Up in the sky! It's a shitty arc!

What the fuck?

No, seriously, what the fuck is this shit?

I was all set to do a review on another comic, and then I saw that Sunday splash image, and all that was right with the webcomic world just outright died. I think it's a sign that "Mookie" has officially jumped the mo-fuggin' couch of creativity. It also seems to be an admission that my suspension of disbelief has worn out its welcome in regards to this strip.

That particular page of the prolific Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, for those of you who haven't read the arc, is the apex of the week or so worth of exposition of a crappy story arc. One of the Chosen that survived in some epic battle in a previous arc returns wearing a magical painted-on suit or some shit threatens to freeze the town to death. On its own, it would just be "meh"-worthy filler.

However, it seems Mookie never met a subtlety that he feels he must smash with the warhammer of "Deus ex Machina" so his idiot readers get the point. Go back to the 8/01/07 strip and click forward to see how everything was planned in minute detail, even the fucking chocolate cake that the evil ice-magic woman ate near the start of the arc.

But what really turned this whole arc into a sinkhole of suck? When it turns out that the way to stop the evil ice woman was for Dominic's white mage brother Gregory Deegan to transform into a mo-fuggin' Superman pastiche.

No, wait, I mean "Supermage!" My apologies. Apparently, in a world full of swords-n-sorcery, someone has the ability to print comic books of the most boring superhero ever. I'm guessing from the title that this guy has the power to use magic. Set aside the idiotic anachronism for a moment, can you imagine the conversation when some idiot showed his friends a Supermage comic?

"Look! I got the latest issue of Supermage! He can fly!"

"So? My brother just learned a flying spell today."

"He shoots laser beams from his eyes!"

"My uncle taught me the same spell last month."

"He can run really fast!"

"My mom already knows that spell. What else can he do?"

"Ummm...he can punch through steel?"

"That golem my sister made ripped open a bank vault."

"What about seeing through walls?"

"Dominic can look through fucking time and space."

"But I paid four bucks for this!"

"Greg, you're a fucking dumbass."

Of course, at the end of this arc, Gregory saved the day, and got an inexplicable Supermanmage cape to wear out of the deal while his dearest brother Dominic planned the entire thing to teach him a moral about not overusing his power or some shit.

When you have to start ripping off fucking Superman, and not in a satirical sense, perhaps its time to put down your pen and come back in a few years when you can throw a storyline together that doesn't hinge on a walking, talking deus ex machina.

On a related note, the vengeful John Solomon explained this arc a lot better than I ever could have.