webcomics

"The sad and obvious truth of the matter is that art, once formalized or mechanized, is no longer art; and the few arts that have not been formalized are now being mechanized. There is no mystery or talent required to create "artistic" beauty; and if a talentless person can do it, why should we give any regard to those who require talent to produce the same result? John may spend a week painting a tree, but Jane will take a photograph, and then use a workshop program to make the picture appear painted. There is no visual art created before the last century that modern technology would not have allowed a less talented person to make better and faster. Let us be realistic and assume this trend will continue. There is nothing we can do to avoid the solemn fact that Michelangelos are no longer needed."

"Fuchsia: Did you really come down here to save me? Criminy: Yes. Well, no. Not to save you. Just to be with you."

"Fuchsia: Does it bother you that I'm a devil girl? That I have horns and a tail and shoot fire from my hands and the fact that I'm not normal in any way, shape or form whatsoever? Criminy: Only if it bothers you."

"The webcomics landscape looked incredibly different back then, with what comparatively few comics there were mostly being about video game humor, sporadically updated and crudely drawn. But Tatsuya Ishida's Sinfest stood out in that he was one of the few web cartoonists who seemed to know art, updated regularly, and didn't do tons of video game jokes that I didn't understand."

"Slick: Existence. I ponder it most ponderously. Monique: As do I. I am like Philosophocles."

"Criminy: I fortify myself with facts. Arm myself with information. Empower myself with wisdom… then I hide away."

"Blue: Your brain's turned to mush ever since you met him. Fuchsia: Him? Who? I don't know what you're taking about!"

"Xanthe: Bare midriff! Patriarchally sanctioned fashion trope that encourages the objectification of women!"

"Xanthe: And there will be justice."

"It took years and years for me to learn the value of the soft touch."

"Monique: Dear Congress. Hi! How ya doin'? Hope I'm not bothering you. Just wanted to ask a favor. Could you possibly, maybe, if it's not too much trouble… represent us???!"

"Seymour: You're in our schools! Our courts! Our ballparks! Our money! You're everywhere! God: I just want to be in your heart."

"Slick: Look, I don't know if you sent a million men to hell… but I do know for a fact that you pulled me out of there. Monique: I did? Slick: Yeah. Twice. So it all evens out."

"Slick: This world you created is a bust! It's a full-on hellhole! What gives?! God: Well, it's a sort of work in progress. It's open to interpretation and functions on multiple levels."

"Slick: There's nothing wrong with admiring the female form… Xanthe: No mansplaining. Slick: "Mansplaining"? Xanthe: You are awash in male privilege and heteronormative assumptions about gender performativity. Slick: Hetero what? Xanthe: Heteronormative assumptions about gender performativity. Slick: In English, please?"

"Fuchsia: Would you ever take a bullet for me? Criminy: Yes… I believe I would…"

"Pooch: You're back! You were gone, and now you're back! Percy: Yeah, yeah. Don't make a big deal of it."

"Monique: Are You Catholic? Protestant? Baptist? Muslim? Hindu? What are You? God: Labels…"

"Slick: What do you want? Name it and I'll get it for you! Monique: World peace. Slick: You got it! Wait here! [On phone] Hello? Sinister shadow government responsible for all the wars in human history? Stop it!"

"Xanthe: This is the patriarchy. A social-interactive construct that bombards us with misogyny."

"Xanthe: Pornography and prostitution are the main pillars of male supremacy and must be eradicated for the liberation of women everywhere."

"The Devil: You're just jealous cuz I'm more popular than you. God: Talk to the hand."

"The first seven years it was coffee and revenge. That's what kept me going. My attitude was, "I'll show them. I'll show them all!""

"Squigley: I only eat to fill the emptiness in my life. It's how I fend off the despairing angst of my meaningless existence. Monique: Pass the fries."

"Monique: People think I'm a demon… Slick: God thinks I'm a monster."

"Seymour: God is a benevolent ruler! Lil' Evil: Don't believe the hype."

"Seymour: [shouting] Praise the Lord! Go to church! Save your soul! Repent now! God is watching! The Devil: [to God] You need better representation."

"Slick: Christmas… Chanukkah… Kwanzaa, Agnostica, Ramadan, Boxing Day. Monique: Let's celebrate them all!"

"Centrists are like: "extremism is dangerous on both sides, that's why I support the moderate, reasonable, non-extreme system where like 12 dudes own half the world.""

"The horror of socialized healthcare is that people have to wait in line to get surgery. The horror of free market healthcare is that the poor don't get surgery at all, and they die. Which of these two things you find more horrifying says a lot about you."

"Under capitalism you are supposed to have the freedom to work where you want. In a massive coincidence though, almost everyone wants to work at the same place: "wherever is hiring because I need to pay rent.""

"When conservatives talk about how much they hate communism, you can usually replace the word "communism" with "equality" and get closer to what they really mean."

"It's amazing how many people want to go back in time and kill baby Hitler. Like, why not just teach him to not be antisemitic as a child? You know he learned that shit right? He didn't have Jew-hating encoded into his DNA."

"Liberal politicians don't get into politics to fight against to wealthy elite, they get into politics to join the wealthy elite. They will never be real allies with the left."

"The free market pays people based on how much value they contribute, which is why nurses, grocery store workers, farmers, and other essential workers have all gotten around a $0 raise during the pandemic, and the richest people on earth who own everything have gained billions."

"So it turns out that all billionaires hate communism. Weird coincidence, I wonder why? Probably because billionaires are all super smart and they figured out how communism is bad."

"The funny thing about "colleges are brainwashing students into communism" conspiracy theories is that they take as a premise that if you so much as read and understand Marx you'll become a communist. In other words, that Marx is irrefutably correct. Which is, of course, true."

"Rent is a tax that poor people pay to rich people for the right to live in society."

"Every single large corporation is 100% on the side of the police. Don't let their fake solidarity tweets fool you for a second. They don't care how many black people get killed, they know the police exist to protect their hoarded wealth."

"If there was a sci-fi novel with a megalomaniac billionaire who was the son of an Apartheid emerald mine owner [referencing Elon Musk], and he was privatizing space exploration so the public no longer has a say in it... you know that would be considered bad, right? The heroes would fight to stop SpaceX."

"Capitalists during the good times: "we took all the risk, so we deserve all the profit!" Capitalists during the bad times: "uh yeah, our risk didn't pay off, we need a bailout.""

"A whole lot of people who get all their information about socialism directly from wealthy capitalists who own the media seem to think socialists are the ones who are brainwashed."

"Conservatives are always like "Free healthcare? What's next? Free college? Free housing? Free food? Walking past a homeless person without looking down on them with scorn??""

"The greatest trick capitalist propaganda ever pulled was convincing people that "freedom" meant something like "being able to choose between 27 different flavors of ice cream", and not "having the material conditions of life allow for the pursuit of your own creative potential"."

"[Referencing COVID-19 pandemic] If the economy is crashing because people can't work, i don't understand why the entrepreneurs don't just create more wealth. i've been told for years that they are the wealth creators. What is the matter? Do they need the workers or something?"

"If every billionaire on earth stopped working, nobody would even notice. If every billionaire's workers stopped working, society would collapse. We don't need them. They need us."

"Socialists: "We want more democracy. Democracy at work, democracy in politics, democracy over resources, and democracy over the media." Capitalists, for some reason: "this is a threat to democracy.""

"Environmentalists: "global warming will cause a catastrophe in 50 years unless we do something drastic." Capitalists: "eh, we'd rather not, that sounds expensive." Enlightened centrist: "let's tax the rich 3% more and have the planet die in 55 years.""

"If I woke up tomorrow and my boss told me that today at my job I had to shoot rubber bullets and throw tear gas at people protesting racism because one of my coworkers killed someone in cold blood, I would simply quit that job and do something useful like stock grocery shelves."

"When billionaires say they "worked hard" to get to where they are, remember that if you added up all the work it took to create that billion, their own personal labor would be something like 0.001% of it. The rest was done by their workers. No one works for a billion dollars."