Development Hell
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"I'm not bitter; I'm just a web designer."
Development Hell is a concept familiar to any creative or semi-creative individual or individuals who have ever worked with a bunch of C-words before. By C-word, of course, I mean clients. I believe Dante has a special place for all the know-nothing clients who don't really know what they want but they will when they see it and they wanted it yesterday.
Development Hell runs the gamut of issues facing two best friends who had a crazy idea of starting their own web design firm and then instantly regretted their decision as soon as they met their first client. The series will deal with the highs and low of the modern designer, the financial realties of starting your own business, new and emerging technology, blogs, what sort of hair product works best, the proper way to podcast, pop culture, clueless clients, the modern world, Apple vs. Microsoft, the banality of everyday life, trivia, relationships, search engine algorithms, PHP vs. Dot Net, the meaning of life who would win if a gorilla and an alligator were thrown into a pit and forced to fight and what constitutes selling out.
Welcome to Development Hell!
Literally laughed outload a couple times. The bland art adds to the "downer" humor. Liked it.
Pretty funny stuff. Reminds me of Kevin Smiths' Clerks. Well, I hope that you come back to Zuda and publish more of these.
Well it was fun while it lasted...
Thanks to everyone who voted for Development Hell and thanks to the editors at Zuda for selecting it for the December competition!
Development Hell will continue along with a whole slew of new comics over at my site www.paradeoffreaks.com.
As always, you can check out the adventures of Pretentious Record Store Guy at www.pretentiousrecordstoreguy.com.
Oh, and I'll be back here at some point during the next year, just you wait and see. :)
Good times.
Happy New Year everybody!
Frankenstein Casanova just sent a text to all his friends about the blog he just posted. Email me and tell me what you think. How 2.0 is Frank?
"Fire bad!"
"Sex good!"
Thanks party people! Pujols, Sean Ricketts, OT, Johnny Zito and Phillip Schaeffer, thanks for the love. Sammy, Berry, much appreciated!
Tell all your friends that they have 1 day left to Vote for Hell!
Spread the word like Gospel!
Albert Pujols is god and god says that Development Hell should recieve the MVP of Zuda comics because it's the best player on the field. But Pujols cannot follow the logic of man, or of baseball writers, because twice in the past the Mighty Pujols has been robbed of his due honors. If Pujols were the deciderer he would bestow the mighty honors on Development Hell, but alas Pujols is only a casual observer in this game...
very nice
Hahaha! This comic is hilarious! Development Hell is my pick of the litter!
Digg the color scheme.
The Knave of Krypton's comic strip interview with the guys from Development Hell is now online at www.knaveofkrypton.com/interviews.html, so check it out or Carlos will be really upset.
Dang! Me and my fat mouth! I was all like the Jeffersons and now I'm all like the US economy due to the sub-prime mortgage crisis! Ain't that a kick in the nutcracker! Time to rally the troops...
I know what I want for Christmas: I want Hell on Zuda!
Vote for Hell, ya'll! :)
It's like Kermit said, "It ain't easy being green."
In other news, I'm moving on up on the Billboard Charts! Thanks for making it happen boys and girls!
Much Love,
Carlos
I love these guys. They're typical American guys just doing their work and trying to get by. I want to see more of them.
Yo, I love this strip! Great use of monochromatic color and cleans lines. I also like the rant hating ranter. I do feel like the "blond" guy could be more of an a**hole. If you know any blond a**holes; I would reference them. Peace, love, and creativity!!!
Development Hell is awesome! It's like Dilbert, except funny and on brown acid that so that everything looks green. Give us more Hell!
The horrid green burns Frankenstein Casanova's eyes, but the tears of laughter help soothe the pain. This is the funniest comic I've read yet!
Geez people! I'm not sure who I should believe. Two people say they love the comic and laughed their @$$es off and then two more people comment that they hated the strip and that the dialogue sucks. Which is it folks? ;)
I love Mallrats and my wife absolutely hates it! Oh well, we'll just agree to disagree. Personally, I think Development Hell is the best 3 panel, green on green, comic ever written about two web developers working the life, but then again it's the only comic to fit that criteria and since I wrote it I'm biased. :P
I didn't laugh at all. I like the duo tone art, but the dialogue is really dry.
You got my vote. I follow funny webcomics better than I do dramatic ones. This one had me laughing my ass off.
I have advertised to my fellow internet-geeks to come check this out. The Webular Series of Tubes really needs this comic, in my opinion.
Cool idea and sometimes funny. The dialog is really terrible and some of the art is sloppy. If it was more consistent it would read better. Keep at it, because you got a good idea, just not altogether there yet.
Regardless of what happens in this competition, Development Hell will continue in some form or fashion in the future! Hopefully it will be right here on Zuda Comics, but if does not happen then it will for sure continue on my website www.paradeoffreaks.com. I had a blast doing it and I have enough material to fill up 120 screens and more! Tell all your friends to Vote for Development Hell!
I really think this could become Penny Arcade level popular. It's a geek-joke comic, but so much broader than the 5billion geek joke comics that focus on video games.
Please tell me that Development hell will be continued somewhere if it does not win the Zuda competition.
Well done comic guys. Don't know that it will win, but I hope you continue DH. I can see this making a great little book that would be the perfect holiday gift for webdevelopers and IT dudes everywhere.
Cracked a smile but didn't break into a chuckle. I do like the cathode-ray tan palette though ;) Weird, I thought I already posted this to the board.
people who don't like this story are dumb, this should win, if not I'll start a riot
Since it's the end of the year, everyone always wants a year end list. So here are some of my favorite comics of 2007. Enjoy.
1) All Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
2) Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday
3) 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
4) Captain America by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting
5) Fables by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham
6) Madman Atomic Comics by Mike and Laura Allred
7) Casanova by Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba
8) Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
9) Invincible by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley and Bill Crabtree
10) Age of Bronze by Eric Shanower
11) Dork by Evan Dorkin
12) Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday
13) Too Much Coffee Man by Shannon Wheeler
14) Eightball by Dan Clowes
15) Immortal Iron Fist by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction and David Aja
This is the best of the four I have read so far...so, of course it is the lowest ranked.
Nice! Very funny and very true!
Those clients are the ones who make you afraid to check your voicemail on Mondays. Painfully well observed.
That is so hilarious! It wasn't what I expected it to be, but that's a good thing. Surprises can be excellent, especially when they're funny. Thank you czarlos, hope to see more!
Thanks again for all the feedback guys! It seems that there are two types of Zuda fans: those who want Zuda to be DC Comics and those who want Zuda to be a haven for web and indie comics. Hopefully the second camp will win out!
Bonni, I really can't say what will happen to Development Hell after Zuda because right now all I'm focusing on is this competition. If you guys like Development Hell and would like to see it weekly on Zuda, please tell all your friends so they can vote for it. Thanks again everybody!
Great work, Maybe it has just an specific target in the audience, that is hard for the voting contest.
By far the most relevant webcomic in present-day culture, one which serve also as a great satire... and a very funny one at that! You got my vote, man, u won my magic word: relevance!
Even if you don't win this thing I really hope you'd continue this series. You're seriously gonna get a lot of fans, the only downside for now is that I'm not sure if they're the DC-type.
Another minor downside for me was that I did not enjoy the color green so much. I'd rather it be grayscale. Then again, its a personal color taste :)
very good! it's always worth a giggle when people have a cousin, uncle/aunt, son/daughter who does web design...I always say "wow, that's cheap. you should definitely go with them and whenever it's finished and you didn't get what you wanted, give me a call."
Every line was DEAD ON!
Well done. Screen 4 was hilarious!
Hey all! Thanks again for all the feedback and for the commentary that is positive, negative and indifferent. I just wanted to address a few things real quick about the strip that keep popping up in the comments.
First of all, I get that the strip isn't for everyone. What is? But I think if you get it, if you're familiar with the subject matter and you're into webcomics like Penny Arcade, PVP and CTRL+ALT DEL then you'll like this comic. Or maybe not. Two and a Half Men is the #1 Comedy in the nation and I cannot for the life of my understand why because I don't think it's funny. Humor is a really subjective thing. That said, if the strip made you laugh then I think I did my job and for me, that's all I'm looking for.
To the people that are hung up on the art and how it's not up to DC Comics standard, I just have to say that I'm not Frank Quitely and this isn't Superman. You shouldn't have to blow the screen up to full size, you should be able to have the screen jammed between your windows at work where you can sneak a peek at it while your boss isn't paying attention. David Rees does Get Your War on with nothing but clip art. Max Cannon and Gary Trudeau frequently use the same panel over and over (or they cut and paste the same panel) in Red Meat and Doonesbury respectively. I don't mind because in that case the art is almost secondary to the joke. I think if the comic works, the comic works regardless of whether the strip is simply one panel repeated three times. :)
As far as the monochromatic color scheme goes, it's something I experimented with and ended up really liking with my comic Pretentious Record Store Guy (online at http://www.pretentiousrecordstoreguy.com/comics/ ). Yes, the glorious green is supposed to mimic the green screens seen on the old skool monitors we had when I was growing up. Plus I think it helps the word balloons stand out.
By the way, if you guys would like to see some of my other comics, my weekly webcomic Parade of Freaks at
http://www.paradeoffreaks.com/
I really liked this! Very funny!
no lols to be had here.
Loved it!
Laughed out loud. Have had that $500 website conversation before..
Love it!, Some of the others are good, but eveny now and then I need something funny and this is it!!
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By the way: What are the two friends names?
Carlos: So do you like the color green or what? Nice to see the drudge report make a guest star. I Don't get into the humor really, not my thing. The art is fine, and it is nice to see if a gag-a-day humor strip can win on Zuda. I doubt it but good luck just the same. If you would have went with the gorilla and alligator pit-fight I would have liked it better.
I've got to disagree with Steve below me. The medium of webcomics has been around long enough that the "Internet nerd" community is already quite aware of it. DC Comics is a big company, and in exploring new media, should be striving to attract NEW readership, not just those who already read webcomics.
To be honest? I like this comic. A lot. It's humorous and relevant to my life and interests. But I wouldn't vote for it. Compared to the quality of other submissions and winners on this site, it doesn't seem like DC material to me. I'd love to see it in a programmer's magazine, or a newspaper, in addition to being able to read it online. I'd love to see more of it, just not on Zuda.
Why? In addition to appealing to a specific niche, (not even to all Internet nerds, just those of us who actually work in the tech industry) I'm disappointed that anyone who would submit work in hopes of being published with DC would recycle 16% of their panels in their sample.
(3 panels/screen, 8 screens, 4 screens that used the same panel twice with minor changes. That means 4 panels of 24 were just modified from previously used panels. Hence, 1/6 recycled panels, or appr 16%)
Also, this is nitpicky, but the poor demonstration of proportion in the repeated panels on the first screen turned me off. Not DC-quality art.
Wow! I appreciate all the feedback, both the positive and the negative, that I've seen so far. To answer stevemeyers22's comment, I DO think a 3-4 panel strip appeals more to your casual internet user because they can just swing by once a week, get a laugh and then move on. A three panel comedy strip seemed much different than the first round of Zuda entries, so I went for it.
Looking at this round of contestants, the editors of Zuda did a good job of picking an eclectic mix of genres and art styles to display. Who knows what the people want, but it seems that Zuda will have something for everyone. Personally, I'm not too into muscle bound guys in tights exchanging blows and expository dialogue, but maybe that's what most of the fanboys dig. I've been to enough comic book conventions where tables upon tables of creators are pushing their crappy, self published, completely generic superhero comics onto the populace to last me a lifetime.
Good times.
Kingofsnake says:
"It kinda prescribes to the "internet nerd" demographic, which might be a very large demographic, but I'm just not part of it. "
This sort of brings up an interesting question ... since zuda is DC's home for webcomics, isn't it kind of a good idea for people to think of that particular demographic? Like shouldn't some (not all, but some) creators think of the overall audience on the internet, especially if they have material that they think might appeal to that audience?
We've got the genre tags for a lot of these entries, and that's got me wondering ... what are people who visit Zuda interested in? It's out here on the web, with webcomics and what not, so the typical DCU (you know, Batman, the JLA, stuff like that) slant might not hold as much weight here?
I don't know, just some stuff to think about and maybe discuss. Especially in terms of a comic like this one which is done in a strip format instead of an 8-page story, and which does indeed contain content that the regular internet surfing audience might be a bit more comfortable with than say a superhero thing.
i think i can relate to these guys. page 2 was the best. customers really are like that. i'm not sure what the green reminds me of more, the matrix or old terminal screens. did you pick the colors based on one of those 2 things or am i crazy?
Nice "slice of life" and the artwork goes good with it. Fairly solid. I think the artwork could be a bit more daring in the directing but it works for a strip.