What is there to say about a webcomic like Ctrl+Alt+Delete? It’s bad. Everyone knows it’s bad. It’s always been bad. But maybe back in its heyday you read it. Back in a simpler time when social media platforms were still a relatively new concept and webcomics ruled the internet. Maybe you even bought the books or one of the t-shirts with ten million words on it. Maybe you actually watched the horrendously animated cartoon show. It was a different time. The Internet was still a precious tiny baby with nothing on it. We had no choice. We didn’t even have Twitter back then. Shit was fucked.
It took us a surprisingly long time to realise that it sucks. It was wordy as all hell, more than half the time the punchline was just somebody swearing or doing something violent, the characters were boring and one-dimensional (angry nerd boy, sarcastic nerd boy, sarcastic nerd girl, sarcastic angry robot, reclusive man with pet penquin, sarcastic boss, annoying coworker, I can’t remember any others because who gives a shit), it was badly written and riddled with typos, all the characters look exactly the same:
and the creator - Tim Buckley, who we’ll get to later - was allegedly an arrogant dickhead whose livelihood just wasn’t worth supporting.
But even when we did realise it sucked, we kept reading. Why, you ask? WELL, FRIEND,
because every now and then it would do something fantastically fucking stupid. In case you somehow don’t recognise the above comic strip “Loss” from the millions of edits that have been made since its release in 2008, this thrice-weekly webcomic about unlikeable boring characters making trite video game references and fart jokes did a storyline in which one of the main characters had a miscarriage. It was extremely off-key, misguided, weird, bad, creepy and, ultimately, the funniest thing he’s ever created.
The news/blurb section that accompanies the now legendary meme Loss comic contained a long justification for this bizarre tonal shift. He basically wanted to flesh out these characters so that they weren’t just one-dimensional XBox-mocking fart-talkers anymore. Which is fair enough! As an artist, it’s good to evolve and improve your craft. However, YOU COULDN’T THINK OF A MORE APPROPRIATE AND GRADUAL WAY TO DO THIS, TIM? REALLY???
The blurb also contained the statement “A miscarriage is definitely not a joke, and I have no intention of making light of it. And it can be a tough and emotional thing for couples to go through, speaking from personal experience. And I know that it’s often much harder on the woman than on the man. However, I also know that it doesn’t necessarily turn you into a sad, depressed sack of tears for the rest of your life. People can move past it, and heal.”
That’s great advice, Tim. Have you considered becoming a professional counsellor? Thank god I read this gag-every-other-day webcomic about owning n00bs to get me through these tough times. I NEVER would have considered that a miscarriage could be harder on the person HAVING THE MISCARRIAGE than on me. You really opened my eyes, you fuckin dingus.
CAD has also featured a bunch of other weird controversies like this joke he did when main character Ethan was building a human suit for his robot pal Zeke who was made of an XBox so he could go out in public:
Just some casual racism. That’s fine.
Or what about when he wanted to add a new character who was a punk girl so he just Google Image Searched “punk girl” and wholesale copied the first illustration he came across without paying or crediting or acknowledging the artist in any way?
He also, bizarrely, did a really strange melodramatic storyline in which Zeke (the robot) went mad and created a Bad Future in which he enslaved humanity and MURDERED Lilah (the miscarriage-haver). This storyline ended with Ethan (miscarriage-adjacent main character) SACRIFICING HIS OWN LIFE to stop the Bad Future from happening. Bizarrely, this was not the end of the webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Delete. It continued as a video game parody strip without any recurring characters or overarching plot. Because I dunno.
These are just some highlights. Please feel free to post your own favourite CAD moments in the thread. That’s what it’s for. Let’s Get Into It.
I mentioned earlier that CAD’s creator Tim Buckley, pictured above looking very tough and cool, was a bit of a jaghole. Again, some highlights:
- Notoriously hard to work with. Had feuds with other webcomic artists, was rude to creators and fans alike at cons. Unprofessional and arrogant.
- As mentioned, frequently ripping off other creators via ripping off their character designs, but also stealing photographs and blurring them and using them as backgrounds.
- He once sent a dick pic to an underage girl.
- He once punched his roommate’s girlfriend because she asked him to take the trash out.
- Other stuff, probably. Who gives a shit. Fuck this guy.
Anyway despite being a piece of shit made by a piece of shit, the webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Delete is still going strong. We used to have an ongoing thread of CAD Mock Threads on Something Awful before the mods decreed fun to be illegal. So let’s get back into it. Let’s all together dive headfirst back into this goddamn shitshow. It’s been too long. Let’s talk about new CAD comics as they come out, and reminisce about our old favourites. Post your favourite Loss.jpg parodies! Your favourite Tim Buckley stories! Which strip made you stop reading Ctrl+Alt+Delete back in the day? (Mine was one where Ethan waxes philosophical on what if they lived in a universe where farts were visible and his sarcastic friend Lucas says he thinks Ethan is either crazy or a genius or something) What are some BETTER webcomics we could be reading? Let’s chat. I’ve missed this.
THREAD RULES:
DON’T BE CREEPY. THAT’S WHAT GOT US SHUT DOWN IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Example of acceptable behaviour:
“I met Ctrl+Alt+Delete creator Tim Buckley at Comic-Con once. He was a rude jerk.”
Example of don’t do this:
“I thought I saw Ctrl+Alt+Delete creator Tim Buckley at Walmart earlier. I followed him to make sure. Here’s a photo of his house:”
Mod Notice: Safari Rules are in effect. This means:
- No intentionally contacting the subjects of mock in any way, shape, or form. This means no emailing them, no posting in their comments section, no tweeting their grandma, nothing.
- Violatons of this rule will be dealt with harshly.
