Final Four of Mix March Madness 2012 Webcomics Tournament–Vote Now!
UPDATE: Round Six has closed…
Vote in the March Madness Finals now!
Round 6! It’s the semifinals and we’re down to the Final Four!
And now it’s beginning to look like an average installment of Game Of Thrones or Strikeforce Morituri, with favorites dropping all over the place. The big games were Order Of The Stick beating xkcd, followed by the huge surprise upset of Gunnerkrigg Court over Questionable Content, which knocked everybody’s Final Four picks out, so nobody wins the $50 gift card from Amazon for picking the Final Four.
We remind you that our four remaining contenders will get at least $25, and whoever make it to the finals will get $50, with the grand prize winner walking away with $100.
Round 6 starts right now, and ends this Wednesday night, April 4, at 11:59 PM, Eastern Daylight Time. We’re down to four contestants, and we get to see who makes it to the big game and who walks away. Go vote!
To see the previous divisions and how they finished, click here, or look at our directory for all the nominated webcomics.
Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament Final Four
| [poll id=”214″] | [poll id=”215″] |
Hat tip: BracketMaker.com
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Gunnerkrigg Court is winning with 79% of the vote! That seems totally sustainable to me! Gogogo!
Goblins vs OOTS would be a tougher choice for me, except that I really want to see the Goblins’ world map.
lol
Remember: the REAL matchup here is Gunnerkrigg vs Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff:
(maybe nsfw)http://www.mspaintadventures.com/sweetbroandhellajeff/
I agree with this Statement.
He’ll be posting the chart of stuff and the map whether he wins or not.
This would be a hard choice for me, but I want that Olive Garden.
GO OOTS!
As for GKC vs MSPA, I’m going to vote for MSPA since I haven’t actually read GKC. And also because I doubt that GKC can have anything rivaling [S] Cascade.
If I’m making a huge mistake, tell me why, please!
Oh shit why did I say that
I don’t think you’re making a mistake. For me, it basically comes down to this: out of all the webcomics I follow, MSPA updates are the ones I look forward to the most. BUT! Gunnerkrigg Court is a strong number two on that list. I strongly recommend that you check it out; it’s a really great comic.
I really do intend to, once I have less on my plate. As it is, I’m working on a bunch of different things already (most of them Minecraft-related, TBH), and I want to finish those before going on an archive binge.
You can read the entirety of Gunnerkrigg in under 12 hours. I highly recommend it! Don’t delay!!
Alright.
I promise to start it by the end of today. :P
If you haven’t read GKC, then why are you voting for MSPA?
What’s the point in voting for one comic over another when you haven’t read both? All that does is turn this into “What webcomic advertises itself the best” instead of “What webcomic is the best” which defeats the entire purpose of the tournament.
Well, that’s true.
It’s just that I like MSPA enough that I’m fairly confident in voting it; I have yet to see anything as awesome as [S] Cascade.
You have a good point, though. And that’s why I felt kind of guilty about that decision.
Well so long as people discover new comics they enjoy, I’d say the tourney is a success, regardless of who wins.
I’d never even heard of Goblins before I found this thing. Now I guess I’ll need to read through OOTS and Goblins to see if I like them.
I just read through GC. There is nothing as awesome as [S] Cascade.
However, it’s definitely up there in my top bunch of comics. I still feel like my votes for MSPA and QC were the right ones, although I agree that GC deserves to be here.
I’m a href=”http://www.goblinscomic.com/08172006/”>here in Goblins, and so far, I like it the least of the final four comics. I’d rather see QC in that slot, but it lost its battle with GC. I’m pulling for MSPA for the win, but I’d be happy with anything but Goblins at this point. of my (as of now) 5 favorite comics, 3 are in the final 4, and 2 of them got knocked out last round by other favorites.
“Well so long as people discover new comics they enjoy, I’d say the tourney is a success, regardless of who wins.”
This. This tournament is what introduced me to OOTS and GC. Thanks to whoever it was who recommeded GC to me in the previous poll’s discussion.
Don’t worry, Goblins Will get better from that. Much better, and quite fast too. The beginning is kind of horrible, but it soon finds some depth and meaning. Do not give up just yet.
I didn’t think the point of the tournament was to determine which one was “best”. If we wanted that, we would have had this tournament made under very specific conditions in which with each matchup we sampled the opinions of a few hundred people… and also… a tournament format is the worst format to do it in.
No, I’m fairly certain this is to determine which comic is the most popular. And even then it isn’t the best way to determine that. Also, the comic that “advertises itself the best” still might not get a majority of the votes in a popularity contest. Not to mention that people who only casually read comics probably aren’t aware of this tournament and haven’t been represented very well in the votes. I’d like to note that unless Goblins doesn’t have a story-line, all four of the comics in the final four are comics which are intended to be read as a whole. You could probably argue that you wouldn’t have to do that to enjoy OOTS, but even then… it still has a story-line. I’m sure if people who didn’t read Webcomics more than once a week were represented better, we would likely have seen xkcd, Cyanide and Happiness, and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal make it past the rounds they lost in. Yes. I’m saying Cyanide and Happiness could have beaten Homestuck. I know. Blasphemy as far as the Homestuck fanbase is concerned. But I doubt a casual reader like that would be able to enjoy Homestuck. It would be really hard for them to slog through thousands of pages. Meanwhile, Cyanide and Happiness’s potty humor and such is very easy to read only once a week and if you read a bunch of them at once when you’re in the mood for it, you find them very entertaining.
I’m pretty sure this is just for fun! And also, to get the names of some great webcomics out there. OOTS I had read before, but never really got past about page 100. Knowing it made it this far in a tournament like this made me want to re-read it, and now I’m enjoying it quite a bit. GKC and Goblins I hadn’t heard of at all before this tournament. I haven’t had a chance to look at Goblins yet, but I’m already enjoying the heck out of GKC. Heck, I gave it my vote this round. (As enticing as Hussies gift card idea is, I figured GKC might be able to put the money to better use. And again, the tournament is for fun. It won’t actually determine much of anything as far as which comics are the best or most popular.)
So yeah… I don’t think anyone has to feel guilty or wrong about voting against a comic they haven’t read. :/
This is an excellent comment.
More than anything, yeah, I think this tournament is a way of exposing people to new comics. I definitely don’t go out -searching- for new web-comics to read, and most of the time if I start a new one, it’s after an author I know has plugged it. So this is a pretty new manner of comic discovery for me, and I find it highly interesting. I just have to make sure I don’t get myself caught up in reading too many of these comments; the venom some people spit out somewhat discourages me from reading the comic they support — but I know that’s no valid basis for judging the actual content of a comic.
Disregarding the specifics, the fact that some people can have so much particular hatred toward a web-comic just because they didn’t find it entertaining is…unsettling. If one has that much energy to put forth toward dissing something that didn’t even hold their interest for them to read through in entirety, I’m loathe to consider what aggression they can muster toward things that actually matter. Then again, maybe these sections are just full of trolls; that seems much more likely. xD
Back to the original point — I’d say you’re definitely right. Casual readership makes much less of an appearance in this tournament. I didn’t even know about this competition until the previous round, haha, and save for perhaps Goblins, it takes some digging to be able to even find out about this competition through the actual comics involved. Noting that the tournament seems to favor comics with entire plots versus a ‘weekly wit’ or some such approach was a good observation, too. (Guess that goes with the lack of casual representation, somewhat.)
tl;dr (because even I’m tired of my rambling): I agree!
Until I was introduced to Homestuck (quite recently), I was what I would consider a ‘casual reader’. Part of my morning routine was to run through a list of maybe 8-10 comics as I ate breakfast. If an update was late, I just waited until I had a chance to read the update. If I wasn’t in the mood, I didn’t read that morning, and had a bonus the next.
My list of comics included QC, Dr. McNinja, Girls with Slingshots, Diesel Sweeties (which I have since stopped reading for reasons beyond my control, and haven’t felt like catching up), and Goats, during the brief overlap between my introduction to the webcomic and when it stopped updating (It’s coming back!!!!!!!!).
All of these I’d argue are comics that require a lot of effort to get into (When I started QC, it was at least 1500 pages in). Of course, when I came across a comic that looked interesting, I filed it away to wait for an appropriate time, then added it to my routine when I got caught up. Someone who flips through a half-dozen comics or so at lunch would seem to me as casual a reader as someone reading the funnies in the paper.
What might be the best would be if each comic participating added a link to the site during the first week of competition, or made a mention of it in a newspost, like SMBC’s daily posts (often consisting of random sound effects like ‘FOOMP’). That way, casual readers would get a chance to hear about the competition, and we might see a more representative voter base.
One would hope that would give us more representation from those comics which offer a daily or weekly laugh as opposed to a story-line that can span years. But then again, one can’t be sure. This is really one of those things that’s just for fun though, and it isn’t really worth trying to balance because it’s really just another tournament based on a basketball tournament that I think we’ve already forgotten because we read webcomics and aren’t worried about college basketball? (Yes, I’m probably overgeneralizing. Deal with it. Maybe even get a kick out of it.)
I really wish they actually hadn’t added a cash prize for the authors. I think it made things too serious. Like we were actually deciding something important. Don’t get me wrong. Comparing these webcomics is fun and it’s really awesome to read some of the comments people have about why they like some webcomics and don’t like other ones. Like how some people don’t consider flash stuff much of a “comic” really. (I read a comic called ‘The Pocalypse’ which is entirely flash. It’s still a comic.) And how “this comic has better narrative” or “this one has better art”. None of the comments are wrong, really… even the ones that directly contradict each other. (Unless they say Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff isn’t awesome… I mean… those people clearly don’t understand perfection when they see it.)
Honestly though… I really want to see GKC make it past this round. It really is an excellent comic, both art wise and story wise.
Or at least for there to be a losers bracket for the final four to determine a real second place winner? Y’know… let’s say GKC and OOTS lose, they go head to head while HS and Goblins are in the final, and the winner between GKC and OOTS would go against whoever lost the final.
Though that’d require an extra article as far as I can see… and… well… to determine a second place winner? I don’t think they want to bother all that much. Heh… Ah well.
Wow, great commentary, Willy! Thanks for posting that. :) Even though you and I seem to disagree on some matters of personal taste and our technical definitions of “comics”, I completely agree with the sentiment behind your words.
It’s too bad that things got more heated for a while there, this round, though. It was starting to make me want to retract my earlier comments about the quality of debate we’ve all been engaging in. Thanks for renewing my faith in civil discourse. :)
“(Unless they say Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff isn’t awesome… I mean… those people clearly don’t understand perfection when they see it.)”
Where are these heathens? How HIGH do you even have to BE to THINK something like that?
(Don’t warn them about the stairs, they deserve what they get.)
Let’s go goblins! Long live Chief! And poor Thac0, he was always my fave (I grew up on 2nd edition:P)
I know a lot of people will vote for GC, because the author sort of needs it, but I’m sticking with MSPA, mainly because I love it so much and it inspires so many people to write and draw, and because Andrew Hussie is such an updating machine.
Sorry author of GC, I personally think Andrew deserves it more.
Except Hussie told us to vote for Gunnerkrigg.
Sort of. He hasn’t said that since it was up against PA.
He said vote of GC if you don’t wanna vote for MSPA.
Not really. Hussie told us to consider giving Gunnerkrigg Court a vote or at least a read. He never really outright told us to vote for it.
MSPA fandom for Gunnerkrigg Court!
I love both comics and would be happy with an overall victory for either left-bracket comic. Both MSPA and GKC have beautifully intricate plots that are revealed bit by bit in later chapters/acts, so one is constantly asking questions about the story and the world. And they’ll both be lasting works of art while the roleplaying game jokes of the other bracket’s remaining comics will grow stale as fewer and fewer remember D&D 3.5.
The difference between the two, however, is in the storytelling style and the pacing. Where MSPA is long, “trollishly” humorous, and wordy, GKC is terse and a lot is said with panel transitions and small bits of narration/dialogue. The pacing is extremely smooth as compared to MSPA being unconventionally long-winded. Not to mention its fandom has far less of a reputation for being sanctimonious and prolific in the most beautiful and awful ways, which translates into fewer self-entitled posters dogpiling on the people who say they don’t like it to tell them that their taste in comics is Bad and they’re Reading It Wrong, as is the tendency for MSPA fans (sorry guys, but you as a group were pretty obnoxious in that regard last round!). I know the fandom shouldn’t represent the comic, but GKC fandom is so much more low-key that I can’t help but count that in their favor. I believe Gunnerkrigg Court really deserves to win, no matter how funny it would be for gift cards to mediocre chain restaurants to be disseminated.
I also dropped a vote for OotS, which is a textbook case of great writing making up (and being accentuated by) simplified art. The problem with Goblins (which I also read) is that, despite the author’s constant work on new pages, the story still moves at a glacial pace. Team Minmax has been in the same dungeon for over a year (real time), and Team Dies Horribly was in their dungeon for even longer before that finally got wrapped up. After the story’s been in roughly the same place for so much time, I can’t help but be more bored and less immersed in it. I have much more faith that OotS, Homestuck, and GKC, which have far more story content for their runs, are going to be wrapped up in a satisfactory amount of time. One could argue that OotS moves too slowly as well, with comics only being posted a few times per month, but more *happens* in an OotS comic than Goblins, so it reads better from update to update. I don’t want to see a map. I want more things to happen in-comic already.
(I will reiterate that I read and enjoy all four comics)
I love that this post is intelligently written, and while I may not feel the same aboutwhere to cast my votes, this type of friendly and respectful debate is truly what makes these types of competitions much more interesting. I, for one, appreciate posts like this where opinions are stated and not forced, yet also supported. I apologize if this is sounding a bit ranty, I just feel there has been a lot of trash talking in previous rounds, and I’m glad to see this one not going teh same way (yet).
I appreciate the respectful debate too, though I disagree about the level of “trash talking” in previous rounds. I’ve seen so much worse, in other corners of the ‘net. To me, it seemed like people (including myself at times) certainly could get carried away with enthusiasm for the preferred side, but I personally haven’t seen too much of what I would call trash talking. I’ve seen a LOT of discussion, and a lot of passion, but I haven’t seen much that I would consider truly out-of-line, and what little there has been (including possibly in my own case) has been called out and dealt with appropriately, in my opinion. I really think we’re doing okay here, and overall I’ve been impressed with the level of intelligent discussion, given how passionately people feel about their “teams.”
He’s half right… MSPA fans DID clog up half the comments section. For proof, just look at the rather lengthy conversation WE had, which, like he said, mainly consisted of me giving you tips or encouragement on reading MSPA. :p
I’m not denying that we took up a lot of space. :) And I understand how that could be obnoxious to some. But to me, it’s more about the tone of discussion, and I think that’s been okay. But I’m starting to realize that perhaps some people just look at the volume of text devoted to a topic, and draw conclusions about the tone and content based on the size of the textwalls. I’m filing that theory away for future reference. :)
I was more referring to how people felt the need to debate with every single poster who said they didn’t like MSPA, whereas people expressing dislike for other comics were mostly left alone. Also, the very first (and longest) thread on the past post invited debate about MSPA–while the text of the post was alright, one can read an implication from the debaters that people who dislike MSPA are somehow misinformed or have poorly thought-out reasons for it, which does come across as condescending.
This is true. There is a good reason behind a little bit of it, though. A decent number of people only read Act 1 and decide they hate it, which is unfair since Act 1 is silly, almost plotless, and vastly inferior to the rest of Homestuck. If the reason why somebody doesn’t like it is restricted to that part, then it makes (a little) sense to encourage them to keep reading, since they might enjoy the rest.
It IS idiotic if they don’t like parts that hold across all of Homestuck, though. I’m not going to debate that.
Actually, I would turn it around and ask, where is the fandom of the other comics to defend them?
Thing is, I agree with benzft because there are plenty of people we’ve heard that have judged Homestuck for Act 1 where it barely even scratch the surface though. Reading only a few pages in or only the first Act 1, sorry but I do consider it as judging a book by its cover…or first chapter, really. At least a good chunk of the fandom actually says, ‘give it a second shot’ then calling names.
For goodness sake! My name is benzrf, not benzft!
And I thought I was careful with that. Sorry about that.
‘sokay.
JUST DON’T DO IT AGAIN.
>:3
Have you actually read OotS? Because a good amount of the DnD humor is fairly cross-version, and the majority (I think?) of the humor isn’t even about DnD. Not to mention that it has an awesome plot that would be pretty great even if it weren’t in a DnD setting. Also, some of the best antagonist(s) that I’ve seen.
I have never played DnD (Dungeons and Dragons, right?), and I find the humor in OOTS to be excellent, even if I sometimes don’t understand every aspect of the joke. When I read through QC’s archives, I didn’t get about half the jokes in the first 500 or so strips (I am ashamed to admit that I hadn’t read Dune at that point…) but I still enjoyed it overall. There’s enough general-purpose humor in OOTS for a casual reader, I’d say. Don’t be scared away by the general idea of the comic. It’s quite good, even for someone who always found the very concept of an RPG tedious and boring.
Yes. DnD = Dungeons and Dragons.
What else?
Also, seconded.
I went with Hussie’s desire and voted for Gunnerkrigg. Besides, I love that one too, so it wasn’t that hard of a choice.
Homestucks, unite! And DON’T vote for Homestuck!
uh
listen, guy, Hussie wanted to support GC but I’m 110% positive he would like Homestuck to win. He’s giving away prizes if it does. So. Uh. Hate to rain on your parade and all, but yeah.
the more you know~*
If you look more carefully, the ‘prizes’ are actually meant as punishment.
Maybe.
You can never tell with a professional troll.
…what if i want the olive garden >:S
you definitely don’t want the olive garden.
I want the Olive Garden for ironic purposes.
Actually, Andrew said considering voting for GC and giving more attention to it, but I don’t think he really meant that it should win over Homestuck (though he of course wouldn’t really mind that).
And Andrew is even giving away prizes if Homestuck wins so…I don’t think he meant that guys.
(not that I’m saying you should ABSOLUTELY vote for Homestuck, the choice is still up to yourself of course)
If by prizes you mean he is turning his prize money into greasy restaurant giftcards and giving them to randomly chosen fans. Didn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression.
Really. There isn’t anything else to say here. Wait there is.
That’s disgusting.
wait there’s still more to say here!
the above two posters are silly because hussie’s trolling his own fans with the ‘prizes’. The olive garden is a big gag on tumblr so it’s just another joke. Didn’t want anyone to ~get the wrong impression~ now did we.
Some ppl just don’t get the concept of “trolling” -_-
GC really is a better comic than MSPA (and my new favorite). as much as i love MSPA, i find its a lot of the same joke over and over (in different forms and in lots of layers, but still the same). its just a shame that its most likely not going to move past this round. either way, im pretty sure goblins is going to take it all
I completely disagree. MSPA deserves to win just as much as any other comic does, and many a fan has explained why in previous comments. I urge you to go back and read those, not to change your mind but to enlighten you. While MSPA comics certainly contain a number of interconnected gags and do revolve around comedy, that’s not all there is to it. Also, sorry, but if you’re of the assumption that MSPA/Homestuck is just one joke over and over again then you’ve definitely been reading the comic wrong :\
And here’s the prototypical MSPA fan discussed above coming along and telling other people how their opinion is wrong.
Just for the record, I’m not jeremy-with-a-lower-case-j. Just noticed that now.
lol? I wasn’t telling the guy his opinion was wrong, I was responding to his by telling him my own opinion of the cmoic. Didn’t realize there was an issue with that, but ok. I guess some people on the net are just really sensitive about opinions huh.
(Psst. “you’ve definitely been reading the comic wrong” is telling someone their opinion is wrong.) I love both comics, but MSPA, as complex as it is, is not as good a comic, in terms of storytelling and consistency.
…no, that’s telling the guy he’s been reading the comic wrong lmao.
Were you reading Homestuck, or Problem Sleuth?
Because Homestuck isn’t really about the jokes…
AH would probably beg to disagree.
Yes, but he’s practically a professional troll.
I’m proud of you for kicking butt and making it this far, Gunnerkrigg Court. MSPA is a worthy adversary to fall to.
Good comics, all four of them! They all deserve the 100 dollar prize!
413rd vote on Homestuck :D