OK so there is going to be something a little different today. I know this might come as a large surprise to a good many of you, but I, Sonty Mick, am taking a night class from community college. Maybe you thought I was too old for college. Nope. You are never too old to get a little more of the good stuff (education). I am hoping that I will become an even better writer from this, and win even more awards.
Anyway, I am taking a class about writing good papers. It is also about editing them and researching them. I have sort of a brief research paper due, and so this next post will actually be my paper! I just submitted it for grading, and I will definitely let you know how it goes. It was hard because I was not allowed to write in first person.
Argumentative Paper
(((==~||~~{Sonty Mick}~~||~==)))
Advanced Composition
12-17-2007
White Ninja Comics is So Bad
Every day days get just a tiny bit longer. You don't notice it, because I think that time gets slower or something too so it's the same from your perspective, but nothing can go fast forever. Famous people have said quotes about that kind of thing, but I couldn't find it online, and I seriously spent 45 minutes in the library and it was a total waste of time.
There has been a pretty good amount of discussion, a decent amount anyway, on what it is that makes a work of fiction a good one or a bad one. Sometimes that work of fiction can even be a comic that may be good or bad (Versaci 34), such as Blondie or Powerup Comics. It may be hard to believe, but the comic could even perhaps be considered a webcomic if it on the world wide web (internet).
It is one of these online webcomics that we must turn our heads to in focus with the lasers that make up the point of our eyes. Only in looking beyond ourselves can we find the rich resources that comics will provide for us on the web. It is on this web, which is like a sea of information, only withoout the sea and with more information, that we will find the topic that requires discussion here: White Ninja Comics.
In this paper, it will be proven through a good argument that by objective standards, White Ninja Comics is to be considered a bad webcomic. It is a bad webcomic for three reasons: The first reason is that the comic is written in a style that does not have literary depth, the second reason is that the comic looks like it came out of a butt, and the the third reason is that the characters in the comic are too hard to tell apart from each other, and most of them are ugly. There are other reasons, but hey, who even cares? I am not getting payed by the word here (that's an old writing joke. I don't need to cite it because I think it's a part of our cultural consciousness.)
First of all, I think that someone had better shed some light on the matter of web comics and and the web in general. The internet is sometimes a difficult concept to understand. What is it? Where did it come from? Well if you are confused about the internet, then maybe you need to understand the extent to which the internet is used. Here is a graphical representation from Wikipedia about how many people around the world use the internet:
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As you can see, the internet is a network that reaches all over the world, and people from differrent cultures are able to use it for whatever they want, including comics. Webcomics are just comics that are on this network, and include a lot of different big names in comics. There are even certain blogs that are all about webcomics and whether or not they are good. (Mick)
OK, the first reason that the comic is so bad is that there is no literary depth in the style. There is a lot of information available about metaphor in writing, and it's easy to get bogged down by it, but here are the basics of metaphor: Metaphor is something that is often used in literature and if it is done well then it can be very good. (Polvinen 55)
What kinds of metaphor can we find in White Ninja Comics? In the installment entitled "
White Ninja Eats a Dead Man" we see one end of the scale. Here the ninja character is just being himself and just giving you a taste of what makes his world the different version of our world that it is. Do you notice anything about the literary depth here though? I think you will need to look hard, but if you do you will see that there is not a lot. When the officer shows up we are not even treated to an interesting piece of dialog. It is just White Ninja speaking without developing his character.
What does it mean to be human? White Ninja Comics could have answered that question in the episode entitled "
White Ninja's Robot Wife", but that did not end up happening. While the comic strip makes an attempt at answering the question by blurring the lines between woman and machine, White Ninja is more interested in eating chicken than he is in giving us a glimpse into the transcendant. It does not answer, or even seriously consider the question of what it means to be human, and this is a major downfall from many perspectives. (Hand 11)
In the episode called "
White Ninja's Pig" we get what should be an opportunity to examine the relationship between mankind and the animal kingdom. It is important for a comic to make a good point and this comic does not do that. (Polvinen 113) In this particular strip we get what seems like an ordinary exchange between these guys, but they are really having an exchange that has a lot of tension even though it doesn't seem to be sexual tension. Maybe the tension here is trying to be a metaphor for sex. It doesn't work.
And so as you can clearly see, White Ninja Comics has no literary value at all. Might as well just read nothing.
The second point about White Ninja Comics that needs to be understood is that the comic looks literally like it was drawn with a butt rather than with a hand. This is because the art is so ugly, and because butts are not very good for writing. There are no scholarly sources about how good butts are for writing. It is a field that most scientists are uncomfortable to do experiments about.
In the White Ninja Comic entitled "
White Ninja In: Hottie Alert", White Ninja seems to think that a certain woman is hot. Well he must have strange taste in women or something, because the women that we see all drawn up here is not an attractive one. She has saggy boobs. Research online will show you that even if White Ninja comes from Japan (the land of ninjas) then even in his culture, saggy boobs are not considered attractive. It looks like this is a clear instance of the art not living up to what one would expect. (Physical Attractiveness)
In the installment called "
White Ninja Doesn't Like to Drink", we see the eponymous ninja is having a cup of flour, which appears to be nice. What is happening in that fourth panel though? White ninja has closed his eyes, and even though this could be considered a symbol of blocking out the outside world, he is actually saying something that he wants to communicate with the outside world. So this piece of artwork is actually misleading, and it actually hurts the argument that some people might make that White Ninja has OK art. (Meskin Par. 4)
Also if you read the rest of the comics you will notice that they are also really really ugly.
So, as outlined here, we are made aware that the artwork in this comic is really bad, and it should not be looked at by anybody. Especially real people like you. Who knows what could happen? Maybe you'd even have to go to a funeral.
OK so the third point that absolutely needs to be made here is that the characters in this comic are too hard to tell apart from each other, and it's impossible to tell which one is which. The most obvious example that I could possibly think of is that there are probably several characters who are white ninjas but they are clearly not the same guy. Like look at the comic entitled "
White Ninja Longs to Be Married" and you will see that White Ninja wants some chick to propose for him then it is unclear if he proposes to a guy or if he is just joking. But then in "
White Ninja's Wife Gives Birth", he is completely married to a woman who is giving birth.
These two White Ninjas look the same.
There are a bunch of other examples but they are completely boring and if you actually care about any of this crap then you can just go ahead and research it all by yourself because I have seriously done
enough research. Seriously, Go see some things for yourself, Don't be caged in by a society that tells you that you need a lid for a sprite when you go to a Mc D's.
In conclusion, White Ninja Comics is very bad, and the three reasons that it is so bad is because the writing has no literary depth, because the art is as horrible as crap, and because the characters all look exactly like clones of each other, and I don't mean actual science clones because they don't always look just like the original (Skipper par. 6). I mean sci-fi style clones.
Thank you for reading my paper.
Works CitedBevan, S, and Earle, K.
White Ninja Comics. 2002-present. www.whiteninjacomics.com
Mick, Sonty and Satiricus, Gaius.
These Web Comics are So Bad. webcomicssobad.blogspot.com/ (Award winning credible source)
Polvinen, Merja. "The Ends of Metaphor". European Journal of English Studies, Dec 2007, Vol. 11 Issue 3, p273-284
Versaci, Rocco. This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics As Literature. Continuum International Publishing Group. London.
2007
Hand, Elizabeth. "Writing Literary Science Fiction". Writer. Jan95, Vol. 108 Issue 1, p11, 4p
Meskin, Aaron. "Defining Comics?".
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Oct2007, Vol. 65 Issue 4, p369-379, 11p
Skipper, Magdelina. "In the News: More than Nine Lives".
Nature Reviews genetics. Apr2002, Vol. 3 Issue 4, p234-234, 1p
"Physical Attractiveness". (15 December 2007). In
Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. Retrieved December 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Attractiveness
"The Internet". (15 December 2007). In
Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. Retrieved December 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet
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