But anyway, he was a bit of a dead-end character and was laid to rest.

Until now. Bom-bom-boom! [Ominous music]

Because Noel Lemming can't DIE! That was the whole POINT! Sorry, Noel, but you're not getting out of it that easily!

While surfing on the internet, looking for good comics to read, I was disappointed to find that - with the exception of one or two websites -
ALL WEB COMICS SUCK.

I reckoned that Web Comics seem to fall into two categories:

1) The Cut-n-Paste Category: The artist has drawn about two different pictures of each of his/her characters and creates comics by cutting and pasting them onto the frames in the comic. Then speech balloons are added. That is all. No action. Just words.

For crying out loud, people! You could save yourself (not to mention the rest of us) so much time and webspace by simply writing your cartoons as "play scripts" and posting them up! Your pictures are ENTIRELY REDUNDANT!
Examples:
Pentasmal - In fact, this one's two main characters are so superficial that they are actually random shapes with mouths! What's funny about it is the fact that BigPanda.net rated it NUMBER ONE in its list of FUNNY web comics! D
Modern Evil - Cut-n-pasted pix of people saying stuff which might have been funny if you'd been there at the time. I think this particular comic is just an ego thing for its creators. D
"?" - The Slightly Demented Comic Strip The only thing comical about this comic is the fact that it features on Web Comic sites and even has a sponsor! Now THAT'S laughable! E

2) The Microsoft Paintbrush Category: These types of web comics are drawn by people who aren't actually cartoonists at all - they're just cashing in on ignorant website sponsors who pay to advertise on these numbskulls' websites. The numbskulls in question draw a few stick figures or blocky faces composed of lines and rectangles and maybe, just MAYBE, if they're feeling REEEEALLY daring, they might just use the occasional circle! Wow! (Excuse me, I'm going to have to go and lie down for a bit now, what with all the excitement of using a circle instead of just straight lines.) Then the stick figures get to say something that the "artist" has copied from another cartoon website (probably a Cut-n-Paste one). Okay, so maybe it's art, but that doesn't make it comic (which means "humourous").
Examples:
Exploding Dog - This artist can't even come up with any original ideas. D-
Diesel Sweeties - I think this one's lameness HAS to be intentional. D
Hotendoty - A perfect example of a "Paintbrush"-er that tries to make up for what it lacks with toilet humour. Dear oh dear. D+

So, after sifting through megs and megs of rancid, putrid, vile web comic pollution, I decided that the proportion of "decent" web comics to "embarrassing insults to cartoonists" web comics is disturbingly low. Not being one to simply stop at destructive criticism, I decided to do something about it by adding my bit to web comics. All I needed was a character...
Enter Noel Lemming, again. I decided that Noel would need to have a makeover, and a more depressed personality. Thus I made him a "goth", taking the mickey out of the whole teenage "my life sucks" thing. And, to make things more interesting, why not give him a sidekick, or contrasting counterpart?

Enter Leon (whose name, as you probably have noticed, is "Noel" spelled backwards) Lemming. Together, the two morbidly mismatched rodents could supply audiences with endless hilarity for a minimum amount of actual humour; what I had created, in fact, was the cartoon equivalent of a trashy TV sitcom. Cool.

Such a style of cartoon is one that I have normally tried to avoid, because of the chringeworthy cheesiness that is generally associated with sitcoms, but hey - it's a web comic - it doesn't have to be anything spectacular!

Because Noel and Leon are equals, rather than Noel being the central character, I changed the name from "The Suicidal Adventures of Noel Lemming" to "Goodbye Cruel World", since this phrase could apply to both characters. Noel would say "Goodbye, Cruel World!" because he wants to kill himself. Leon would say "Goodbye, Cruel World!" because he looks around his world and sees everyone killing themselves. (-:

It was a real headache trying to figure out whether or not Noel and Leon lived in a world of lemmings where everyone but our gruesome twosome would be committing suicide in some bizarre parody of a rat race society, or if they would live among humans. I initially went with the first scenario up to "Caught On Camera" (episode two), after which I decided that a world of humans would make more sense, especially since Noel and Leon would be cast out of their lemming society (see the INTRO - my fourth GCW cartoon).
So, um, Andrew - how come you're not posting your GCW cartoons AS you draw them?
Well, I've got a huge stack of GCW's that are waiting to be posted in future weeks. That's to keep me ahead of schedule for times of real-world-busy-ness. I won't necessarily post them in any particular order unless they follow on in a multi-episode thread. So the next GCW might be weeks old - or it might have been drawn in a rush last night because it relates to a topical current event.

And finally, in case you're wondering if Noel Lemming is some kind of metaphor for my existence, (as is the connection between many cartoonists and their characters), I'm not even going to dignify that with a straight answer. Remember - William Shakespeare maintained that the views and ideals expressed by his characters were not necessarily his own.
Lighten up. Go and read Post-Ironic Pig.

Note:
Just to show that I don't hink that all web comics suck, here's MY very opinionated list of web comics that DON'T SUCK:

1: Bob The Angry Flower - Brilliant. Surreal. Unpredictable. May I be so impudent as to say that BTAF cartoons are in a similar style to mine? (No! I'm not worthy!) A

2: Zebra Girl - So very corny, but so very well-drawn that this can be a good combination. A-

3: Living In Greytown - Bizarre, naughty, occasionally funny... but the characters are amusing and the storylines are somewhat addictive. The first few episodes were much better than the current 2-framer strips. B-

4: Glop - This isn't so much your traditional "web comic", as such, more of a "comic that has been put on the web" - but it's the most ingenious and surreal superhero-comic parody... ever. Go. Now. Read. Laugh (not that you'll need to be told to). A

If you don't agree with my judgement, then for cryssakes TELL ME ABOUT THE GOOD WEB COMICS!

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