Description:  This comic featured various ready-made pictures that I found
online.  It documented the journey of an elderly white man as he embarked on a
religious quest to rid the world of evil.  With its minimalist aesthetic,
combined with the lack of traditional punch-lines, I can only assume that my
intent was to emulate the irreverent Dadaist style of Red Meat, or Aqua-Teen
Hunger Force.  In reality, it comes across more like Tom Goes to the Mayor:
awful and hackneyed.

Assessment:  The somewhat avant-garde lack of punch-lines definitely succeeds in
stopping the comics from being funny.  The material is completely nonsensical,
and exudes the sort of forced kookiness that can be found on the Tom Green Show
and the web-journals of Tool fans.  Nominal religious humor is incorporated for
cheap laughs.

Penance:  50 Hail Mary’s, then I have to drink an entire fridge-pack of
Coca-Cola, and watch reruns of Super Milk Chan until I puke.

***

Comic:  Elitist Mr. Cutie-Face

Description:  This single-panel comic features an ugly round thing saying
something disparaging about Deconstructionism.  The humor is derived from the
fact that these two dissimilar things, cute little critters and snide
intellectual commentary, are juxtaposed against one another.

Assessment:  The title of this comic is a travesty, and I hate it.  If the
phrase “Mr. Cutie-Face” appeared on television, I would punch my fist through
the screen, which would electrocute me, quite possibly even kill me, but I
would not care.  I would gladly die so that the name “Mr. Cutie-Face” would be
heard by fewer people in this world.  The comic itself is not that funny,
although it could be in the right context.  If I were to see a two second clip
of this in the middle of a sketch comedy show, without any explanation, I would
probably think it was very funny.  As it stands now, however, it is pointless,
annoying, and humorless.

Penance:  I will read the complete works of Jacques Derrida, but it’s possible
that I would have done that anyway…

***

Comic:  Idiots in the Snow

Description:  This comic consists of a series of photographs that may or may not
have been found on somebody’s personal homepage.  Through the insertion of
insipid and nonsensical dialogue, I attempted to transform the figures in these
photographs into comically absurd characters.  Instead, it seems like a series
of unrelated captions envisioned and executed by a particularly dense
thirteen-year-old with a vocabulary deficiency.

Assessment:  This is quite possibly the work that I revile the most, and
consider it my most shameful contribution to internet trash.  The dialogue is
some of the most terrible that I have ever read.  It would be a challenge for
even the most puerile idiot on the most loathsome message board imaginable to
create something more stupefying and uninspired.  I had no idea what to write
in the captions as I was creating it, but I tried to preserve that spontaneity
in hopes that it would achieve a sort of art-by-chance overtone for the whole
piece.  Instead, it is completely transparent, and painfully obvious that I was
simply regurgitating whatever kind of reprehensibly stupid crap popped into my
head.  This is a discredit to humanity.

Penance:  I will lie freezing in the icy mountains of Norway forever, and each
day I will have my liver eaten out, over and over again, by that jackass with
the clown nose in the second panel.

***

Comic:  Insanity

Description:  Two “stylized” stick drawings stand in opposition to another.  One
of them tells a somewhat lackluster joke, which sends his companion into peals
of maniacal laughter, which consummate in his eventual demise.  The simplistic
drawings and dark humor are evocative of Johnen Vasquez or Don Hertzfeld, only
worse, making the whole comic seem like a sycophantic rip-off of either of
their work.

Assessment:  The character design is not terrible, although since it was drawn
in Microsoft Paint, it looks sloppy and rushed.  Also, the second-to-last panel
is nothing short of eye-wrenching, and completely unintelligible.  The ending is
predictably morose, and it’s nothing that your average LiveJournal user couldn’t
have dreamt up.  I would say this is mediocre at best, and more than a little
obnoxious.

Penance:  I will spend one full day hanging out with a group of angsty
high-schoolers as the listen to Mindless Self Indulgence and watch The
Nightmare Before Christmas, after which I will criticize their sub-culture and
kill them in a cartoonishly brutal fashion.

***

Comic:  Hate

Description:  A pink rabbit-like creature suffers various excruciating deaths.
He is supposedly guilty of some sort of ineffable crime, and the reader,
ideally, would enjoy seeing him punished and killed for the horrific atrocities
that he has committed.  The deaths are elaborate and disturbing, and the
creature is perpetually chipper.  Often, because of the low quality of the
drawings, he resorts to describing how he is being executed in an excited,
upbeat voice, peppered with little idiosynchratic sound effects.

Assessment:  I remembered thinking that this was the worst comic of all, but
upon retrospect, I believe that it is only marginally terrible.  When I read
these comics for a second time I found myself laughing at them!  This is
strange, considering that this comic series has a number of fundamental flaws.
Firstly, there is no justification for the violence committed against the
mysterious figure in these pictures.  The reader is supposed to hate it, yet is
given no reason to.  In later installments, attempts were made to remedy this,
but they were all clearly forced and ineffective.  Secondly, the drawings are
some of the most offensively bad that I have ever seen.  They are quick, almost
formless scrawls, so poorly rendered that dialogue is required to explain their
contents.  Characters change in size and dimension from one installment to the
next, and there is no attention paid to perspective or composition.  Although I
recalled it being far worse than it actually is, this is still an immensely bad
comic.

Penance:  Well, the obvious thing to do would be to suffer the same fates that I
inflicted on the Hate rabbit, but they are all so unbearably cruel.  I’d rather
just do something nice for the Hate rabbit, like draw him getting some ice
cream.

***

Comic:  Serious Issues

Description:  A troubled youth contemplates using a firearm against his
intrascholastic tormentors.  After some deliberation, he is suddenly shot dead
in his own home by the quarterback of the football team.

Assessment:  This is the one comic that I am actually proud of.  The drawings
are impressive for having been done in Microsoft Paint, and the punch-line is
reasonably funny.

Penance:  None.  Good job.

***

With the exception of the last one listed, I apologize whole-heartedly for
creating these comics, and extend my deepest condolences to anyone who may have
read them.  I know that there is no way that I can make you un-read them, but
perhaps knowing that I am flagellating myself in shame will be consolation
enough.  If anyone still feels unvindicated, you may feel free to punch me in
the stomach next time you see me in public.

In the future, you can expect nothing but the best from me.  In the days to come
the name Jesse T will become synonymous with work of the utmost quality.  I
promise you, the internet, improved humor, complete self-awareness, and
meticulous care.  Anyone who accidentally stumbles across this unsolicited
tripod site while searching for Humiliation/Throatjob Porn will be astonished
by the craft and artistry that I have poured into my writing.  This I solemnly
swear.