Grim Tales From Down Below

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Rating Summary

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Background
From the bowels of the internet, a site where art students gathered to display their work and critique each other's pieces was born. This web site was called DeviantArt. It was a safe haven for a young, impressionable artist who was new to the internet. That artist was me. As I browsed the site, filling my favorites folder with anime fan art, I came upon an artist who drew Powder Puff Girls fanart and a fan webcomic. I added one of his character sheets to my favorites folder and never bothered to look into just why a grown man would be drawing fan art for a cartoon about grrrl power.

That was until I was browsing Encyclopedia Dramatica and found Bleedman's page there. Needless to say, I need to send Vinson the bill for the therapy season for the traumatic rape of my childhood he caused.

However, he made another webcomic about a show known as The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, which aired on Cartoon Network for a while. The show is about two children, Billy and Mandy, who tricked the Grim Reaper into becoming their slave/friend. Sounds awesome, right? Too bad, because Bleedman took a huge dump on its premise to pander to his mall goth fanbase.

Downfall
The moment Bleedman revealed that the Grim Reaper and Mandy (who is now a smoking hot blond sex goddess wearing nothing but a corset with wings and thigh high boots) got married and had two children, Mini Mandy (ugh) and Grim Jr. However, that isn't the worst of it. Apparently, Mandy is a militant Left Winger who was behind - wait for it - 9/11! I shit you not. Somewhere in Bleedman's mind, he thought that making a character from a cartoon show into a terrorist would be an very good and edgy idea. Not only is it stupid in every way, but highly insulting. Of course, Bleedman's attitude towards people being offended by this is even more sickening. ""The reason why I was suspended was because I blew my tops, I got really annoyed by one of the deviants whining around the front page about the 911 pages. I replied back to her in a manner that violated this so-called "Etiquette Policy". Here's what I said: "You wanna talk seriously or just screw around like the whining little bitch you are. If you want people to listen to you I suggest you act a little more mature over this, I think you're old enough to understand that". Obviously some[one] reported this to the administrators, so yeah I need to be more careful when talking to people in DA. Someone is close by listening to every word I say so I better just shut up now and let my pencil do the talking. - Vinson 'Bleedman' Ngo"" Now, I do admit to having a pretty raunchy and tasteless sense of humor and have no doubt offended people before. However, I posses some degree of social grace and some tact and don't get all pissy when I get in trouble for lacking proper social skills, nor do I insult people for being offended, the reason being simply that I'm not a social retard.

But did Bleedman's fanbase care? Hell no. His suspension from DeviantArt violated his freedom of speech! He was a martyr!

Also, Mandy has a poster of Hilter on her wall. Oh, Bleedman, you are so edgy I can shave my beard on this page.

Story and Plot
The comic opens with Mini Mandy (who looks like a rag doll with one eye) and Grim Jr. (who is a skeleton with a small tuft of brown hair on his head) fighting a demon. Their asses are being kicked until Spawn shows up out of nowhere to save the day. Yes, you heard me right, mother fucking Spawn. After that random cameo, they go off to Halloween Town for their first Halloween. The story devolves into underage girls flashing their panties and crossovers from many other cartoons.

Art review
I'm not going to lie: Bleedman is a very competent artist. The art style is very much like a cartoon you'd see on Cartoon Network and is very reminiscent of Power Puff Girls if they were preteens. However, all of the child characters have the same body shape- big head, big eyes, tiny torso, big fucking hands, long legs, and the largest cankles you have ever seen. The problem comes when Bleedman draws characters from other series in his anime/cutesy cartoon style. Take this page for example: Lock, Shock and Barrel from The Nightmare Before Christmas were a group of a fairly creepy looking children, but in Grim Tales from Down Below they are so cute that you just want to eat them up. Quite literally, the only way to tell a character apart is by their hair, colors, and clothing. Half the characters in the image above are proof enough of this claim. Now, Bleedman can draw pretty well. It's easy to see with his more detailed characters like his robots and monsters. It's just too bad that when it comes to drawing these highly detailed characters in his comics, he tends to avoid drawing these scenes like they were the fucking plague. What's the point of having so much detail on your character if you're not going to even show them in action? This is a cheat on the artist's part as it shows how lazy he can be when it comes to actually making a comic. Does he even care about the quality?

Let's move onto another couple of things that really bug me about his art. First is the coloring. You often see the entire thing colored in a very bright fashion, but this becomes a problem when it comes to setting a mood. The page above is a perfect example of this as the mood of the robot being dismantled is a simple gray with neon green goop surrounding it, but even that is offset by the rest of the page being as bright as daylight. Isn't this comic supposed to be "dark and edgy?" Then you should show it with the colors you moron!

Second thing is the panels. Now, it seems good at first, but reading further into the comic, you notice one the biggest flaws: characters constantly breaking the panel boarders and crowding other panels, and mixing multiple panels into one big clusterfuck panel. Take the middle panel there for example. Not only is there a small monochromatic figure of HIM, but there's also a giant Mandy defying gravity, and a giant kid on fire with another Mandy standing in front of him. All of this happens right behind the little HIM. So... what's going on in that panel anyway? Was there really a need to combine those three completely different panels into one big panel? It's nice to think out of the box and not cram images into little panels, but sometimes you need to hold back on the reigns and not go overboard with it. Bleedman's work is not only an eyesore to look at, but the images without dialogue are completely impossible to understand and serves to hinder his already disgusting storyline!

Writing review
Grim Tales From Down Below is nothing but a giant wank fest, and a masturbatory aid for Bleedman. It's like a contest to see how many cameos a webcomic can possibly have until it collapses under its own bullshit. Seriously, look at all of these fucking cameos! We have The Nightmare Before Christmas, Meet Joe Black, Yogi Bear, Megas XLR, Evil Con Carne, Teletubbies, Invader Zim, Dora the Explorer, Danny Phantom, Fairly Oddparents, Saw, Spawn, Hey Arnold!, Lenore and... Yu-Gi-Oh? See, what makes it so jarring is how most of those characters will just come outta the wood-work by convenient plot device rather than for any substantial explanations. It also doesn't help that most fans will just eat it up without question, the mindless sheep!

What little plot Grim Tales has is about how Mini Mandy became a rag doll-like girl with incestuous undertones. It all started when Mini Mandy and Grim Jr. went to Halloween Town and got chummy with Lock, Shock, and Barrel, and of course Grim Jr. gets kidnapped by Oogie Boogie so Mini Mandy has to save him and... gets her shit fucked up. When it comes to info dumps, Bleedman is the master. Words are just vomited onto the page to form long, ranty blocks of text and whatever the fuck this is. I know talking is a free action, but goddamn.

All and all, the writing is just bland, boring and redundant. The key to writing is showing, not telling, especially when the writing is in a comic.

Author biography
Ladies and Gentlemen, Bleedman is a pedophile. But much like another webcomic artist we know, the fans do not care, even though Bleedman is much more open about his pedophilia. He even jokes about it. Luckily, there are sane people on DeviantArt. Overall though, looking past the pedophilia, Bleedman is a real douche-bag who only draws to serve his own cum-soaked fantasies. But what about his fans you may ask? Doesn't he give them props for elevating him to the ranks of "The most viewed artist on DA"?

Short answer: NO! Actually, what he said to them was "Get a life." Oh Vinson, you're a real credit to artists everywhere.

Conclusion
Mall goths will like anything as long as it involves cartoon characters and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Also, the shotacon and lolicon lovers would really enjoy this. For those with higher standards, however, you'll quickly find yourself scrambling for eye bleach after viewing this horrid mess of a comic.

Links

 * Bleedman's page on Encyclopedia Dramatica NSFW
 * Comic Page Very NSFW
 * Bleedman's DeviantArt page PANTIES AND 9/11 LOVE STORY AHOY!!
 * Bleedman Fan Artists group First of the Bleedman lover groups on DA
 * Grim Tales Fan Group Second group so far.