April 3, 2004

Is SORE THUMBS really a GAMING comic? Heck, is it really even a POLITICAL comic?

Posted By Chris Crosby at 6:49 AM

There's been a couple discussions on the forum about what exactly SORE THUMBS is. Is it really a GAMING comic? Is it really even a POLITICAL comic? I'll touch on those very issues in this blog post.

SORE THUMBS is a gaming comic in the sense that MEGATOKYO or PvP are gaming comics, in that the strip is peripherally related to video games. It is set in a video game shop, some of the characters are gamers, and there are occassional references to video games. There have been 12 SORE THUMBS strips so far, and out of those 12 strips, there have been specific gaming references in 4 of them. Just as in the two above-mentioned comparison comics, there will not be references to gaming in EVERY SINGLE STRIP. Go look at the last 12 strips of each of those two other comics and compare.

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Okay, you're obviously too lazy, so I'll do it for you. Of the last 12 MEGATOKYO strips, there were 2 strips with specific gaming references (and that may be only if you count spelling the word evil "3VIL" and sprinkling sentences with the word "L33T" as gaming references). Of the last 12 PvPs, there were 3 strips with specific gaming references. See, we beat them BOTH in the number of game-reference strips, and they didn't even have the burden of introducing their concept and cast in THEIR last 12 strips.

As for the political nature of the strip, the answer is kinda the same as the gaming thing. There are political references in the strip because some of the characters are politically-active, but this is NOT an "editorial" comic like TED RALL or THIS MODERN WORLD, where each comic is meant to convey the opinion of the cartoonist. I'm not trying to make any particular political point in SORE THUMBS, or use the strip to communicate my liberal-leaning views (though it obviously seems that way to many of you). My goal with SORE THUMBS is to write a funny and/or interesting comic that loosely relates to politics and gaming. The characters are all totally INSANE in their own special way, not rational people who you should necessarily agree with on anything.

And no, Fairbanks is not a "strawman" for Cecania to easily knock down. If he is, she certainly hasn't knocked him down yet, has she? You can't point out ONE strip where Cecania has debated Fairbanks on ANY TOPIC (even Mario representing an ERECT MALE PENIS!) and won the argument. And if anything, she's shown she may be as devious and dishonest as she originally painted Fairbanks as being in the first strip. We don't know the whole story behind why Fairbanks killed those two guys "for looking 'suspicious'" (Cecania's words), but we do NOW know that those two guys were, in fact, ACTUAL TERRORISTS. Despite him being a conservative and all, that makes Fairbanks a REAL AMERICAN HERO in my book.

You can't possibly say that the world would be BETTER OFF if those terrorists were NOT DEAD... can you?

(That was a very subtle political reference playing on the question that every conservative asks when a liberal says they are opposed to the Iraq war. And yes, I do think that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein running Iraq. Probably.)
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April 3, 2004

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