by Mike Meginnis
There are infinite categories by which to sort artists, most of them meaningless, many misleading. As a reader and a writer, I am not interested in genre. I do not care about the conventions which a work defines or defies. They are relevant in the general sense, surely, but not to my worldview. I don't care if someone is indie or punk or feminist or a nazi, if their work is noir or SF or fantasy. For me, there are basically two categories of art, which I have termed Social, and Asocial. Most of the stuff we will be covering here in the Examiner, unless my prophetic powers fail me, will be in the latter category. This is because social art tends to lack permanence. It is, by my definition, about being a part of a community perceived or extant. It is, in fact, often created with that sole aim. There are social comics about being "punk," social comics about being smart, social comics about having a sexual fetish for anthropomorphic animals, and even, get ready for it, social comics about comics.
To digress briefly, an asocial comic will tend to aim for a more timeless quality, creating its own context rather than depending on an external, social force to give it one. It will be interesting even when whatever community it was created within has ceased to exist. It can probably be translated into another language and still hold together very well. This system isn't by any means perfect, of course; Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote straddles both categories, as it was originally conceived as (and indeed, continues to read as) a biting satire of the era's popular fiction. It also attained timelessness, however, by creating a new archetype. Trimmed and retold to modern tastes, it continues to be vital today. Thus, it is both social and asocial by my flawed definitions.
1/0, the comic that first inspired this system of classification, did so by straddling both categories. While it begins haphazardly with the sole goal of having a comic-- indeed, it is a comic about making a comic whose only purpose is to be a comic-- it eventually grew far past this, to a transcendent metaphysical discussion of fiction and realities. It built characters with frighteningly convincing minds of their own (more on this later-- much, much more) from silly gag-fodder and plagiarized characters. It went from radically social to decidedly asocial, defining both sides of the coin for me.
1/0, a four panel gag strip, starts out cute, crudely but expressively drafted and "wacky" with punchlines like "You can draw an extradimensional vortex, but not a shotgun?" and "Even your originality is stolen!" What initially did a half-assed job of setting it apart was the lack of a fourth wall. Through captions, the creator, who calls himself Tailsteak, converses with his creations. What actually set the early episodes of 1/0 apart from your average webcomic is just how desperate it was to be accepted into the webcomics community-- going so far as to blatantly steal its main character from a more popular strip. If this weren't an obvious enough scream of "LIKE ME! LIKE MEEE!" then maybe Tailsteak's next move was: He sent the stolen character and his sidekick Ribby the Rib to declare war on yet another strip, Pentasmal. Pentasmal never acknowledged the move.
Tailsteak's expressive cartooning and dry wit indicated from the beginning that there could be more to this strip, and as he found it more and more difficult to stick to the confines of the gag-a-day comic strip, the artist found himself elaborating on his world. One could easily skip straight to strip 41 without missing much at all, although I personally enjoy even the early, more irrelevant strips quite a lot. At this point, the comic begins to take shape, mixing witty dialogue with sometimes-hilarious jokes on the idea of a comic strip universe.
Gradually (very, very gradually) more elements were introduced. The slowness of development at times gives the strip a threadbare quality, but this is, whether intentional or not, exactly what the comic is all about. By paring it down to its most essential elements, Tailsteak forces readers to focus on them, and creates a solid basis for his discussions of the special properties of fiction. In an early strip, the abrasive fanged eyeball "Junior" makes a racial slur on old Arab women. Sidekick Manny the Molecule turns to the reader and asks the artist if he's racist. Hysterically, the artist says defensively, "This is not my fault!"
If I have to explain the joke here to you, you probably wouldn't like 1/0. In a plotline that would soon follow, the characters discuss the paradoxes of free will in fictional characters. Many writers say that their creations write themselves, but this is patently ridiculous. Where does the responsibility for a given bit of dialogue lie? How much "freedom" does a creator owe his creations? These questions are fascinating to some people, but will leave others wondering when the actual story starts.
As the metaphysical discussions become less entrancing, Tailsteak once again alters things to stay interested, now introducing a number of dramatic elements. The first murder in 1/0 takes place, and the dimwitted but well-meaning Marcus creates his own personal fourth wall out of grief. He remains completely ignorant of the artist's existence for a very long time, providing a vehicle for discussing theism versus atheism that even Tailsteak's own characters suggest is a little transparent. In an interview I conducted with him not too long after that strip ran, he of course denied that this had been his goal. Again, though, the theme of characters holding their creator responsible is a powerful one. At one point, a character shouts, "What are we, but fictions of God?" drawing a clear parallel between humans and their fictional creations. The characters' conflicts with their creator are so satisfying largely because there can hardly be a person on this planet that doesn't want to hold his or her own god accountable for his or her own life. If we are indeed the creations of somebody else, then why have they made us who we are? Cruelly, Tailsteak has deprived all of his characters but one of romantic love, and they get pissed off at him for it.
It would be so cathartic to communicate to my own deity this message: Why here? Why now? Not that I'm complaining, just, you know, what's the deal.
1/0 begs the question: What would you ask yours?
As the comic grows more dramatic, the art gets a lot better, the lines cleaner, the dialogue more eminently readable. The cast continues to grow in number and complexity, and within his first year out of the three he spent drawing 1/0 every day, Tailsteak frequently transcends his strip's status as a social comic to provide thought provoking, distinctly asocial fodder for the reader's consideration. The fact that the dialogue is sometimes blatantly and perhaps even intentionally clumsy in its attempts to make readers think is excused by the context of our consciousness as readers of the author's existence. Since he himself is a character in the strip, and we know he can talk through his characters, we might almost feel cheated if he didn't occasionally use them as mouthpieces.
The characters become such a convincingly separate force from their author that, after receiving a lot of what they feel is unfair treatment, they go on strike, refusing to do anything at all for weeks of strips. To try and keep things interesting, Tailsteak is forced to render them from every viewpoint possible before finally giving in to their demands so they'll start entertaining the readers again. In the context of the low-key tone fostered in the early days of the comic, this reads as high drama, and rightfully so-- it may not be visually stimulating, but the idea of characters rebelling so effectively against their creator is fascinating.
Relationships grow and change, with much of the latter quarter of the strip maintaining a lot of tension under the announcement that Tailsteak would end the strip at number one thousand. By this point, the comic leans completely on the strength of its characters, as it always tried to do --and often failed in. By now, everybody is likable and well defined. They are not complex, per se, but they are nuanced. Here, at the end, 1/0 stops being at all an intellectual's guilty pleasure and displays a subtle mastery of the four panel gag strip format. A minor talent with a lot of charm has developed into one that stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of webcomic creators, even if he has some polishing to do before he's done. Watching this development is in and of itself almost as deeply satisfying as the story's conclusion.
The thing that first got me hooked on this strip was a quote hidden at its bottom end. Since the quote is attributed to no one, and it sounds like some of Mason "Tailsteak" Williams' writing, I have to think he wrote it. As the tiny text has it:
