Last time, I talked about puerile, embarassing pandering. How appropriate, then, that today I talk about the popular webcomic Least I Could Do.
LICD, penned by Ryan Sohmer and drawn by Lar Desouza, is a Joe Shuster Award-winning comic that is being adapted for television. Not bad for a comic all about the most transparent self-insert ever and his adventures falling ass-backward into sex, power and success.
How transparent are we talking here? If you are a LICD reader, you know everything I’m about to say and should skip the remainder of this paragraph. For the rest of you, protagonist Rayne Summers (seriously) looks exactly like how Ryan draws himself has Lar draw him, except with hair. He is borderline obsessed with Red Bull, as is Ryan. Both have a cat named Baby who, tragically, passed away on November 12. Rayne enacts Ryan’s nerd-fantasies. And of course no Mary Sue would be complete without an obnoxious know-it-all complex.
Given that Ryan himself has lampshaded it, I think the self-serving nature of Least I Could Do is beyond dispute
And that’s what’s really infuriating about LICD. Lar’s art is good, the update schedule is brisk and adhered to with professional zeal, the jokes… well, they’re tepid sitcom fare once you get beyond the risque subject matter. But the essential flaw of the comic is that Ryan Rayne is a smug prick whom the universe inexplicably bends over backwards to accommodate. He can be a total pig and no women ever seem to think less of him for it. He has propositioned a female CEO under the pretense of applying for a job under her, and gotten a cushy executive position out of it. He has gone on a date dressed like a Nazi and had it go perfectly. Even on the rare occasion that Rayne gets knocked on his ass, he never suffers any lasting consequences. He’s Garfield with sex instead of food, which is a valid comparison not only because he gets everything he wants, but because every single strip is about him being an asshole.
Rayne is a bad side character who has somehow fallen into the role of protagonist. He’s not like Achewood’s Ray Smuckles, a womanizing and perpetually fortunate playboy who is nevertheless relateable and likeable. Where Ray has his vulnerable side, where Ray gets into a variety of situations that speak to the breadth of his character, Rayne has no flaws (at least no consequential ones,) and all he ever seems to do is follow his dick into more and more ludicrous farces. Rayne is not a character to be sympathized with so much as he is an egotistical fantasy to be projected upon.
This character is infinitely more human than Rayne.
This wouldn’t even be so bad, though, if not for the comic’s unwavering focus on Rayne. Take a look at the cast page. Rayne is depicted as the largest, and not just because of his ego. No one else in that picture has ever mattered, or ever will, outside of his or her relationship to Rayne. There’s the teacher friend, the fat friend, the female friend, the possibly gay friend. Don’t bother learning their names, because they are all the same character, existing only to react to Rayne’s zany antics. (Don’t believe me? Try reading a transcription of a LICD strip and seeing if you can distinguish anyone besides Rayne by the text alone.) They are there to fill in the space at the end of a speech bubble’s tail, and nothing more.
Now, credit where credit’s due. Ryan has recently been attempting to lend Rayne some depth. However, like his last attempt to do so, it is bound to fail. I can say so with such confidence because Tim Buckley of Ctrl+Alt+Del tried the same thing. Buckley seems to be unaware that taking a pathological cretin and turning him overnight into Mr. Responsible is not growth; it is retardedly inconsistent behavior. Ryan, you ought to know better. Not even CAD fans would believe that the kind of guy who welds himself into an Iron Man suit is qualified to tell anyone how to raise a child.
At this point, you may be thinking, “Well, maybe I can still enjoy this comic in spite of its overgrown-teen author’s obnoxious e-wanking.” You would be wrong. I reiterate for emphasis, the jokes are nothing special. At best, LICD’s humor is that kinda-funny thing your idiot stoner buddy totally said last Friday night (you had to be there.) Direly lacking in subtlety and creativity, LICD has neither the depth for a character-driven strip nor the wit for a gag-driven strip. Unless you really like jokes deemed too lame for Fox primetime, there is no reason to like LICD except the desire to, like Ryan, bask vicariously in a cartoon manchild’s success.
In conclusion, Ryan, you’ve grown since you started Least I Could Do (EDIT: Oh wait, no you haven’t.) Rayne, however, hasn’t, and he never will; any attempt to make him more than the masturbatory wish-fulfillment fantasy he started as can only turn out cheap and disingenuous. I advise you to take what you’ve learned, toss Rayne back into the semen-crusted seventh-grade notebook from whence he came, and start from scratch. Good luck.
January 28, 2009 at 6:07 am
I know this is nercomancy, but thank you, thank you, thank you for putting this overrated peice of mastabatory crap in it’s place.
January 30, 2009 at 4:35 am
No problem. I’m surprised no one had done it before.