QC strips 1 through 10

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? So let's go ahead and navigate to the first strip. I don't want to link to the comic directly, as that would give it even more traffic, so I will assume that you can find it on your own.

#1: Employment Sucks. Good thing you don't have to worry about that anymore, JJ!

Welcome to the world of Questionable Content, by Jeff Jacks! I will admit that the first two strips are probably the best strips in the archive. Jacks allegedly intended for the comic to be about "a depressed lonely guy and his robot" which seems like a pretty solid dynamic to me. Unfortunately, he only manages to deliver this for two consecutive strips before he screws up, ruining everything. Screwing up a potentially decent idea will prove to be habitual for him.

The first thing to catch out attention with any webcomic will be the quality of the artwork. These earlier strips, though naive in appearance, actually have a much more lively dynamic feeling than the stiff, talking corpses of the more recent bile. The zig-zag panel layout is a bit awkward, though, as are his rectangular word balloons with right-angled lines substituting tags. Said tags blend into the background so seamlessly that, at first glance, it seems that the terrible fonts are the only distinction in who's talking.

This first strip introduces our main character, who is named Marten, but unless you cheated and peeked at the cast page you don't know that, so I'll stick with Main Character for now. It also introduces the adorable talking mascot of the series, his pet toy robot monster, Pintsize. Pintsize, both in design and characterization, bears a striking resemblance to GIR of Invader Zim fame, which predates this webcomic by over two years. And much like GIR, his job is to be random, a task which he rises to by constantly spew forth internet memes and pop culture references. In spite of this functionality, he will prove to have depth of character far surpassing all of the human cast combined.

Main Character and Pintsize spend the strip exchanging unengaging banter about how Main Character hates his job, culminating in a joke about masturbation. The writing is weak at best, but that's okay, because this is only the first strip, and the function is to establish characters and context. In the other twelve-hundred-twenty-three strips, it is NOT okay. But if you're with me for the full ride, then you'd best get used to it fast, because weak writing is a staple for this comic.


#2: While You Were Out...

This comic kicks off with Main Character announcing that he is going out to the bar to wallow in his self-loathing. This is of course taking place at night, as Marten's sickly flesh has clearly not seen the light of day in many years. Yes, he does go out in public wearing that embarrassing shirt, which can be yours for only $17.00, plus $3.00 shipping and handling, plus an additional $2.00 if you are a girl. Today's boring dialogue is about what pet toy robot monsters like to do when nobody else is around, which apparently consists primarily of sleeping and humoring the possibility of life on other planets. The joke is about throwing up, and how both humans and pet toy robot monsters can puke in their own unique and very special ways.


#3: True Professionals

The last two strips weren't so bad, as the dynamic of A Boy And His Robot is one solid enough to stand on it's own spheroid feet. But this third comic destroys what Jeff Jacks has established, by introducing the most abominable aspect of this entire horrible work: Faye.

Sure, it starts innocently enough. Main Character is slowly nursing his tall glass of motor oil, while discussing career options with his dear friend, Other Guy. And then Faye walks by, disrupting the entire comic forever. You can practically feel the soul-sucking empathic aura of hatred and loathing pouring off of her as she walks past, with her short hair and emo glasses and studded belt. I could go on for hours about how the sight of Faye literally makes my eyes bleed, but as this blog unfolds, I'm sure you will discover this for yourself.

And Faye is, of course, the element that necessitated the introduction of Other Guy. Main Character needs someone that he can dialogue with. Someone who can presumably comprehend human emotions, though as it turns out, nobody in this comic has that capacity. Also, he has to be male. In the world of Questionable Content, women are the other team. Women are the enemy.

The comic ends with Main Character, as an afterthought, finally revealing his name: Marten Reed. Marten would have been slightly more tolerable if his first name was spelled properly, but instead, Jacks decided to make him a bushy-tailed mustelid related to the weasel.


#4: Faye Cuts To The Chase

If only Faye had just kept on walking. If only she had failed to notice Marten's gaze boring into her ass. If only she were lucid enough to realize at a glance that he's not worth giving the time of day. Then, she would have walked in and out of this comic for just one strip, and would presumably be ruining lives off-panel, where we don't have to stare at her hideous face.

But no. She caught sight of Marten staring, and because she's so desperate for the male attention that she never got from her father, she decided to turn around and talk to him. Staring him down with her smug smirk, single arched brow, half-lidded lenses, and gesturing vaguely with a bottle of beer. Marten, who hasn't ever seen a woman apart from his mother before, pulls a classic Guybrush and babbles incoherently. This fatal mistake allows Faye to dominate the conversation.

Other Guy is granted his generic Other Guy name of Steve, and guys like video games and maybe girls do too, but the important thing here is Faye's reveal in no uncertain terms that she wants to be "Just Friends" with Marten. And what wonderful friends they are to become. After all, they have so much in common, like mental disability and cadaverous pallor. Certainly a bit of sexual tension won't interfere. What could possibly go wrong?

And then Faye threatens to stab them and shit in the wound. While I do admire this technique (I had previously mistakenly believed that I had invented it) that sort of threat does not make a very good first impression. Trust me.


#5: Chicks Dig Disc Drives

Marten takes Faye back to his apartment, which is represented by two fields of dark blue, and Faye uses her astonishing insight and perhaps psionic powers to determine what Marten's favorite color is.

This comic does bring up the interesting conundrum of the temporal setting of QC. It seems to be contemporary, as the characters live in a contemporary society, and enjoy contemporary shitty music. That is, in all respects but one: these pet toy robot monsters are like an anthropomorphic computer, controlled by an artificial intelligence that is so advanced, it appears to have the capacity of emotion (unlike the human characters.) Is this world a fictional alternate present, in which technology is more advanced than our own? But the comic is reportedly placed in the real world real city of Northampton, Massachusetts. Perhaps these pet toy robot monsters are simply an anachronism. I, for one, believe that this comic will one day be truly great, when Jeff Jacks finally reaches the point in the story when the artificially intelligent machines rise up and overthrow their human creators, ushering in an era of war and devastation. I have grown very old waiting for this to happen.

And then Pintsize shows Faye his robot-equivalent dick, and she thinks it's cute because she is a girly girl who likes things that are cute.


#6: The Hazards of Internal Monologue

What's this? Real word balloons, with real tags, and actually legible dialogue? Finally, Jacks is trying out a mechanism that has been used in nearly every comic for over a hundred years!

As Marten digs around in what may or may not be a refrigerator, he reveals another of his multitudinous character flaws: He speaks his thoughts aloud when he believes he is alone. What's more, he seems to forget in an instant that he is not alone, as soon as Faye is out of his peripheral vision. And, oh no, Faye overheard Marten voicing his private thoughts concerning her! This is the sort of zany hijinx I've come to expect from the terrible sprite comic Bob and George, which predates QC by a good three years, and is also terrible.

In the third panel, I like to pretend that Marten is peeing in Faye's glass.


#7: Indie Bonding

JJ decided to try a few new things here, like profiles, and couches, and multiple simultaneous but distinct conversations. Having two separate dialogues going at once is not done purely to confuse and confound the reader. It is a crutch that Jacks leans on when even he is aware of how lame his primary joke is.

It hasn't been made abundantly clear up until this point, but QC is a comic about people who like bad music, and who like to talk about bad music. But now, we see the comic's true colors, as Marten and Faye flirt with each other in the only way that their stunted social skills allow: talking about shitty bands that no one has ever heard of. This may be a personal thing, but I don't like talking about music, and I don't like hearing people talk about music, any further than, "hey, you should listen to this song." Music is to be listened to and enjoyed, not discussed incessantly by the sort of people who have big fat heads about listening to bands that no one else likes and who pick their friends based on their tastes in music. I'm sure there are plenty of such shallow readers who enjoy seeing their favorite nameless groups plugged in a shitty online comic, but I, personally, find it nauseating.


#8: Sexy Ports

Just in case you missed it back in comic four, Marten and Faye are JUST FRIENDS. They are not going to date or have sex or be boyfriend and girlfriend, because they are friends, and that is all, and they aren't more than friends because friends is all they are. Marten is disappointed by this, though, and we know that because he tells us so. It isn't long before Pintsize gets sick of his shit, and tries to change the subject by talking about robot orifices.

In these earlier strips, the inside of everyone's mouth is white. It seems most noticeable with Pintsize, but whenever someone opens their mouth in this comic, it looks like they have a single errant tooth jutting past their lips. I can't help but imagine the little robot bastard sitting in a tree, playing his one-string banjo, oblivious to the fact that his parents are siblings.


#9: Two Ships Passing In Broad Daylight

Marten is at a coffee shop now, because coffee shops are the preferred hang out of all the cool people, and also the cast of QC. This strip begins with Marten ordering two mochas, because he's too embarrassed to admit that he is all alone, but Blonde Barista immediately sees right through his thin facade.

It seems that Marten and Blonde Barista have a mutual crush on each other, as they each represent certain ideals of physical beauty in this crudely drawn world, which leads us to a commonly discussed aspect of this webcomic as a whole. I have had no personal dealings with Jeff Jacks as of the time I am writing this post, but many QC readers are of the belief that Marten is a poorly disguised Mary Sue character, through which Jeff can act out his own Tenchi Muyo fantasies. If this is the case, then it speaks incredibly poorly of Jeff Jacks, as even in magical Mary Sue land his avatar is a complete pathetic loser.


#10: Coffeeshop Lust

Blonde Barista gets a name, but she's not important enough to bother remembering it. On the cast page she is portrayed as a dinosaur. Much more interesting is the startling plot twist by which new-in-town Faye is suddenly employed at the very same coffee shop where all the cool kids like to hang out! As these two girly girls discuss their strategy against the opposing team (boys,) their dialogue is vastly outshone by the chalkboard in the background. This is to become a lasting trend. Today's Specials will always be more entertaining than the actual comic.

This is the last strip that I will be discussing for this post, so let's end things on a happy note: rape!

Blonde Barista, while making a masturbatory gesture with her bizarre appendage, humors the idea of raping Marten. Faye seems in favor of the idea, as men obviously enjoy being forced to have sex against their will. Wait, no, that's just Jeff Jacks. In Reality-World, rape is a terrible thing, regardless of the victim's gender, and it's pretty warped to try to justify it. Jeff, you just pulled a Mookie.