about one of my comic heroes. Don Rosa. In my opinion, greatest Disney comic artist of all time, along with Carl Barks and Victor "Vicar" Arriagada Rios.

When Disney magazines started publishing Don Rosa's comics, a lot of people hated them because the guy couldn't stop adding random little details to the drawings.

The thing is, he used to make even more incomprehensible comics before he got his dream gig.

Get a load of this.

Now, somebody is going to shoot me for saying this, but in this form, the comic actually shares a lot with Belchie's comics. In that it's a little bit of a mess where a lot of things are happening, and it makes a lot of really random references that nobody gets (unless they had the fortune of living in Louisville - I didn't get what was so awesome about this comic until I read about Bill Bailey and looked at the images of Hyatt Regency hotel).

But you know what works in this comic? You can actually just look at the damn page and immediately comprehend that wacky superhero capers are taking place. The fact that you're dropping in middle of a story arc doesn't matter. The dialogue makes sense. Action makes sense. Sure, the art style is busy which makes things a little bit difficult to grasp, but the point is, you actually can do so. The art is unrefined, sure, but the storytelling actually works.

Belch comics? Not as much. You need to actually spend serious effort trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and even then you might be none the wiser. Goodness forbid if you try to just look at single pages.
 
Adamska said:
I think he's still in the egocentrist stage of development as posited by Piaget.
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I looked that up - the egocentric stage is from 2-6 years old.

Funny how calling out obvious deliberate racism is "crying", according to Sweet. I guess according to him, the racism in Belch Dimension is just "vintage cartoon humor" that "kids today just don't get". Just like that one video he posted.
 
Nobody's crying, Sweet. They're just disgusted and embarrassed for you, the same way they would be if you repeatedly shit your pants in public.
 
MrsFrizzle said:
"The people I'm trying to find"?!?! Dude, every one of those people has a Facebook and/or Twitter account that is findable in two minutes. Whatta newsman!
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No one told him about social media though! Even if he did know social media exists, he'd still be waiting to hear back from Geek Squad about it.
 
WWWWolf said:
Belch comics? Not as much. You need to actually spend serious effort trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and even then you might be none the wiser. Goodness forbid if you try to just look at single pages.
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So much this. Sweet's comic art takes way too much effort just to figure out what's happening in a given panel. It'd be one thing if, like with Don Rosa's art, the reader could tell just at a glance what was going on yet still felt compelled to go over each panel just to pick up on all the extra details, but that's not the case with Sweet's drawings, which are just a cluttered, incomprehensible mess. Just like with Chris, though, Sweet believes his work is professional quality and won't even entertain the notion that he might need to improve.

It also bears mentioning that the character in your avatar is a far better reporter than Sweetums could ever hope to be.
 
Apologies in advance if any of this has been commented on before. Went browsing around the AJM forum because why the hell not, and stumbled upon a few Belch posts in their thread devoted to talking about animation. Here, Belch gives us his thoughts on the firing of Skyler Page, creator of the Cartoon Network show Clarence, due to allegations of sexual harrassment:
Jonathan Sweet: Victim Blamer said:
It seems Skyler Page, who is said to suffer from bipolar disorder, wasn't especially liked at the network. At least one former coworker has come forth and confirmed there were other incidents on the part of Clarence's creator of grab-fanny in the workplace. Does mental illness excuse intimidation of one's coworkers and creating a hostile work environment? Could his firing have been avoided if the victims had been a little more firm with him about discomfort caused by his inappropriate behavior? Would Page have grounds to sue if the charges are unfounded?
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Belch confesses he feels bad for being expected to laugh at the character of Clarence, because Belch sympathizes with him and Clarence is allegedly based on Page himself:
Alas poor Fartknocker said:
So I actually watched a couple episodes of the show, and I'm thinking, is Clarence supposed to be special-needs? He's a fat, socially awkward, if well-liked (or at least moderately tolerated by his peers), little fartknocker, who seems to be based on and voiced by Page himself (should that have been a red flag to CN execs right there?). His best friends are a horribly anal-retentive kid who once tried to special-order a fast-food meal without a burger just for the fries, and another kid who may be even more screwed-up than Clarence--he exhibits dog-like mannerisms and sort of reminds me of a grade-school version of Karl Childers. I feel uncomfortable laughing at their antics because I knew kids like this who got the proverbial s-word beaten out of them every day on the playground.

Being somewhat socially awkward myself and having dealt with complaints in the workplace (although nothing this severe), I can sympathize... however, if boundaries are firmly set, I think they should be respected. There's a difference between a look that lingers maybe a bit too long to be comfortable and actually physically groping someone.
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In the midst of all this, of course, he wrenches the thread back around to himself and his past issues with his coworkers:
PAY ATTENTION TO ME said:
I guess once Page gets his head straight and is able to tell his side of the story (though having a lawyer present would be advisable). If there's one thing I've learned in the creative industries, it is that you get to know who your friends are fairly quickly. People tend to run fast from a coworker with any hint of stink on their name, for fear of being tainted by association.
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I guess six months on a college paper makes you a member of the "creative industries."

I also braved Sweetie's bizarre, anachronistic webpage, and I know that we've all laughed about it before, but I really can't get over his book-pimping section. That content scattered all over the page...the text written in different fonts and colors with colored backgrounds...I see that Sweet's exceptional sense of layout extends to more than just his comic art.

Finally, he links this little blurb on PR Web, a self-promotion website for people who can't get anyone else to say nice things about their work, apparently. Aside from giving me intense second-hand embarrassment at seeing a grown man take himself and his MS Paint comics this seriously, it's pretty amazing in that Sweet can't shut up about his butthurt, his political leanings, and how much he wants to suck Rush Limbaugh's dick. He'll talk about his comic for a couple of paragraphs and then launch into a long rant about how TV ratings cost him his job as a newspaperman. Here's my favorite part (funniest bits bolded for emphasis):
Threatened by tiny boxes in the corner of his TV screen said:
Sweet launched his website http://www.freewebs.com/welcometolemora/, in 2004. Llike his books, it serves as a soapbox for his rabid right-wing views, espousing opinions on everything from the writing craft to virulent denounciations of his former bosses and of his greatest bugaboo: TV ratings. He says they are "evil, useless and should be destroyed". Sweet further insists "they have done more to destroy lives, cost jobs, and rob Americans of their freedom than any other law to come down the pike in a decade". He calls, among his other reform plans, for the immediate repeal of the bill that introduced them in Congress. Privately he has called them "little monstrosities" and referred to his accuser as a "mentally and morally warped little man, waving about his magic phantom sketch".
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wow
 
Shadow Fox said:
I also braved Sweetie's bizarre, anachronistic webpage, and I know that we've all laughed about it before, but I really can't get over his book-pimping section. That content scattered all over the page...the text written in different fonts and colors with colored backgrounds...I see that Sweet's exceptional sense of layout extends to more than just his comic art.
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What.. what is the gray thing flying around in the background? I'm getting a headache just looking at it. Is that... is that a shark riding a vacuum cleaner?
 
wheat pasta said:
What.. what is the gray thing flying around in the background? I'm getting a headache just looking at it. Is that... is that a shark riding a vacuum cleaner?
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I think it's some kind of spoopy ghost, in keeping with the Halloween theme of his latest comic issue.

I think "shark riding a vacuum cleaner" is a better interpretation, though.
 
Yes, TV ratings, a true threat to American freedoms and civil liberties. Not any of the other political acts people get worked up about, like the Patriot Act and PRISM and shit, but TV ratings.
 
Sweet is hilariously naive about politics. If anything he should be thanking the left for the fact that he is provided for, instead he identifies with a party who knowingly exploit people like him and if they could would take away his tugboat in a heartbeat.

It has to just be the racism and homophobia that he identifies with. Hell, it's probably the only thing he understands when he listens to Rush.
 
MrsFrizzle said:
Nobody's crying, Sweet. They're just disgusted and embarrassed for you, the same way they would be if you repeatedly shit your pants in public.
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I dunno, my eyes are watering a bit from the migraine that his god-awful, incomprehensible visual style gave me. :C
 
sikotik said:
And which party was in control of Congress at the time Sweetheart???
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His knowledge of politics doesn't go that far. At best he just sees the president, and that's it.

As an aside, let me just quote from this section of Sweet's dumb rhetoric:

Selfish Manbaby said:
Sweet further insists "they have done more to destroy lives, cost jobs, and rob Americans of their freedom than any other law to come down the pike in a decade".
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You heard it here first everyone: Sweet's single individual life is more important than the millions that were hit by the Great Depression, the Oil Crisis, the Recession of 2008, all of the many wars we've had, and bills such as the Patriot act. This is because Sweets is legitimately the ONLY person I've seen who was allegedly "affected" by the TVA so he is literally placing himself above the rest of the fucking country.

I can't tell now if Sweets is the best strawman liberal now because of this entitlement, or the best strawman conservative because of how selfish he is. Imma say both.
 
Looking over the early parts of the thread, I kind of wonder if Sweet just hears critics talking in only short phrases in that Jar Jar Binks talk, kind of like how the kids in Peanuts hear adults talking like, "wah-wah wah wah"?

Really though, he parodies criticism as what he calls his impression of "stupid talk" when he doesn't want to listen to criticism, or he thinks it's stupid, I'm guessing.

Adamska said:
This is because Sweets is legitimately the ONLY person I've seen who was allegedly "affected" by the TVA so he is literally placing himself above the rest of the fucking country.
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Alternatively, it could be Sweet's apparent tendency to project irrationally. If you'll recall from earlier in this thread, Sweet thought that normal college dating was like his unique "chinaphone" experiences. So if Sweet thinks he suffered because TV ratings, maybe in his mind, he thinks that others have also. I'm hoping that he's not that egotistical.

sikotik said:
And which party was in control of Congress
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By June 1997, er, half-past 1997, the 105th Congress still had the same majority.
 
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