Webcomic Review Article Advice/Critique

DarrenForest

Recently, I've tried writing once every fortnight to help me "keep in a writing mood" for my novel project, and I've recently written my first review here. Spoilers, it's a review of Penny Arcade.

My thought process behind it is I should start with something either horrible, or almost perfect. Seeing as I didn't want to get spammed death threats and viruses that somehow cause technological immolation combined with high-volume declarations of the genitalia of male youth, I decided on Penny Arcade.

However, it's been over a week and a half and I haven't gotten any advice from others, so it's safe to say nobody cares over there. Then I recalled that when I asked for outline advice there were plenty that assisted me before, so if anyone can help me sort out a more efficient way to write articles about webcomics, it would be much appreciated. This includes sorting out any erroneous facts, also. It'd be bad if I ended up describing Tycho's character incorrectly or some such 'blasphemous' thing.

Also of note: I've decided against a works cited segment for the articles since I was trying to go for an "Internet newspaper article" format. If anyone thinks that's a bad idea, please let me know.

Fletcher

This certainly isn't bad or anything, but it also isn't really a review either. It really reads more as a description of what penny arcade is, rather than any kind of analysis or judgment of the comic's actual content

It seems like if you want to make this work, you'd be better off keeping the descriptive element at the beginning, then going into waaaay more detail about why you think the comic succeeds or fails in different areas. The penny arcade article's only judgment calls seem to be "the art has gotten better" and "they are crude but that is okay"

it may also help to use images (if you legally can) to illustrate examples of how the art has changed, or certain aspects of it you like, or a joke you found particularly effective etc.

hope some of that helps a little bit!

(also you spelled weirdo incorrectly)

LoveIsUnity

If you have to explain that you're making a joke, you should do a better job of making that joke instead of offering an explanation. The last paragraph also isn't funny, but at least you don't explain that you're being hyperbolic.

I'm not quite sure what the focus of your review is here as it is pretty all over the place. It's clear that you like it, but that isn't really valid criticism. Why is it good? Is it good because the personalities behind the comic seem interesting? It seems like you wanted to write about how cool Mike and Jerry are but you realized 2/3 of the way through that you needed to actually provide a critique.

Druhim

There's so much wrong with your "review". As has already been pointed out, it's not really a review for starters. It's just you talking about PA. The first four paragraphs are pointless and should be removed. We don't want to read a fictional internal dialogue about why you decided to review webcomics and why you decided to review PA specifically. Especially since it appears the reason is that you can't think of anything better to do. So in the first four paragraphs you've already done an excellent job of convincing me you have nothing to say worth reading.

I'd say the whole piece is so fundamentally bad that you need to take some some basic courses in writing at a local community college (assuming you're out of primary education). Also you should re-evaluate why you're doing this. You aren't going to get famous by reviewing webcomics, especially since you don't know how to write. That and no one's really going to want to read you vomiting up a bunch of facts about PA. Again, that's not a review. The whole thing reads like a book report written by an 8 year old kid.

TychoCelchuuu

I think your best bet at this point is a 'tude adjustment: your post here and your comic review all are chock full of incidental details about yourself that don't end up being relevant to anything you've written. There's nothing wrong with autobiographical details, even in H/A posts or webcomic reviews, but they need to say something rather than just waste our time.

For example, it is not "Also of note that you've "decided against a works cited segment for the articles since [you were] trying to go for an "Internet newspaper article" format." That's not of note. Nobody cares about your works cited section. When you're writing, you don't want to be engaged in some sort of masturbatory ejaculation of words onto the page (or in this case screen). You only want to be writing down stuff that needs to be there. How do you know what needs to be there? It sure as shit isn't the first thing that comes to mind. It's what your audience needs to read for your point to get across. You need to read your prose with an eye towards what can be cut because it's not contributing to your objective. This of course entails an objective, and if you don't have any reason for writing in the first place, you should reconsider whether you should be writing, or at least whether you should bother showing it to anyone when you're done.

Delete it all, take a step back, and think for a moment. What is it you want to say? What do you want people to feel like after having read what you've written? What's the end goal? Once you've got that clearly in mind, write your stuff, and now read it with an eye towards that goal. Are there any words, sentences, or paragraphs that aren't helping the reader see whatever you want them to see? Delete it. Don't add funny side notes or incidental explications of your thought process or detailed explanations for the lack of a full bibliography unless you have a damn good reason for thinking these are going to be extremely relevant to your central point.

Buy The Elements of Style and read it until you don't get such mean replies to your posts on these forums. That's step 1.