The Last Ever: Sheldon
This is no edit, it’s all drawn from scratch.
This comic isn’t actually a dig at Sheldon. I actually really enjoy Sheldon, it’s a harmless comic with great characters with a slightly nerdy disposition.
What I am mocking is comics that, against all reason and logic, try to take “Dramatic” twists. This is the single biggest mistake that webcomic authors make and it seems that a good 90% of them make it. The biggest lately was the now-infamous CAD miscarriage storyline in which Tim tried to take his characters of “Moron” and “Female Moron” out of their wacky antics and tug at the heartstrings of the reader.
It failed miserably and so does nearly every comic that tries this. They start with some comedy and then go against the atmosphere and world that has been established to delve into terrible dramatic plots. These plots are always trite, boring soap operas or incomprehensible fantasy (usually both) in which the author becomes more and more involved in a vast, poorly-realised world of their creation. The readers are expected to indulge what is essentially comic masturbation and, for some reason, they usually do.
I actually think Dave Kellet, the author of Sheldon, wouldn’t ever do that. One of the strengths of the comic is that Kellet understands what his comic is and what it means to readers. It’s a gag strip, something funny to take you through the day. In the very, very rare moments that it gets mildly serious there is always a joke and the drama is usually a sweet moment that keeps to the established world and characters.
These two strips are by far the best example of this: ONE, TWO
The one major criticism I have of Sheldon is that Kellet’s artwork is very inflexible. He is very confident in how he creates it and it’s practical for the jokes but the designs have limited potential when thinking about interesting angles. The characters heads never move out of three-quarter position and so to go to another angle is immensely difficult which hampers the possibilities, if he pushed himself to move out of the same angles it could only be an improvement.