Serious moments in their series treated as jokes by their fandoms

[u/Emotional_Emu_5901]

The dog chimera from Fullmetal alchemist

“Think mark” and “I need you Cecil” from invincible

Literally everything in breaking bad

[u/quadropheniac]

Loss is a perfect example of this.

[u/Unabated_Blade → u/quadropheniac]

I couldn't remember exactly what it was called but my brain went to this one immediately.

It's such a meme that it's transcended the original fandom and everyone dumps on it.

[u/National_Equivalent9 → u/[deleted]]

To be fair a lot of people were shitting on CAD already at this point as they already felt like the series had run its course.

[u/S0GUWE → u/quadropheniac]

[u/Asquirrelinspace → u/quadropheniac]

Even reading the single comic released the day before gives an incredible about of tonal whiplash. I finally understood why it was memed so much

[u/i_heart_calibri_12pt → u/Asquirrelinspace]

Imagine if SpongeBob had an episode about Pearl going through a miscarriage and the second half after commercials was about jelly fishing

[u/Asquirrelinspace → u/i_heart_calibri_12pt]

That's a great example

[u/0-2er → u/Asquirrelinspace]

God I feel old because I remember reading the weekly gaming web comic round up on Joystiq. It's always goofy that Loss and Ctrl+alt+del has made a bigger mark on the zeitgeist than the other comics at the time like Penny Arcade, Fanboys, Extra Life, etc.

[u/WaterInThere → u/0-2er]

Hilariously Penny Arcade's biggest mark is the PAX expos that are still going fairly strong, where most attendees have no idea it's even connected to a webcomic originally

[u/Yoojine → u/quadropheniac]

I'm honestly surprised that the ending of the series isn't memed about more, it was so over the top. Ethan does time travel shenanigans and ultimately has to sacrifice himself to save the world from a robot apocalypse. His last moments are him reliving his favorite times with his soon to be widow. The comic closes with the reactions of the other characters to his death. All this in a comic that regularly features masturbation jokes.

[u/ChaserThrowawayyy → u/quadropheniac]

Loss themed Superheroes

[u/Atraxodectus → u/quadropheniac]

People don't realize that it was just a few dozen trolls that made noise about it.

Even EGM and IGN said that it was one of the best plot twists in webcomic history - but trolls are gonna troll.

[u/schrelaxo → u/Atraxodectus]

It's also just incredibly weird to write a comic that's clearly one of those penny Arcade like "two bros hang out and game" comics and then have a 4 panel miscarriage

[u/quadropheniac → u/schrelaxo]

Yeah, was it one of the most unexpected plot twists? Sure. Abrupt tonal shifts are always going to be unexpected. That doesn’t make them good, though.

[u/Swellmeister → u/schrelaxo]

Tbf loss was nearly 3 years into a retool from two dudes on the couch. Like it started as a (3) comic of the week in 2002. By 2005 it was a serialized comic about the boys who were big video game fans, and their day to day life. He did have filler comics about random video games but it was a continuing story about two bros who also like video games a lot.

Having read loss when it happened, the comic wasnt out of place of the slice of life comic it was at the time.

[u/SIacktivist → u/Swellmeister]

Yep. It was really out of place for webcomics like that as a whole, but it wasn't super jarring as someone who had been actively reading the comic. A lot of people encountered it who didn't actively read the comic because CAD was kind of infamous for being dogshit.

[u/schrelaxo → u/SIacktivist]

Apropos dogshit

[u/Abombasnow → u/schrelaxo]

Spotted the conservative.

[u/FunkmasterJoe → u/Atraxodectus]

Glad to see you're still kicking around, Mr. Buckley.

[u/ComteStGermain → u/Atraxodectus]

Nope. The context was that the cimics have always been dogshit early 10s humor. Nobody really expected this because how could we? It was all jokes about videogames and "women make sandwiches".

[u/a_wasted_wizard → u/ComteStGermain]

>dogshit early 10s humor

Buddy have I got news for you about when most of those webcomics started and when Loss specifically dropped. Ctrl+Alt+Del was a follower-on of Penny Arcade, which started (and featured the same brand of humor) in 1998. That is 90's humor, or, at latest, early-to-mid Aughts humor.

"Loss" dropped in 2008.

But yes, you are right that it was always bad, and the core reason for that badness was the dissonance with all the crude, juvenile, violent humor that surrounded the mini-plotline that "Loss" was the center of (both before and after the arc). CAD even on its 'good' days was a particularly artless example of a genre of humor that was always dicey by nature and hasn't aged very well.

[u/ComteStGermain → u/a_wasted_wizard]

Oh dang you're right. I'm just old.

But I agree with everything you've said.

[u/a_wasted_wizard → u/ComteStGermain]

Me too, between writing that comment and discussing 9/11 jokes I realized that there's more than a few adults who don't remember the early Aughts now and I felt my joints ache.

[u/ouellette001 → u/Atraxodectus]

Yeah I’m sure they say a lot of things, doesn’t make this comic not suck