Page 33, Vol. I, #10

I just copied this off a web site I found.

It is a common feature of artistic praise that something is "original." Likewise, the reverse is true, and to say something is "unoriginal" is to demean it.

I think this is a fallacy.

I studied comparative literature in college. One of the primary assumptions of this field of study is that there are no such things as linguistic or national boundaries when it comes to defining literature. In other words, you can't fully understand the literature of Spain without understanding literature from France, Rome, and northern Africa. The northern African literature that primarily influences Spanish literature is medieval Arabic. Which in turn is informed by more ancient near-eastern literatures (it was not a Muslim that invented Djinni) and ancient Christian and Jewish writing. And so on. They don't exist in a vacuum.

The most successful movie of all time is based on a historical event. Hardly original. The next few successful movies are adaptations of novels written half a century earlier. But still we praise originality.

Well, ok, I'm not about to run out and tell you that originality is fundamentally a bad thing. But when the best written comic characters ever written are made by taking an animal and giving powers that represent that animal to a person (Batman, Spider-Man, and so on), originality is hardly a pre-requisite for quality artistic creation, is it?

What inspired the current topic is the world-wide perception of webcomic Ctrl-Alt-Del.

CAD is far and wide accused of being unoriginal, and people like Kristofer Straub at Checkerboard Nightmare actually resent CAD's success because of its "unoriginality." As you can see, I think this is a foolish reason for liking or disliking something.

For starters, I'm not entirely sure why people think it's so unoriginal. Yes, it's a gaming comic. But there are hundreds of those. And if people thought that making a comic about video games, even back in the day when Penny Arcade was starting, was an "original" idea, well, I suppose we're using different definitions of the word. My definition has to do with taking unique ideas and implementing them in new ways. Sure, a comic on the Internet wasn't exactly old hat, but a comic/cartoon based on a video game or on people who like to play video games had already been done. Repeatedly.

I hear this accusation often phrased in terms that make it the love child of Penny Arcade in a breeding program with PVP (who gets the alimony for that divorce, I want to know). I'm entirely unsure where this comes from, other than, as I said, it's about games. Maybe it's because Lucas (of CAD) and Cole (of PVP) are both relatively levelheaded. I suppose that's the same. But have you ever heard of The Odd Couple? Laurel and Hardy? The straight man is the oldest comedy trick ever. If that's your standard, everyone who's done comedy since Aristophanes (possibly much, much earlier) is simply a knock off.

Maybe it's because both CAD and PA have characters that aren't exactly in touch with reality. Again, this isn't something Gabe and Tycho invented. Ever watch Seinfeld? UHF? How about Taxi? How about (quickly becoming my favorite example, since it was written hundreds of years before Christ was born) any play by Aristophanes? Yeah, ok, so if CAD loses, PA loses too. Maybe it's that both PVP and CAD have girls who play games (even though they play different styles of games on different platforms and have vastly different personalities), or that both PA and CAD have characters that spout random nonsense for no reason (oh wait, CAD did that *before* PA, and naturally, is proceeded by an entire 20th century MOVEMENT in art about it).

In fact, the only remotely significant parallels between CAD and the comics that supposedly donated genetic material for this clone are that CAD's site design is modeled off an idea that I'm (relatively) certain PA (mostly) pioneered on the web (news on the main page, link to the latest comic), that CAD would like to do a lot of things that PA does and that it has a continuity, like PVP

But none of that "unoriginality" has anything to do with the comic itself, really. Add that into the fact that CAD has better line art than PVP, more likable characters than PA, and has more comprehensible writing than at least 95% of the webcomics out there (I think that number no exaggeration, though I haven't computed exact numbers). And even if you can find some way to make an unoriginality charge to stick, I wouldn't care. CAD would still be a very solid product worth reading.

In short, the execution is more important than the originality factor we so often bandy about. You may feel that CAD has worse execution than it's primary rivals for web attention (because it would be a mortal sin to read all three like I do), but calling it unoriginal is just stupid. Hating it for being unoriginal is even worse.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go read about a Jewish guy who saves the world with his amazing powers granted him by his extra-terrestrial origin and his superior moral fiber. Maybe that's the New Testament, but maybe it's just Superman.

Discuss it in our forums.

Written by SaintEhlers on January 02nd, 2006