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It's funny. Laugh. Books Media Book Reviews

User Friendly 1.0 203

Posted by timothy from the gone-gold dept.
Craig Maloney writes with the review below of the latest release from User Friendly, laughware which finally hit 1.0 earlier this year. Read on for Craig's impressions of the book, which is loaded with more than just reprints of the UF comics you've seen on the web.
User Friendly 1.0
author J.D. "Illiad" frazer
pages 112
publisher Plan Nine Publishing
rating 9/10
reviewer Craig Maloney
ISBN 1929462395
summary An “autobiographical” look at the thoughts and ideas that make up the User Friendly comic strip and community.

Greetings Cave Dwellers

Arguably one of the most successful and popular online comics is User Friendly. With three full-length books in print, a community of dedicated readers, and merchandise that has been featured on major computer celebrities globally, one would have a hard time disputing the popularity and the success of User Friendly. Over the past four years, User Friendly has grown from a small inter-office comic into an internet destination and a community of loyal readers. User Friendly 1.0 collects not only the comics that have not been published before (O'Reilly didn't include them in the previous books because of layout and other considerations), but also various essays, thoughts, illustrations, and other comics not necessarily related to User Friendly.

It All Began Here

The first section of the book contains the comics that didn't make it in the first User Friendly book (User Friendly, published by O'Reilly and Associates). These are the comics that introduce the crew of Columbia Internet (the friendliest, hardest-working and most neurotic little internet service provider), and births Dust Puppy (from a server that hasn't been upgraded in a year). The drawings are more primitive, with four frames of story rather than the three we enjoy today, but don't let that detract you from the humor and the sheer fun of the comics. Sure, they're not the same as what you're expecting from the current dailies, but they have a certain charm all their own.

Introduce Yourself / Essay Contest

The latter half of the book introduces the characters of User Friendly and their real-world analogues. Yes folks, the secret is out and revealed for the first time; User Friendly is based on real-people, although Illiad is quick to point out the people the characters are based on aren't QUITE as neurotic as their cartoon counterparts. Illiad also takes the latter part of the book to talk about his views on art, drawing women, community schisms, and the practical joke of 1999 and its aftermath. These essays show Illiad as a cartoonist who is not only humbled and flattered by the acceptance of his work, but also an artist who appreciates the community that has evolved from that work. Illiad appreciates his fans, and it's that appreciation of the fans that makes a book like User Friendly 1.0 not only possible, but also readable.

Bonus

As an added bonus, User Friendly 1.0 also features several SuSE Friendly comics (strips done for SuSE) and the crossover between User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance (in case you missed it). The strips are a nice treat for the fans and I have User Friendly to thank for my Sluggy Freelance addiction. :)

For the fans

If you don't like User Friendly, you've already skipped this review, and won't buy this book. That's quite all right, as this book isn't meant for you anyway. For the people who are fans of the comic, or who have a passing interest in the behind the scenes thoughts and ideas of User Friendly (or who want to see the early comics and the crossover appearances), this book is a no-brainer purchase. The writing is genuine, and having the rest of the comics in print is a bonus. User Friendly 1.0 is a labor of love for the community, and the community won't be disappointed.

You can purchase User Friendly 1.0 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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User Friendly 1.0 More

User Friendly 1.0

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  • Fuzzy Thing (Score:2, Funny)

    by ScroP ( 536977 )
    What is that fuzzy thing with feet?

  • Ha-ha (Score:4, Informative)

    by kraf ( 450958 ) on Friday August 16, 2002 @10:36AM (#4082441)
    if you appreciate the "humor" of UF, you'll love this [hackles.org]

  • Am I the only one? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Friday August 16, 2002 @10:37AM (#4082451)
    Who dislikes User Friendly? I love web-comics like Penny-Arcade, Megatokyo, PvP, Diesel Sweeties, etc. I just don't find UF funny OR interesting in any way. Some of the early stuff was pretty good, but there are a lot of better [angryflower.com] comics to read online or otherwise.

    Remember this is just my opinion, I'm not trolling you if you happen to like UF.
    • I suppose it's all a matter of opinion. Having been a tech-support person in the past, I -really- appreciate the UF comics that poke fun at things like user support and other things that can cause techies to go postal. I don't find every comic funny but there are some that are always worth revisiting ('PEBKAC' comes to mind) when you're on the phone trying to explain to somewhere where their 'Any' key is located. ;)

      • Yeah, but those jokes have been done to *death*. It's just not funny anymore, just like the CD-tray-coffee-holder thing.

        The creation of the Dust Bunny character was original and showed some flash of promise, but since then it's just been a long, slow circle into more and more repetetive jokes.

        Now, Illiad has a web comic and I don't, so take my opinion for what it's worth, right? But I just can't stand UF anymore.

        • Re:Banal (Score:2, Informative)

          by Kierthos ( 225954 )
          You could at least make the effort to get it right.

          Repeat after me: Dust Puppy.

          And the Dust Puppy is popular enough to be in Quake.

          Kierthos
    • You like what you like - I happen to like UF. The world would be pretty dull if everyone liked the same stuff.

      Tom.

      • The world would be pretty dull if everyone liked the same stuff.

        Yes, because cultural homogenization never occurs...thank heavens for that.

        1. Decide that everyone should like the same stuff.

        2. ...

        3. Open a GAP.

        4. Profit!

        Wait...someone already did that. Sigh. Maybe it's not too late to patent the business method.

        • Wait...someone already did that. Sigh. Maybe it's not too late to patent the business method.

          Since when has someone already doing it been a problem with patenting an idea?

          Or are you not from the good old USA?

      • Great!! Maybe you can help us out.

        Can you explain why you like UF (and I understand that we can't always explain why we like what we like)? I've seen "UF sux" and "UF rulz" posts, but no elaboration from the "rulz" camp.

        • Explaining why something's funny is hard - I won't even try.

          Okay, why does UF appeal to me in general?

          • The humour's my kind - often dry, often ironical.
          • I can identify with many of the situations - oh boy, can I just...
          • The cartoon's topical - this works both on the day, and in retrospect.
          The quality is variable (IMO), but that's normally because the subject's not something I'm so interested in or sypathetic towards. Having said that, the recent series (AD&D)playing) had bored me, and I still have fond memories of the game...

          Yes, it's difficuilt to say why I like it, but I've had a stab!

          What I find interesting are the people who insist on saying UF is shite... If they really hate it, and if they aren't willing to have an open mind on the subject, why read this review?

          Tom.

    • I've tried to like this strip more, since I understand all of the material that makes this the kind of strip that needs to be online and not in the newspaper. Unfortunately, most of the time recognizing the industry humor is the only feeling I have coming away from it -- in other words, not much.

      I grew up wanting to be a cartoonist and was a huge fan of strips like Peanuts, Bloom County, and even Doonesbury. I've laughed many times at those and others you'd find in the paper, and I find that I prefer humor with a broader appeal than stuff that's supposed to be funny only because it's an inside joke.

      - DDT

      • You must not have given it much of a shot. Certainly there are the days when the punchline is just an inside joke, and I have to explain it to my wife. But a lot of the time, she likes it just as much as me without the explanation, and she's a daily reader too. Did I mention she's not "in the industry"?

      • ...and was a huge fan of strips like Peanuts, Bloom County, and even Doonesbury. I've laughed...

        No, no, no! Why would you read all these comics, when Robotman (Monty) [unitedmedia.com] is (are?) the only comic(s) you will ever need? :)

        Jim Meddick for Statsminister! (or President, or Whatever...)

      • I agree. It's kind of the IT grunt's answer to Dennis Miller.

        Don't get me wrong, Dennis Miller can, on occation, be funny... but the majority of his jokes are supposed to get this reaction:

        "He just made a nasty asside comment about the Secretary General of the UN's hairstyle! I didn't realize anybody else in America even knew who he was, let alone what his hair looks like! My god, he's really smart... just like me! Ahhh-hahahaha!"

        UF is kind of like that, only you don't need to be as worldly to catch the inside references in UF, because they are all super-obvious observations to anybody who ever worked a low-level job in IT.

      • Actually, as a fellow bloom county/outland fan, I find that www.ozyandmillie.org has much the same style of wacky/cute/political critter humour. I recommend it for Bloom County fans.
    • I read it for a bit, but it was just the same handful of rather dull jokes again and again.

      Ha ha! Microsoft sucks! Ha ha! Users are stupid! Ha ha!

      Ha ha! Ha ha!

      I can see why that plays well with the crowd here though...
    • Who dislikes User Friendly?

      I do. I find it even less funny than Dilbert...
    • Penny Arcade had their own take [penny-arcade.com] on User Friendly.
    • I totally agree. User Friendly just isn't funny, not even witty. The writing is uninspired and the art just isn't strong enough to carry it.

      The only funny strips involving User Friendly were done by Penny Arcade.
    • User Friendly is the most unfunny comic in the history of the universe. It's even less funny than Pupkin [bobbycrosby.com]
    • Yeah, UF is all the same recycled 'linux rules' wanking over and over and over and over and over.
      A rotting corpse is funnier than UF.
      Penny Arcade, on the other hand, rules...I mean, how can you not love stuff like "Fruit Fucker 2000"?

      I just wish the space moose [spacemoose.com] guy would start making new strips.
      There just aren't enough comic strips with sodomy as a central theme.

      :wq
    • I don't like most of the geek comics you list, I think because I feel like their brand of humor consists of merely mentioning things that geeks get excited about, like final fantasy and anime and japanese ^_^ smiley faces. Basically, I feel like these comics are underinspired comics that happen to be "geek" comics, but somehow that passes. (For the record, mixing in robots and indie rock does it for me with Diesel Sweeties, so I'm just as guilty...) But I'll definitely agree that User Friendly is the most tepid of them all; it just takes the most tired cheap-shots at Microsoft, or AOL, or people who don't know how to use computers, and the clip art isn't even fun to look at.
    • Seems my tastes happen to coincide with your own -- PA, MegaTokyo, PvP, SinFest, (the now defunct?) Flem In Your Face!, Mac Hall and Dilbert are all what I consider to be great comics. I did try to read User Friendly for a while, since it seemed / seems to have quite a following amongst the `Dotters, but its crude artwork and fairly straightforward topics never seemed to inspire much in the way of laughter, internal or external.

      Then again, it seems that it's popular with a significant number of people, so more power to em. As long as it makes you laugh........
    • User Friendly has been pretty dire the last two or three months. Pitr becoming a proper evil genius had great promise but was a huge let down. The topical jokes are not funny and the artwork is terrible.

      Having said that I have the first three User Friendly books and they are great.

      C
    • The thing I dislike about UF is that not only is it not funny, it tries to get its laughs by making fun of people who aren't in the know about computers and other "geek" topics. Many of us know someone who uses some unix variant and walks with an air of superiority and condescension because of that. UF is just that person in comic form.

      • >Many of us know someone who uses some unix variant
        >and walks with an air of superiority and
        >condescension because of that.


        NO, you still don't understand. We're not condescending because of what *we* do, but what because of the silly stuff you little people do and use. Face it, we *are* superior :)


        But if you send a SASE, I'll send you a nickle to buy a real computer.


        hawk

    • I used to like it. It was the first online comic I ever read, and I'm glad it was there because it introduced me to a whole new creative world. But over the past couple of years it's gotten really stale and there are many, many other webcomics I read that are a lot funnier. Maybe we should be trying to figure out when it jumped the shark [jumpedtheshark.com].
    • Wow. Another fan of Le Fleur Fâchée. Who would have thought it? Props, dude.

  • I never really liked this cartoon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cruise ( 111380 ) on Friday August 16, 2002 @10:43AM (#4082485) Homepage
    It just seems to play off off whatever the current geek topic is.. It's sort of like a poorly done dilbert.

    But hay, We have "artists" local to daytona making money off of the crap they produce too. Someone must think it's funny, or artistic, or somehow homoerotic or something.

    • Re:I never really liked this cartoon (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tomknight ( 190939 ) on Friday August 16, 2002 @10:51AM (#4082536) Journal
      It just seems to play off off whatever the current geek topic is..
      ...and there's something wrong with being topical?

      It's sort of like a poorly done dilbert.
      ...only Dilbert rarely manages to relate to anything that's actually happening (except for w.r.t. my office politics, where it's scarily accurate!).

      Tom.

    • It's deeply ironic that UF spends so much time blasting "marketing" types, because marketing is the only reason the strip got off the ground in the first place.

      As most people agree, UF is poorly drawn, unoriginal, and unfunny garbage. So how come anybody reads it? Simple: Illiad chose a underrepresented market segment --- techie types --- figured out a list of topics they like to see, and proceeded to pander to them as much as possible. Marketing-oriented business at its finest, in the tradition of Harlequin romance novels. But I don't think Illiad is even aware of his hypocrisy.

    • > It just seems to play off off whatever the
      > current geek topic is.. It's sort of like a
      > poorly done dilbert.

      I read both dilbert and uf. In my opinion there are differences between them. Dilbert is aimed more at making fun of businesses and the stupid things that business do for the sake of business (usually done by showing how smart and geeky engineers are) and UF is aimed at making fun of geeks in good fun.

      Although there is some overlap where a dilbert will be all about geeks for the sake of geekiness, it is aimed more at making fun of business (read Scott Adams's books and you'll see this).

  • The Archive (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tomknight ( 190939 ) on Friday August 16, 2002 @10:43AM (#4082487) Journal
    I recently re-read the series, from the beginning (up to May this year, when it all started to get too close to today). Here's the link [userfriendly.org] to the archive - but beware - this can really screw up your productivity!

    UF is not as amusing as it has been, but it's generally nice, intelligent and witty. What more do you need?

    One of the best strips was from September last year [userfriendly.org]

    Tom.

    • but beware - this can really screw up your productivity!
      Indeed it can.

      You'll spend the rest of your day showing the strips to your co-workers and saying: "Is this supposed to be funny?"

    • One of the best strips was from September last year [userfriendly.org]

      This one hadn't anything to do with the whole UserFriendly story. If this really is your favorite, you're not a fan of UserFriendly.

      • I see what you're saying - what I mean is that here the cartoonist reached out and touched me in a way I haven't experienced before. This was the single most emotional cartoon I've experienced. Now, I am a great UF fan, but none of the strips did as much for me as that one. Otherwise I'd say the AJ "Love letter to you" to Miranda strip was fantastic. The hope, the pain, the irony. Superb, beautifully topical.

        Tom.

        • You are correct. This is a nice strip, and very touching. As a matter of fact, I have one of the commemorative copies hanging on my wall in a nice silver frame.

    • UF is not as amusing as it has been, but it's generally nice, intelligent and witty. What more do you need?

      In a comic strip? How about ART?

  • On drawing women... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rahga ( 13479 ) on Friday August 16, 2002 @10:44AM (#4082495) Journal
    I'd love to know what illiad and other "known" artist/toonists/etc. think about drawing women... in specific, how to deal with the women around them who feel the need to comment and critique they way you draw the female figure (in all it's forms, of course... this was added to destroy the inevitable "female figure? there's not just one!" replies).

    Heck, maybe it's just bad memories of 6th grad art class when you are forced to draw sketches of your classmates, and you felt obligated to draw in a turtleneck sweater and jacket just so you could avoid the topic of their breasts altogether. However, I imagine that most comic artists and 3d-modelers for modern video games have to put up with a fair ammount of ribbing about how large or small they create figures for their characters.
    • I'd love to know what illiad and other "known" artist/toonists/etc. think about drawing women... in specific, how to deal with the women around them who feel the need to comment and critique they way you draw the female figure (in all it's forms, of course... this was added to destroy the inevitable "female figure? there's not just one!" replies).

      Heck, maybe it's just bad memories of 6th grad art class when you are forced to draw sketches of your classmates, and you felt obligated to draw in a turtleneck sweater and jacket just so you could avoid the topic of their breasts altogether. However, I imagine that most comic artists and 3d-modelers for modern video games have to put up with a fair ammount of ribbing about how large or small they create figures for their characters.

      Heh... There's an answer for that, too. (Thanks Barry!) Angst Technologies [inktank.com]

      T

    • I used to draw pictures of nekkid women and sell them to my hornier schoolmates. This predated the Interweb and was in possibly the most backward part of Ireland, so I had a monopoly on the blurry porn industry. It was great.

  • UF is too banal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Friday August 16, 2002 @10:49AM (#4082524) Homepage
    UF, by and large, sticks to the obvious jokes that we (as geeks) were making ten years ago. I'm sorry, but it was funny when I was 15 and it was new, but now I just don't see why people like it so much. MS jokes, D&D jokes, geek social jokes, but none of it at all original.

    I bought the first book (the O'Reilly one), but that's pretty much all I could take. I *wanted* to like it, but it just doesn't work for me. When I stumbled across Sluggy Freelance, I traded.

    Can someone explain the attraction to UF? I just don't get it.

    • When I stumbled across Sluggy Freelance, I traded.

      My personal favorite webcomic that everyone should read from the start. Go here [sluggy.com] and start all the way at the beginning. Its geeky and very funny with INCREDIBLE stories.

      It filled the void left by "Calvin and Hobbes" for me
    • Can someone explain the attraction to UF? I just don't get it.

      I take thirty seconds to read UF every day, but I'm a leech otherwise. I don't read the discussion boards, I don't read the link of the day, and I don't buy merchandise.

      What you want to do to gain insight on who "participates" in UF: read about 5 days worth of discussion threads.

      This shows you who the "UF community" is... a bunch of unimaginative, generally unsociable geeks who trade repetative inside jokes and whine about how they are REALLY SMART AND NICE but other people don't understand them, and they are having a really hard time because their mom is in the hospital, and oh I hope she feels well, me too, ME TOO, me also, *hug*, etc. ETC. AD NAUSEUM. There is a random hit or two discussing the strip, but it's usually explaining the english to someone on a different continent.

      So while I'm a "fan" of the strip, because it is a fair attempt at capturing humor at the ISP workplace and in the tech sector at large; the community eludes me because, humility aside, I have a life. Good for these people if this is what they want to do, but none of them seem genuinely satisfied with their lives, and I will continue to sit here and shake my head while "Mike Burns, your company's computer guy" and "Miss lonely and insecure" continue to try to find work and/or romance via the "community" at UF.org.

      Sorry to be blunt, but that is my opinion. I'm sure yours is probably different.

      • Dare I say it....?

        ME TOO!

        Yes, that was an attempt at humour, but I really am "me too"-ing as well. The discussion boards used to be a place where the cartoon was discussed, at least some of the time, but now they really are tedious, and I really did fel nauseated the last time I read one. Having said that, I do still love the cartoon...

        Tom.

        • Problem is they've tried desperately to base a "community" on a simple webcomic, and it's just too thin to do that. I mean, why not base a "community" around a brand of oatmeal, or TV Guide, or another piece of life's minutae?

      • Re:UF is too banal (Score:2, Informative)

        by Kickstart70 ( 531316 )
        I'm the head mod over at the UF Community boards, so I figured I'd better respond to this (well, I could have ignored it, but that would be no fun at all).

        Every once in a while someone comes in and says something akin to: "WTF? Why are you losers talking about shiat other than the strip?". The inevitable response is: The Comment Board is NOT for talking about the strip! Sure, you can talk about the strip if you want to, no one is going to tell you otherwise, but there is NO REQUIREMENT to do so. The Comment Board is just a place where people can interact with other members of the community in a place that is -for the community-.

        This simple idea evades the people who arrive there and expect hundreds of responses saying, "Illiad, nice job!" or "Illiad, you suck!". Can you possibly imagine how boring and stupid that would be?

        As for the 'support' posts...it's a community. There are people on there who've been talking for years, who've met in real life, and a few who have dated or even married after communicating on the UF board. If someone in this community wants to talk about something or get a little encouragement from other people who want to give that encouragement, then what the heck is wrong with that? It's not for you, and you don't have to respond. You don't even have to read it.

        If you don't find something you want on the UF board...that's a shame, but it's not the end of the world. Certainly there are enough places among the terabytes of internet bulletin boards for you to find one that suits your temperament. I personally hope you find one. You can even go ahead and slag the UF board there if you want. The people who make the UF board what it is will continue to do what they enjoy - namely, what they've been doing all along.

        Thanks for dropping by,

        Kickstart
      • Thanks mostly to range of topics covered by the comic strip the base of UserFriendly regulars stretches across almost every profession (mostly white collar) to almost every skill level. This introduces quite a range of topics. Granted technology is usually right on top, but people from medical, political, legal, and about every other camp are present as well.

        This doesn't set well with some people, especially those looking for a specialized group. I personally like the diversity of the boards. Where else can someone ask an HTML question and get five friendly answers telling them five different ways to solve their problem without getting flamed for not having bought a book or knowing a particular basic in one thread, while a conversation about the Bill of Rights being ignored is going on in another? This "Lack of focus" is hard for some people but to me it builds a warmer atmosphere.

        I'm not going to say my boards better than your board, it's not. I like my board better than I like your board but that doesn't mean it's better. Everyone has a different opinion of what they like. I like to browse /. and the Register for all types of technology news, I browse the Cruel Site of the Day to feel synacal and feed my twisted side, and I hang out on UserFriendly because the wide range of people there bring me to interesting stories that I would have never found sticking to boards that were only focused on one subject. Some people aren't intersted in news outside of their area of focus, personally I'm curious about just about everything and UserFriendly feeds that curiousity. I like the way /. has pictures next to the headline to denote which part of the tech industry each TLP covers, that concept wont work on UserFriendly, we could never come up with enough pictures to cover all the subjects we cross, but yes if we tried personal mushy stuff and hugs would be amoung the first subjects with pictures.

        As others have said if you don't like it don't fscking read it. I'm not going to say that, I'm going to say drop in and check it out when you feel like it. If you've got a question about anything and don't know where to post it try us, if we can't help we can probably tell you who can. I read the comic for a couple of years before I ever posted, the only reason I started reading the boards was the extream slowdown news sites experienced during 9/11 and I wanted to try to stay up on the news. I knew enough about the boards to know it had a global community so I started watching UF and /. since CNN wasn't going to happen. I'm glad I did, I found out what was going on a lot easier that way since I didn't have access to a radio or TV while I was at work and the bandwidth was killed by everyone else trying to get webcast.

        Just my brain dump, not trying to change your opinion about the board, but please don't think of us as a bunch of uneducated clowns.

  • UF used to be funny (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Your_Mom ( 94238 ) <slashdot@i[ ]smir.net ['nni' in gap]> on Friday August 16, 2002 @11:02AM (#4082584) Homepage
    (Disclaimer, I've been clean for about a year or two now)

    UF used to be part of my daily Webcomic reading habit, I remember spending close to an entire day reading the archives when I first read it. Then, about a year or two ago, it just stopped being funny. The storylines really just started getting into childish "Windows Sucks! Ha!". Honestly, I don't see how people can still read it.

    I have the first book, because there are some good storylines from the first few years, but after that it really started to go downhill. Now I read Sluggy Freelance [sluggy.com] and I feel much cleaner.

    For those who like Computer Comics I recomend Angst Technology [inktank.com] and (whenever Jeff gets out of his "I want to be a /real/ artist and have a story arc" phase and begins to produce teh funny again) GPF Comics [gpf-comics.com]
    • The storylines really just started getting into childish "Windows Sucks! Ha!". Honestly, I don't see how people can still read it.

      And this is not a recurrent theme on /. ?
  • All the comments here about how unfunny UF is are even less funny than UF itself. So I go over to read UF to see how unfunny it is, and it looks like a feast of Oscar Wildean wit by comparison.
  • ok,
    i hadn't read it before. so i just spent a little time trying to get some background and nearly fell a sleep in the process.

    i didn't laugh and sometimes i couldn't even figure out what the lame attempt at a joke was.

    but the have three books?
    wierd
  • I too, have User Friendly to thank for my sluggy freelance addiction (sluggy.com)
    I've actually gotten to the point where I *prefer* sluggy to User Friendly.
    They just finished a MAJOR story arc, so now is another good time to start reading. of course, if you start from the beginning (As with all internet comics) give them a litttle patience. They take a few weeks to get up to speed.
  • User Friendly looks like Funky Winkerbean meets Dilbert and has a kid who reads the Necronomicon, raises the corpse of Charles Shultz that marries Bill Keane and gives birth to an unholy creature that likes to scratch itself until it bleeds in the patterns approximating the strip you see.

    Like anything else, it's ok in small doses.

    • User Friendly looks like Funky Winkerbean meets Dilbert and has a kid who reads the Necronomicon, raises the corpse of Charles Shultz that marries Bill Keane and gives birth to an unholy creature that likes to scratch itself until it bleeds in the patterns approximating the strip you see.

      Which, when you get right down to it, says that it really is it's own strip. And it's still more fun then a conference call or a Friday 4:00 PM meeting. I've been an avid comic strip fan since about 8 (Started on Walt Kelly's Pogo, nothing has since compared and it's been a long wait...) and I'm 42 now.

      UF was a regular read when I wasn't so addicted to other sites, which I check in the morning, afternoon and evening. I just popped back in and read back a month and still find it an amusing strip, well worth the time it takes to read it.

      I used to be a regular on rec...something...comics where epic battles were waged on the evils of Cathy and Garfield. Net: Cathy and Garfield are still in the papers, though the San Jose Murky has dropped Cathy from the Sunday section, good riddance, but I can't take any credit for that. Illiad does strike me as someone who is actually getting better. Banal? Naw, the problem is some people have higher expectations. Take them to greener pastures, leave UF to those who enjoy. It strikes me as a somewhat self-indulgent, coy, smug, at times, but still worth a regular read.

      That said, I do find Penny Arcade pretty damn funny at times, but it's mutch edgier, and for that does have further to fall when the gag is flat. Much as I enjoy PA, I don't read it very often either.

  • I personally SF has become less and less funny as it went along, and has been a chaotic mess as of late.
    I used to read it daily, and wasted an otherwise productive day reading the archives a while back, but have found myself going to the page less and less.

    Admittedly, UF hasn't been as funny lately, but its a lot more coherent and it is still on my morning "must-reads".

    No rip on Sluggy fans intended, that's just IMHO.

    • Sluggy Freelance used to be hilarious (the time machine strips especially) but it seems to have gone downhill as of late... All the Oasis stuff doesn't seem to be quite as funny as good ol' fashioned Bun Bun running around and railing on everyone... :)
    • I agree - its much less humourous lately. I find a lot of webcomic authors do that - exploitation now, everything jake, mega tokyo. They all start out as "funny" then they get more and more stories - and the stories start getting serious.

      Megatokyo moves too slowly for its serious story, ditto EN. EJake has a bad tendancy to just give up and go written or half-assed for large comics, which is why I gave it up a year back.

      Sluggy is actually the only one where I *don't* mind when it gets dramatic. If its dramatic, Pete pulls out the stops and works his ass off to get the extra panels in at decent quality so he can properly tell the story at a good pace. But still, drama has killed a lot of good comics - remember when For Better or For Worse used to be funny? Sluggy still tells a joke once in a while - sometimes for a few panels even. It looks like they're getting back to jokes for a bit right now actually.
  • Lots of posters are posting links to their favorite web comics. Almost all of them are coming up as followed links in my browser.

    I gotta get a life

    the AC
    [oooohhh, shiny. A couple of fresh links I haven't seen before...^D]

  • Bob the Angry Flower (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mirk ( 184717 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMmiketaylor.org.uk> on Friday August 16, 2002 @11:36AM (#4082809) Homepage
    ADVERT. You should be reading Bob the Angry Flower [angryflower.com], a weekly strip so utterly wonderful that I can't begin to do it justice.

    Admittedly, Bob's more into giant robots [angryflower.com] and suchlike [angryflower.com] than computers [angryflower.com] and software [angryflower.com], but hey - don't let that spoil your reading pleasure.

    (Oh, and he can punctuate [angryflower.com], too!)

    • Heh. I went to University with the creator of BtAF, when it was just a local campus strip. Bad art, demented stories, and non-sequitors. Not bad for campus comics! :-)

      But now it's a comic with a near-cult following. I don't quite understand how that happened.
      Strange days.
      • swordgeek, I can't find an email address for you, presumably due to spam-paranoia. Please could you email me on slashdot@miketaylor.org.uk

        (Apologies to anyone else who sees this, I know it's of no interest at all to anyone. I'd use my "-1" bonus to score this at zero if only there were such a thing! :-)

  • Pokey the Penguin! [yellow5.com]

    Way funnier than that UF stuff.

  • Superfluous recommendation of other comic strip (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Friday August 16, 2002 @11:45AM (#4082856) Homepage Journal
    And its not sluggy-bastard-freelance, either. Try PhD [stanford.edu], although I'd imagine the recognition factor of the comedy requires you to have done at least a few months in graduate school.

  • Hey you distractors: Find something else to do!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Friday August 16, 2002 @11:56AM (#4082925) Journal
    If. You. Don't. Like. User. Friendly. Then. Don't. Read. It.

    Simple enough for you?

    Some of us like it, through Illiad's strong and weak days.
  • I think JeffK hit the nail right on the head when he said UF's target audience is a buncha nerds who will laugh at the lamest joke as long as it has the word "Linux" in it.

    Here's a joke guaranteed to raise howls of laughter:

    Why did the chicken cross the road?
    Because he wanted to use Linux!
    • Actually, a couple of years ago at Comdex Toronto, some Linux booth had some guy dressed in an actual Dustbunny costume as a promotional tool. ("Tool" being the key word.)

      I thought to myself "It just might be worth being barred from Comdex for life just to go over there and kick the tar out of him..."

      But then my train of thought was derailed by another booth giving away free squishy toys.

  • my review (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes, it's a cliché, but it's true enough to be worth repeating: User Friendly is to the open-source world what Dilbert is to swarming hives of Windows cubicles. Set in an ISP company that keeps getting bought and sold, the constant remains a team of cynical, hilarious techies. M.B.A.s and marketers drift in and out, as do CEOs, often making statements like, "I can't surf the Web. I think the Internet is broken." For anyone who's dealt with similar situations, User Friendly is the ultimate in-joke.
    To be fair, the comic is pretty basic in layout and execution. No one will confuse this book with a graphic novel, since the visuals basically exist only to further the punch line. (Think of a stripped-down Bloom County and you're getting close.) Lots of the jokes involve goofy, clichéd rants about the beauty of Quake, Linux, and Star Wars--the holy trinity for a white, wired, 18-26 year-old male audience. But when the author, Illiad, nails the bloated bureaucracy that exists in the tech working world, it's a laugh-out-loud payoff. In one comic, a new "suit" walks into the tech den and asks, What's "one thing that makes your job difficult, and we'll see about eliminating that." The chorus erupts: "Meetings." The new boss replies: "Very good. Now let's spend a few hours discussing why meetings make you unproductive." A comic that tilts at windmills and Windows, it's clear why User Friendly has developed such a strong online cult following.
  • User Friendly, for as long as I've been aware of it, hasn't been funny. Obviousy I'm not the only one here with these sentiments. But why?

    I believe it has something to do with the co-opting of geek culture. There's precious little difference between your average UF strip and any of the mediocre dead tree comics who made uninformed jokes about how much computers crash in your local paper's comics page. Most of their jokes aren't really that geeky - it seems like they simply pander to the wannabes, and there's nothing sadder than a wannabe geek. If you want some really geeky jokes, see the always-offensive Jerkcity [jerkcity.com] for superb strips like this [jerkcity.com] or this [jerkcity.com] or even some of this [jerkcity.com].

    Typical computer/office humor gets old real fast, just like Dilbert did. But from what I can see, UF never even had the biting humor and that Dilbert's heydays can claim.
  • Perhaps just one voice in the face of the critics, but I'll admit to actually enjoying UFIE 90% of the time. Why?
    • Primarily because the strip has stayed true to the quirks and foibles of all of it's moderately crazy characters along the way. Not every joke is funny, but when you figure out some of the back stories and how they are playing out between the characters in current strips, there is a whole lot of anarchistic fun going on, sort of like a Seinfeld for IT literates--
    • because the Sunday strip often offers a scathingly funny critique of what's happening in the real world --
    • the best execution of an Internet based practical joke I've ever heard of -- co-ordinated with Malda and co. here at /. (I know, I'm not providing the link so you'll have to dig for it in the archives)--
    • the strips related to September 11, last year;
    • The assorted real or pretend evildoers which pop up to afflict the user friendly staff from time to time

    For all the detractors then, I challenge you: Go back and read between the lines. Stick with it until you catch a clue to all of the inside jokes about Miranda's tech prowess, Greg's neurotic responses to users, the fact that Pitr isn't Russian, [he just plays one in the strip], the AI (ERWIN) that's got it in for the marketing nerd and why (believe me, the marketroid earned it!!), humble little dust puppy and his nemisis, the Crud Puppy.... Or the smiling man (you know, the accountant type who hands you your last paycheck (surprise, we're downsizing!)), or the older geek boss who runs the show...

    Stereotypes perhaps, but they also break the mold and let these crazy people interact in ways that will usually bring a smile to my face.

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