Kate Leth’s comic came out and it’s just terrible.
So basically you’ve got half a conversation here, because Amie doesn’t say shit. Which kind of works for the joke (Amie doesn’t give a shit about her job and isn’t listening to her boss), except this is all just noise. Amie’s boss is just bitching about nonsense. She’s either a stupid character or it’s just stupidly written. Take a guess.
You didn’t clock out yesterday, and I had to go back in and reboot the computer system!
I’m willing to buy this. A lot of businesses run shitty software and something as simple as not clocking out could require “rebooting the computer system”. And a woman might use that phrase.
But it could’ve been tightened up a bit so I wouldn’t have to qualify this at all. Like Amie could’ve forgotten to do inventory or something. That seems like more of a major event for a retail supervisor.
It took seven minutes and honestly, Amie, this is the second time this has happened!
What sort of supervisor calls their employee to bitch about something minor the second time it happens? What a cunt.
–if you shirk your responsibilities, it makes me look bad as an employer–
It does? Amie works at a retail store. Who would a supervisor have to impress? The owner. But if the supervisor isn’t the owner, she’s not really Amie’s employer. It’s a nonsense line.
Kate’s worked plenty of retail jobs, but it’s clear that she never thought about those businesses beyond the cashier level. The boss is the boss, and that’s good enough for her!
–very disappointed in you, it’s time you took things a little more seriously–
Cleverly establishes the character as someone who doesn’t take things seriously, leading to character growth when she later has to take being a magical girl seriously.
It’s a bit of good writing. Too bad this is literally how Sailor Moon starts out and Kate just lifted it from there. Also there’s a character in Sailor Moon called Ami. Also all the ad copy mentions Sailor Moon. In the name of shitty ripoffs, I will punish you!
–and, furthermore, this other thing I have to say is–
At this point I noticed that Kate cleverly broke up all the dialogue into little snippets so she didn’t really have to think up a full conversation. Just fill it with a bunch of cliche lines, that’ll do.
–want the best for you, I see all this potential, but you’re just–
I think Kate heard the “potential” line a lot from her mom. Don’t worry, Mama Leth, I’m sure it’ll all turn around now that Kate’s got her own original comic!
In the next panel she just walks out with the milk.
PRO TIP: Sarcasm doesn’t work well in comics, especially when your characters have unreadable expressions. If Leth wanted to keep the gag, she could’ve add the shop guy drink 40 cents worth of milk and then hand her the container. This would make Amie look like more of a sad sack - she can’t even buy milk without bad stuff happening to her!
But she’s not victimized, which would make us empathize with her. She doesn’t cleverly swindle the shop guy to get something for nothing, making us admire her. She simply gets the milk at a discount for no reason. A very feminist way to write a scene.
The “hah, not hah” joke is so bad I had to just walk away for a minute. And the art isn’t any better.
Panel 2, the fish bowl is in her left hand. Panel 3, she’s picking up the pan with her left hand. Panel 4, she’s using both hands to slam it onto the bad guy’s head. Panel 5, she’s holding the fish bowl again. Panel 7, she’s holding it in the other arm.
You’d think with an art style so simple, they could work out these inconsistencies. And this isn’t just nitpicking - errors like this make comics harder to follow visually, which makes them less fun. When everything works, you don’t notice it. When things don’t work, you start to wonder why you paid $3.99 for this shit.
This is entirely the artist’s fault because no comics writer ever scripts fight scenes in detail. I just sort of assumed the artist would be competent, since pairing Kate with a lazy artist seems like a bad idea, but…
There’s a big “4” on the mic. That’s consistent. But he says “Channel Twelve” in the dialogue. The lack of effort these cunts put into this comic is really amazing.
lol Katrina Leth
>brown and pink
(via eidolous)
