On a whim, late Monday night, I decided to end my comic, The Perfect Villain. Actually, it wasn’t a whim. This thing has been building up for a long time. However, the decision to actually end the comic was a sudden one.

If you’ve been following me and my website for quite some time, you can see that something like this was bound to happen. I’ve taken a few hiatuses, and have been lacking in updates. The biggest hint was when I tried to make Majestic my main comic. In fact, Majestic has been listed above TPV in my Comics drop-down menu ever since then. Majestic’s just a plain better comic than TPV. I’ve liked it better. Others have expressed that they like it better.

So, why is TPV not as good as Majestic? I used to think TPV didn’t live up to its full potential because I didn’t update it consistently. Yet, I hardly update Majestic at all, and I still consider it better. Inconsistent updates weren’t the reason nobody read TPV. To understand this, I have to delve into why I didn’t update it consistently.

The whole second in command contest was the worst mistake. I consider my first comic to be the worst comic, but I can understand it since it was the first. There was still room to improve. However, the second in command contest didn’t give room to improve. It introduced too many characters, making it impossible to develop any of them. Meanwhile, with the concurrent storyline, I was getting perhaps a little development going with Goemon. For the longest time, I lamented having too many characters. It made it harder to think of new comics since I didn’t have any real characters to drive the plot.

I already planned to kill off the characters, to make the story tighter. However, on Monday, I changed my mind. I decided it would be better to kill the comic. I hadn’t actually considered the option before, weighing the costs and benefits. In the end, I decided to kill the comic because it wasn’t just the characters driving the comic down.

In fact, the comic was driven down from the beginning. Originally, The Perfect Villain was intended to satirize villains from game and movies by creating a character that didn’t have their major flaws. I wrote a few strips based off that, but didn’t actually get around to using any of them. (Actually, I did manage to incorporate making fun of the “dark” theme of many villains.) Instead, I went into the Evil Lair Idea, and the comic devolved from there.

I effectively limited myself by deriving the title first, but what really limited me was the plot. The plot was never great. Hey, it’s a sprite comic. The plot can never be great. The comic became the equivalent of rambling. And if you’ve read some of my entries, you know how I despise rambling. The comic had no direction. One step in front of the other, with no destination in mind. Perhaps things would’ve turned out differently if I’d stuck with my original idea and not had any plot. But hey, that’s what happens when you improvise from square one.

The seeds have been there a long time. Yet, why did I suddenly decide to kill the comic on Monday. Well, this was the catalyst:

Reviewed by: UberMan5000

Overall Rating: 3

Comments:

Chalk up The Perfect Villain on the miles-long list of spritecomics with nothing to offer. The main character is a stick figure that can’t move, his minions are insipid, his adversaries are all vastly incompetent and bland (except maybe Goemon, but that’s still a bit of a stretch), and the comic itself is crudely constructed, the backgrounds composed of random circles and polygons and the talk balloons totally nonexistant (the author merely uses different fonts arranged in disjointed patterns). It probably took the author (whoever the hell he is) ten minutes a piece to construct each action-packed episode, concept to completion!

The storylines share the crudity of the comic’s presentation. The comic opens up with an obligatory “I’m the Perfect Villain, hear me roar” kind of comic, then he finds a lair, finds a second-in-command (who’s nothing more then a wise-ass scribble) who he picked through rounds of Family Feud, Match Game, Jeapordy, and a gauntlet that went for over 60 comics. He then rounds up a hoard of cut-and-paste Yoshis for his hoard of minions. A very bad-looking inverted sprite of Mario from Mario RPG named “Captain Nova” (because he glows) vainly tries to foil this perfect villain. Ness offers him a ride in his glob of circles that he calls a submarine. He then abandons him, has a dialogue with the narrator (fourth-wall breaching, classic). Captain Nova then gets caught in Goemon’s spider web and they set off to find The Perfect Villain’s lair. The rest of the story isn’t even worth talking about.

I’ve read through all 109 comics in the archives so that you don’t have to. Psycho-Ward.org can pay for as much ad space as they want, but all they need to do is make this comic tolerable to get some viewers and gain my respect. Avoid this comic until they get their act together, but you’ll probably be dead by then.

As I read it, I wasn’t mad. I realized it was almost all true. I appreciate everything he said (except: “but you’ll probably be dead by then”). I needed this. I needed someone to confirm these lingering thoughts I’ve had for a long time.

I’ve said before, “If this wasn’t my comic, I wouldn’t vote for it.” I shouldn’t have continued a comic if I really wasn’t that proud of it. It took me a while, but I finally realized that yesterday.

If I didn’t believe in the comic, why did I keep doing it? Part of it has to do with Peter Pan, I think. No, that’s not a complete non sequitur. You see, TPV’s mode of humor is definitely younger. It’s definitely less mature. And you know what, I think that comforted me. In TPV, I never had to grow up. Well, now I’ve outgrown TPV. I’ve matured, and my humor has matured. TPV has not matured with me. Granted, I think some of the later episodes have better comedic timing, but they’re still not as good.

Let me give another story. I’ve mentioned before how Urchin quit Sakana Yama. What I haven’t mentioned is that he came back. And then, he soon thereafter quit again. He said he didn’t find his work funny. Now, Urchin didn’t have the same problem with characters that I did, but I think he outgrew his work too. He outgrew the coarse random humor.

Even though I don’t think TPV is that great anymore, I have no regrets. It was a learning experience. Practically no one is successful with their first comic. I learned some valuable lessons. I learned that too many characters can kill. I am more familiar with my photo editing programs. I learned pixel editing and patience. I know all about the PNG graphical format. I learned a bit of discipline and time management. My greatest lesson from TPV, however, is what not to do. I know not to make another The Perfect Villain comic.

I don’t think any of it was a waste of time. I did make some people laugh. I don’t think TPV was in the bottom 1% of comics. I think it was at least at the 2% level. Even though it’s not great, I’m still proud of it. Some episodes didn’t take long to make, but there were still over 100 comics. That does add up.

Next time, however, my comic will be higher than the 2% level, and the amount of time spent on it (especially planning) will increase exponentially. Look forward to my next comic.