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

[DrChristianTroy]

So, thought:

So, Sweets's protagonists are all literally himself playing out ASU revenge fantasies one after another. We've gone over this repeatedly.

But Sweets keeps saying that "dem liberals" can't understand his story and that it's loved by True & Honest Conservatives like himself.

Disregarding the fact that many of our Conservative Kiwis have said they thought Belch Dimension was sub-Sonichu levels, I have to ask... what exactly is Sweets implying with that statement?

Is he saying that he's some kind of huge Conservative hero? ... Or is he implying that his case is not unique and is actually relatable anongst Conservatives. Because both possibilities are hilarious AND somewhat offensive to the right-wing.

Well dude got a whole forum to rally around him (or at least get rid of people mocking him). Maybe he means those 7 people.

 

[John Titor]

So, thought:

So, Sweets's protagonists are all literally himself playing out ASU revenge fantasies one after another. We've gone over this repeatedly.

But Sweets keeps saying that "dem liberals" can't understand his story and that it's loved by True & Honest Conservatives like himself.

Disregarding the fact that many of our Conservative Kiwis have said they thought Belch Dimension was sub-Sonichu levels, I have to ask... what exactly is Sweets implying with that statement?

Is he saying that he's some kind of huge Conservative hero? ... Or is he implying that his case is not unique and is actually relatable anongst Conservatives. Because both possibilities are hilarious AND somewhat offensive to the right-wing.

He was talking about AJM. They happen to be mostly conservative and too "polite" to say anything negative about bad art so ass pats is all they give.

 

[AJMLurker]

Yes, by "true & honest conservatives", he is referring to the AJMers. We ass patted him for his comic and he, well, took it to heart. Praise is the only language that Sweet can understand, hence his inability to accept his time at ASU was an embarrassment for him.

 

[AnOminous]

Disregarding the fact that many of our Conservative Kiwis have said they thought Belch Dimension was sub-Sonichu levels, I have to ask... what exactly is Sweets implying with that statement?

It's pretty standard cow logic that the Farms and people who laugh at them in general are 100% composed of their exact political opposite, whatever they consider that to be. So to ADF, we're all 100% cishet dudebro gamers, to this dude, we're all liberals, etc.

 

[Dr. Merkwurdichliebe]

So, because I'm not goddamned mental, I've never saved up enough urine to tell if it's pungent at all, so...

... Would that have smelled?

Because oh god, I don't even want to imagine what that would have smelled like.

In a piece that was submitted but -- for obvious reasons -- never published by The Herald, Sweet actually discussed his habit of peeing in jars. His reverie included describing both the odor emanating from the jars and the appearance of the jars after they had sat around unemptied for a period of many days.

The "horrifying" ratings may now be launched.

 

[Chan the Wizard]

I think Sweets need to expand his unpublished comics to include his unpublished articles. We need to see the bad boy of college journalism in action.

 

[Trombonista]

Let's just make one thing clear: The "bad boy of college journalism" was a persona Sweets created in the hope that people would find him cool. They just found him annoying.

 

[Holdek]

Okay, so let's talk about Sweet's art, shall we? BRACE YOURSELVES FOR SOME TEAL DEER COMICS SPERGERY.

Spoiler: A LOT OF WORDS ABOUT NOT FUCKING UP COMICS

I've brought up the horror vacui plenty of times while discussing Sweetie's art; I even suspected Sweets might have some form of schizophrenia just based on how chaotic it is. This probably isn't the case, though; Sweets just fails at one very important aspect of making comics and art that every artist should do:

Sweets comic and drawing method becomes obviously apparent rather quickly; Sweets doesn't plan anything. He draws up no thumbnail pages, no sketches to determine how best to lay the panels out on the page, shit, he doesn't even draw any kind of construction on his figures, causing them to shrink and grow from panel to panel. Shit, characters faces will be completely different from one panel to the next.

Allow me to sample a comic strip Sweets did fairly recently. How recently? I dunno, last year I guess. whatever. It's about some poor bastard Sweets has a grudge against from ASU who doesn't even fucking work there anymore because of course it fucking is.

This comic is part one of a two-parter, but because I can only stand to look at this dreck for so long, we're just gonna do the first part. 'Cause fuck it. And fuck you, Jonathan Sweet, for being a hateful little boil on the taint of the internet who's not even man enough to stand up for himself on the Farms. God, what a pussy. What would Rush-senpai think?

Ahem. Moving on.

So right off the bat you're going to notice that the way the panels are laid out on the page is pretty fucking weird. There's a lot of unused negative space on either side of the strip for no real reason other than Sweets wanting to cram in as many WORDS WORDS WORDS as possible in the space of 3 and a half panels. In fact, that first word bubble probably wasn't even supposed to be there. It sticks out like a growth on the side of the strip. If Sweets is going for a newspaper comic layout, he's fucked up tremendously.

For reference, this is probably what Sweets was aiming for:

We're gonna use Bloom County because I sincerely think Sweets was deeply influenced by it, as were a lot of cartoonists that read it (myself included).

If you ever want to get a good grasp on just how bugfuck insane Sweets is, compare Sweets strip to the Bloom County one. Both involve derision aimed at bumbling, incompetent authority figures, except you can actually tell what the fuck is happening in one whereas the other is so fucking cluttered with shit. There's a logo for the S.A.D.I.S.T.s in the background behind the central figure, there's colored-in laughter at the bottom of the strip the whole way through (implying that these people have been laughing at him since he opened his mouth, btw), there's too many goddamned cluttered word bubbles with a bunch of text so cramped together it's a fucking chore to read and on top of that the last panel is inexplicably cut in half while the inner bubble on the bottom hangs off.

Since the strip essentially has four panels, let's compare it to a standard four-panel comic format.

This is the format a normal, sane person uses:

Four boxes, evenly sized and spaced apart. Boring, but it works. Very easy to read, and even easier to place on a page surrounded by other comics like it. Now, let's look at Sweets'.

I set the original strip at a low opacity just so I can't be called a liar by Sweets. This is his layout, and frankly, the one he actually drew is even worse. Panels wobble and bleed into each other, touching and creating tangent lines. For those of you who don't math, that means lines that touch. This is a big no-no if you're making comics. And oh my God, all that white space, the differently shaped panels... it looks like the Black Flag logo started sniffing glue. This is a fucking mess.

You see, Sweets didn't retain one of the basic rules of somebody who's starting out in an art field, that being the K.I.S.S. rule: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Refer again to the Bloom County strip; there's not a lot of negative space between or around panels, but there's plenty inside the panels themselves. Sure, Breathed could have drawn all the little details of the classroom behind Senator Bedfellow, but Breathed doesn't even use proper word bubbles; instead he goes for the minimalist approach of a single line coming from a characters' mouth. This works as well as it does because there's plenty of negative space around the words themselves, making them very easy to read and see who they're attributed to. Sweets attempts to mimic this for the second panel (and only the second panel), but there's too many goddamned word and not enough space in the fucking panel.

HEY.

HEY, IDIOT.

DID ANYBODY EVER TELL YOU COMICS ARE A VISUAL MEDIUM?

Fucking hell, at least you could read the text that Tim Buckley plastered all over his comics. Also, using hyphens to break up words that don't have hyphens is usually not a good idea unless you need those words to be REALLY BIG FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT. But Sweets does this for just regular dialogue, making it evident he just draws a picture on a page first, then crams whatever text he's imagining in there above or below characters heads. I did this a lot when i was making comics in middle and high school; they were, like Sweets', roughly-planned, straight-ahead comics. Of course I had the good sense to use a goddamned ruler to plan out panels.

Think about it, Sweet. You are more incompetent than a teenage girl. And you write dialogue like you're writing a novel and not a fucking comic. For a comic strip, remember the K.I.S.S. rule: strip out the words you don't need. Just remember the words of William Shakesman.

This just means "Don't waste our time." Or your page space, for that matter. Less is more.

For longer comics, if you need a lot of dialogue, having one panel of a character's head just saying a shit-ton of words is fucking boring. You gotta break that shit up. Since comics are visual, you do this by drawing more panels to stretch out the long spiels. This maintains visual interest and keeps up the pace so that your reader isn't stuck on one panel for too long. A lot of comics do this, but by far my favorite use of this technique goes to Herobear and the Kid, which uses this a lot, probably because creator Mike Kunkel worked as an animator for Disney.

Tyler's transition from arrogance to self-doubt can clearly be seen over the course of four panels, and it helps break up what would otherwise be a huge block of text. Jeez, so how much more interesting is that visually? I mean, shit, if you're only making a new panel because you ran out of space to cram your WORDS, maybe you should consider sticking with writing prose.

So, what would Sweets comic layout look like if he wasn't a smelly, thumb-headed crazy racist man? Well, I tried to replicate his panel layout in a way that made a little more sense and I got this.

There's some uneven gutter space on the one side, but all the panels are uniform sizes with the exception of the little in-bubble. Notice how there's not a whole bunch of white space on the outside of the strip? Shit, you could format this into a newspaper fairly easily, I'll bet. It's a much more economic use of space and it's not a lop-sided eyesore.

Jesus, I've written a ton of words and I haven't even gotten in depth into the art on the actual dude yet. I guess this, like that comic, will have to be a two-parter.

God help me.

It's like how when Chris fucks up on a video, he doesn't stop and redo it (let alone write notes beforehand). He just posts it. Because he's lazy. Like Jon,

 

[MrsFrizzle]

Let's just make one thing clear: The "bad boy of college journalism" was a persona Sweets created in the hope that people would find him cool. They just found him annoying.

I think he just misheard someone say he was the sad boy of college journalism.

 

[The I Scream Man]

I've always loved that phrase. "The bad boy of college journalism." It just, it's so myopic and self-congratulatory, isn't it? I've been extremely sick all day long, so I've been trying to think of different examples, but most of mine involve things that aren't so pointless. You can't very well say, "The Hero of Checkstand 7" or "The Renegade of Custodial Services" because those are actual positions you get paid for, and that might make a difference to someone. College journalism is so utterly pointless unto itself, in that there's an inherent understanding that you're writing mostly fluff pieces for love of the game and nothing more. That's not even to say I don't like or admire college journalism, it serves a purpose and sometimes the articles are good, but it's not really my first choice if I want facts and analysis for things that happen beyond the campus boundaries.

College journalism rules precisely because nobody gives a shit, it's a test environment, not unlike a college radio station or really any student position, there's lessened responsibility and the understanding that you'll be supervised, so you can make mistakes and learn from them. @trombonista had the right of it, I think: he tried to craft this image of being a stud in college, and this bad boy bullshit was part of it. Everything about his behavior at that time in his life screams, "I was really unpopular in high school, but I can totally reinvent myself here!"

 

[Chan the Wizard]

Can you imagine if he managed to lure Ashleigh back to his dorm room with all of the piss jars?

 

[melty]

In a piece that was submitted but -- for obvious reasons -- never published by The Herald, Sweet actually discussed his habit of peeing in jars. His reverie included describing both the odor emanating from the jars and the appearance of the jars after they had sat around unemptied for a period of many days.

The "horrifying" ratings may now be launched.

Wow seriously? Seriously?
What could possibly make him think this is acceptable, much less charming and worth writing about? Does he think toilets are just for when people are feeling fancy or. ...?

 

[He Sets Me On Fire]

Part of the reason this thread is so fucking amazing is because of the giant essays that @He Sets Me On Fire writes. You're the man dude.

Expounding upon my friend's point here, I completely agree that he hasn't the mental fortitude to either understand why these things are happening to him or even what in particular is happening. Cause and effect are words that, while I'm fairly sure he knows the meaning of (or at least some butchered variant), don't really factor into his mindset. "Stove hot -> I get burned", is what your standard cause and effect relationship looks like to you or me. Perhaps not quite as dramatic, but you get the picture.

But Jon must just kind of exist in some sort of world bereft of one of its pillars, in this case, that actions have consequences. What would such a world look like, I wonder? Perhaps it's akin to being colorblind, or deaf, or otherwise suffering some sensory impairment. That isn't to imply that those are bad things, mind: simply that to us they would be, because we exist in a world of colors and sounds. I could even use a very nerdy analogy and say it's like people and objects and ideas have invisibility spells cast upon them, at all times, in all situations. Thus, when you burn your hand, you have no idea why because the stove simply doesn't exist in a manner that you can perceive. You possess no wondrous abilities of your own, and if you can't see it or hear it, how can you be sure it exists? That is what I picture Thumbelina's world to look like, guys: whole chunks missing. I'm dead certain that he knows that something is there, in the same way that physicists are aware of dark matter: the absence of a detection method doesn't mean that there's nothing there, because they can perceive the effects of the force upon other things.

And this, right here, is the good part. See, I think that he can perceive the analogous dark matter of consequences pressing upon his world from all sides and angles, but because of his ego and insecurity, as mentioned by HSMOF, he's...I don't know, trained his brain to disavow any knowledge of the causes of his problems? I'm having a hard time constructing a framework by which to understand Knuckle Neck because his mindset is so alien to me. I almost feel like it's a failing of mine, you know? Like I'm somehow bereft of empathy because I can't for the fucking life of me fathom a mind willing to go to any lengths to not be wrong quite like his is.

Edit for one more good zinger: in much the same way you'd have a really hard time describing the color red to a blind guy, describing the whole "actions have consequences" thing to him must really be difficult. Because, I mean, he's been hearing it his whole life, from before ASU even, I'm certain. The ASU Conspiracy was his mind's last, most desperate attempt to shore up the walls, so to speak, and holy fucking shit where are you mentally when THAT bullshit is what makes the most sense to you.

Apologies for taking so long to respond to this. You raise some excellent questions (and thanks for the props!).

You know how I see it? I see Jon's (and similarly, Chris's) mind as a kind of snowglobe within a polarized mirror. Others can see in, Jon can't see out. The area around him, the one he's spent most of his life in, is the only area of the world that he's familiar with, and even then, there are limitations within that world. Certainly, other places exist - they're forced into his perspective when he went to ASU, for example - but, for the most part, Jon's limited capacity can only see what is around him, what is familiar to him, what makes sense to him.

Now you would think that inside this little bubble, Sweet would be comfortable. But there's a catch: Other people walk in and out of it all the time. Likely, the majority of these people have nothing to do with Sweet, except for his parents, family, bullies, teachers, and authority figures. Meanwhile, other people have parties, friendships, lovers, sex, admirers, shoulders to cry on, etc. And none of these folks are the least bit concerned about Jon Sweet.

This leaves Jon at a disadvantage. He is the king of the world due to his myopia ("The media should be coming to me! I'm the story!"), but no one acknowledges his royalty. What's more, nothing Jon does has any effect in this world. He is either ignored or gets in trouble. Additionally, he's a coward who's afraid of getting hurt. Heck, he backed away from a threat of beating and strangling you when you suggested he "bring it on," after a fashion. I mean, really, you never even threatened him, you simply made it clear that he was not to talk to you in that manner, and he shut down immediately. Jon failed at being an internet tough guy.

Okay, so, what do you do when you're the king of the world, but no one will bow down to you? You do the same thing that venerated scientists do when questioned about the nature of the world around us: make theories. Of course, professional scientists base their theories around observation. Jon does the same, but his observation is skewed due to mental problems and a desperate emotional need to make himself relevant in a world that couldn't care less about him.

Nobody cared about Jon back in college, save for one adviser [?] that pushed him to join The Herald. Afterward, the status of fucks given about him remained unchanged (none or fewer). He was tolerated at best, having to go so far as to deliberately attract negative attention to himself (the neck-cracking and peanut chewing).
Jon was, simply put, a hairy, feces-caked asshole, on top of being a Neanderthal weirdo. No one hung out with him, no one liked him, no one praised him. So, looking for sense in a world that made no sense to him, looking for importance in a world that overlooked him, and looking for power in a world that granted him only charity, Jon had to find a way to make himself both relevant and powerful, one that fit inside the tiny, frosted glass of his bubble. Jon saw himself as an outsider who spoke the truth, who ruffled the feathers of the complacent sheep (y'know, those flight-capable sheep with feathers) and cowed PC weaklings too afraid to face the music.

In short, Jon became "The Badboy of College Journalism."

Remember, this was the 90s. The envelope pushed by Madonna, the cast of Saturday Night Live, and Porky's in the 1980s had finally ripped open. The shock jock, the angry pundit, and the outrageous comedian, while nothing new, were suddenly thrust into the limelight. Whether these people told it like it was, or just roused the rabble was unimportant. They were loud, lewd, and lucrative, and they set the media world on fire. There were a lot of angry voices complaining about these people, and a lot of those voices were coming from the left (a lot of the material that these personalities would use often targeted gays, women, and blacks).

Jon wanted - needed - to fit in somewhere. He needed to be someone important, and the fact that he wasn't attractive, or smart, or good looking, or insightful, or physically presentable in any form, or popular, or tolerable to look at without vomiting, or in tune with any kind of rational readership, coupled with the fact that his face was constructed entirely of cartilage and hideous, made fitting in nearly impossible. So, he had to find a way to compensate for this societal rejection. I mean, dealing with it in a mature manner and facing his flaws was about as likely as him dispensing his urine in the proper receptacle. So he thought to emulate his heroes in order to turn his failures into successes, and the Badboy fantasy was born.

That's my take on it, anyhow.

e. Thanks to NobleGreyHorse for the grammar suggestions!

 

[John Titor]

Update: https://archive.is/1bEEo

Two things: One, I'm pretty sure he ripped that "fag" joke from Clerks: The Animation. Two, he explains why he pees in jars.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Ever the scientist, I wanted to see if my piss made an effective weed killer.

>Ever the scientist

And he's still lurking the forums, I see.

Also, like @Meowthkip said, Sweet is so attached to ASU because it's the most exciting thing in his life before being exiled to, as Sweet calls it, "a technological backwater" place in the "squashed gob of dung on the Missouri Bootheel." It's similar to how CWC has an unhealthy fixation on high school because of how it was the last time he had a regular social life before being exiled to the Hoard House.* Sweet getting kicked off the Herald was Sweet's "Count Graduon" moment.

*Although with The Impulse club, that seems to be changing.

 

[Chan the Wizard]

I had no idea what was really going on with that "visual gag." I thought the kid had pulled out his penis and started going at that guy's ass. I had no idea that he had pulled out "Michael Jackson."

 

[mattwan]

"The Case of The Fresh Heir Fiends" sees Jon set to receive a substantial inheritance from an obscure, eccentric old uncle. The bulk of the story is set in jolly old England, at a spooky ancestral castle said to be home to a vengeful ghost-- although whether or not you buy into the whole spook thing, the real and immediate concern is the four criminals looking for a tasty slice of the heir pie.
​

Munster, Go Home! aired regularly on TBS and as a Saturday-afternoon movie on over-the-air channels when Sweets was a kid. If you click through and read the plot synopsis, it might sound slightly familiar. It also featured Terry-Thomas as a conniving British relative; I'm not saying Mustachio Man in the latest strip is intended to be Terry-Thomas, but he sure looks more like Terry-Thomas than the "fag" looks like Michael Jackson.

 

[He Sets Me On Fire]

Update: https://archive.is/1bEEo

Two things: One, I'm pretty sure he ripped that "fag" joke from Clerks: The Animation. Two, he explains why he pees in jars.

Another perfectly good reason why it'd be funny to force Sweet to watch The Food Network while making him starve for a few weeks. Whatever grudge he may have against the Herald, "Ashleigh", his brother, black people, black children, or liberals, gay people have done absolutely nothing to him. He's picking on this group for no other reason than he's just a hateful bag of bile that needs to put others down in order to achieve a false sense of superiority.

Munster, Go Home! aired regularly on TBS and as a Saturday-afternoon movie on over-the-air channels when Sweets was a kid. If you click through and read the plot synopsis, it might sound slightly familiar. It also featured Terry-Thomas as a conniving British relative; I'm not saying Mustachio Man in the latest strip is intended to be Terry-Thomas, but he sure looks more like Terry-Thomas than the "fag" looks like Michael Jackson.

Original ideas may be literally fatal to Jon.

"And, finally, to those who read the "Modern Art" column last week and wonder about the cleanliness and the horrid pee smell, here's a fact for you@: until acted upon by bacteria and environmental pathogens, human urine, like sweat, is actually clean and relatively odorless. I never let it sit for long; I'd usually take the container out back and dump it into the garden. Ever the scientist, I wanted to see if my piss made an effective weed killer. Sadly, it did not."


Hm. Well, probably not, but you're missing one very important aspect of the argument. You SAVED YOUR URINE IN JARS IN YOUR DORM ROOM. THE SAME DORM ROOM YOU SHARED WITH A ROOMMATE!

No wonder he had "Ashleigh" troll you! You well had it coming!

"If it did, I wouldn't be killing myself for two hours a day chopping all those damn weeds and trimming the stupid trees, now would I?"

Uh, Jon, don't try to be funny. Figure out how human beings think first, then try for humor.

You know what, though? At least Jon has been consistent with his "Cutting-Room Floor Friday" posts. No, really, check out what you see at the bottom of every journal.

June 12, 2015

June 29, 2015

July 3

July 10

July 17

Oh, hey, there're two comments on July 14th! They're from ... oh, they're from Jon.

(edited for legibility)

 

[bloodcoffee]

Dude, I cannot read that yellow text on this white background.

 

[He Sets Me On Fire]

Dude, I cannot read that yellow text on this white background.

I went ahead and changed it to a darker green, does that work better?