A New Low for Web Comics
Written by Matt Cohick
Published on 06/10/2007
Originally from Binary Culture / [the-lowdown.net]
http://www.binaryculture.net

Web comics are a rather inexpensive medium due to many unlicensed and licensed copies of Photoshop out there, inexpensive broadband, and almost unlimited freedom of expression (as long as you make a sensible punchline). I saw one such web comic on an Internet forum, unfortunately not on Binary Culture. It featured two Premium Xbox 360s wearing yellow Stars of David, one wearing a Yarmulke in a blood soaked wall setting talking about being a “strange camp” and the possibility of an “Elite Model” replacing the Premiums. After the first two panels, there is a storm trooper telling the Premiums to walk towards a magnet while holding something that looks like a Panzerbüchse Pz.B.38 or a Pz.B 39. In the final panel, the Bent Crossless Xbox360 Elite is praising the Black colored “Aryan SKU” for it's HDMI ports and 120 GIG hard drives with an Hitler Xbox360 talking about having the Elite SKU forcing gamers to play First Person Shooters and downloading expensive map packs.

Somehow God Mode Online skipped Jumping the Shark and decide to swim into the shark on May 14 2007 for the sake of controversy.

Being the responsible blog writer I am, I refuse to reprint this comic to generate more traffic to God Mode.

The Internet was not amused and neither was the Keenspot forums since this writer did not find any commentary about the Xbox 360 strip.

This is more offensive than Goatse man, lemon parties, and Maddox hate mail combined. It is offensive, not just because it trivializes a systematic killing of European nationals but the joke is weakly presented. The punchline claimed that there was a possibility of the current hardware revision of the Xbox 360 is going to be replaced by the HDMI port enabled Elite. Due to Microsoft's motivation of offering multiple choices for various consumer set, Microsoft has no intentions of phasing out the Premium and Core SKU. Microsoft's intention is to introduce a 65nm process to make the system run cooler and more effective compared to a towel based solution. At this time the 360 Elite is also made in the older non 65nm proccess.

It is one thing to making jokes of Microsoft and German National Socialists Fascists political ideology, but if a comedian makes an attempt at creating a punchline from tragedy; do it right. The only other joke related to the Holocaust was the “The Pony Remark” in Seinfeld. I know it is not fair pitting Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David to Ryan Kerns due to television and web comics being different mediums but the execution of “The Pony Remark” does something that the God Mode fails to do. “The Pony Remark” actually generates laughs from a historical tragedy. When Jerry and Eline goes to visit Aunt Manya's apartment for dinner, Eline brings up the subject of people owning ponies and Jerry makes an off hand comment on rich people owning ponies owning ponies. Manya was offended by that comment since the word pony triggered happy memories of preoccupied Poland and appalled by Jerry stating that he hated “anyone that ever had a pony when they were growing up.” These series events led to eventual death of Manya, an eulogy on how she loved her pony, and the exodus from Poland during World War II.

The reason why “The Pony Remark” pulled off joke related to World War II and Holocaust because the punchline wasn't about the genocide. The joke was about dealing with the response of unintended consequences with a sophisticated level of black humor.

Instead of linking Ryan Kern's failed attempt at humor, here is Manp's, of NeoGaf, interpretation of the comic involving classic black humor.

The punchline is that no matter what current revision of the Xbox 360 you have, they both experience overheating from the red ring of death; just like what happened to both Nazi German soldiers and the victims of the Holocaust. Unlike web comics, real life genocide is no laughting matter.

The punchline to this blog is that even though you are able to draw better than a swarm of Anonymous from the Internets, there is someone out there who can deliver a clearer punchline to a larger audience.