Video Gamology - A Review

Oh god. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh god.

So once upon a time, I made a blog post about Ideas That Would Never Happen. In this post, I talked about a time not so long ago (6 years, actually) that I made comics. I made them with sprites that I found on the internet but because I was young and stupid regarding internet content, I never credited the original people who made the sprites. For that, I'm sorry and I will credit you now. I used many different kinds of sprite art, all of which can be found at The Spriters Resource, an enormous resource with sprite art from different video games.

These comics were...well, they were...

Kirby, you shouldn't play with bombs. It's dangerous.

The comic series was called Video Gamology. It starred Kirby, Sonic, and Shadow. Mario was a supporting character who occasionally dropped by to enlighten the comic with some important information.

Brilliant.

Shadow was a very depressing character who never wanted to be involved in anything the other two were doing. The only thing he enjoyed doing was beating up Kirby. Sonic was the voice of reason in the group, and admittedly, a reflection of myself as a middle schooler, stupidity and all. Kirby was...um...

Oh, Kirby. What've they done to you?

Kirby was the unfortunate fall guy of the three. Everything conceivably horrible only happened to him. Kirby was the exact opposite of the character we've become familiar with: a bombastic and vulgar loudmouth who constantly did very stupid things including acting in pornographic films, attacking others for the hell of it, threatening to kill himself for attention (as you can see in the image above), and many other indescribable actions. On top of that, he would constantly be tortured by Sonic and Shadow on many occasions, including being used a Christmas ornament, and did not have any other friends who he could relate to. Typing that really breaks my heart.

We're here for ya, buddy.

This has only been either segments or parts of comics but for the purposes of this review, we will be looking at one comic which summarizes the entire series in one comic. Ladies and gentleman, this is comic 22 of Video Gamology titled "New Video Gamology 1", originally posted on DeviantArt on September 8th, 2008.

Self-aware characters. That's never been done before.

This comic was meant to be a reboot, bringing back all of the characters and putting them into new scenarios. I had three comic ideas ready to go when I released this one, but the reception (only 1 view) was disappointing and I lost any kind of interest to continue with the strips.

This was the first time the characters would speak with uncensored swears. I thought it was the most hilarious idea but it seems to pad out the attempts of humor by filling it with profanity. You can also see how piecemeal the presentation is, with a basic understanding of the comic strip format but with a lack of animated expressions from the characters.

Look at the frown on Kirby's face. That's art.

The strip's humor was very juvenile for its time, doing its best to simulate (copy) South Park's kind of humor but leaving out the intelligent satire. Punchlines for strips would usually just be really gross, depressing, or racially insensitive. And some times, there just wouldn't be a joke at the end. Some strips were also really huge so there would only be occasional moments of humor dispersed with really weird moments like Kirby swimming in a sea of shit, or Kirby eating a tomato and becoming gay. Yes, that was a punchline for a strip. No, I did not get a lobotomy recently.

*canned sitcom laughter*

Despite how hard I've been on the comic so far, I will admit this comic shows a lot of progression from the earlier ones I made. I found the appropriate font for character dialogue, I got a better understanding of each character so that they could play off one another and even Kirby became less of a punching bag. When I started making them, it would take 1-2 hours to finish a strip. At the time, it was time well spent.

"...returning from the grave..." Nope.

I think if anything has shamed me from writing about this sooner, it's the fact that this is the worst kind of fan-fiction. When people think about ridiculous scenarios happening to popular characters (and I don't mean rule 34 kind of things), this comic strip is exactly what that is. Children's characters that swear up a storm, blood, guts, and violence at every turn, and adolescent humor. What this strip is is a type of wish fulfillment that fulfilled my basic desires of humor whenever I wanted. I guess I can understand why I would want to make this kind of comic strip but...geez.

Will I ever make another comic? No, but not for the reasons you might think. It's not like I've advanced in terms of humor but comic strips just don't appeal to me as much as they did when I was in middle school. If you want more intelligent and inspired humor featuring these characters, check out Brawl in the Family. It's well worth your time.

We'll miss you, buddy!

Thanks for reaching the bottom. I have both a YouTube channel and a Vimeo channel. I'm also on Twitter and Tumblr. If you like reading other silly things by me, join the RS Facebook group for updates and info on my projects. We'll see you next year!*

*Not really.