Elftor

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Background
If you've ever read Elftor (you haven't), then you might think that I'm just picking an easy target to review (which I am). I mean, what can I possibly say about it that isn't patently obvious just from reading the first strip? Well, I can talk about the whole premise of the comic.

On the site's news section, in a post dated June 9, 2007, Alex says the following:

"If you hate webcomics as much as I do, you might enjoy the mad ranting of the medium's greatest detractor: John Solomon."

In that post, he puts a link to John Solomon's blog, which has since been taken over by some other guy. From this post, it seems that the author hates webcomics, and from that I can deduce that Elftor is supposed to be bad, like some kind of troll comic. However, troll comics generally don't run for five years for the simple reason that the people making them don't invest that much interest, and this post was made ten months after the comic's last update. In another post dated June 12, 2005, a little over a year before the comic ended, he said the following:

"Comics are for jerks."

Is that why you worked on this comic for four years up until then, Alex? You know, generally speaking, when somebody makes something tongue-in-cheek, something that's supposed to be bad, there's usually some satire, genuine humor, and purpose involved, and the author includes subtle hints that tell the audience "this is supposed to be bad, *wink wink*". If you're going to make a comic bad on purpose, use it to illustrate a point. Use it to draw attention to clichés and common mistakes seen in other comics.

However, Elftor doesn't do that. Elftor is just bad, and when Alex implies that it's meant to be, I get the sense that it's little more than an excuse.

Downfall
I really don't like to say "the beginning" in my reviews because so many reviews say that, and it just seems like taking the easy route, but honestly.

Story and Plot
Elftor is about an elf named Elftor. It's a gag-a-day comic, so there really isn't a story or plot. There's a talking cheese wedge with whom Elftor plays videogames, and sometimes, copyrighted characters make appearances, and of course, they behave out-of-character.

Elftor is a typical "zany" character. He's stupid and violent, but always comes out on top. I know you've seen this kind of character before. In the place of a personality, he has quirks, such as being an alchoholic, a rapist, and a pedophile.

Writing review
This is a typical Elftor comic. As you can see, the comic is reliant on painfully bad attempts at dark humor. Then there's the random humor. The very fact that one of the characters is a talking wedge of cheese is bad enough, but none of the strips end with an actual punchline. It's always just "Elftor and friends kill somebody, then they all say 'hooray'".

There's also senseless attempts at satire. In this strip, we see Ralph Nader depicted as some kind of cave man. I don't get it.

Then of course, there's the attempts at being shocking. There's a strip where Elftor finds out he's Jewish and gets sent to a concentration camp, and another one where Elftor causes 9/11, and one where Elftor gets a girl pregnant, then tries to kill the fetus by smacking the girl in the stomach with a shovel, then the baby gets born as a zombie, then it gets a girl pregnant and asks for a shovel so it can kill its baby. You know, it's weird to think that Alex puts so little effort into the art, but tries just so damn hard to be offensive.

Author biography
I don't know anything about Alex other than he's also responsible for another webcomic called Rabbits. The website doesn't even say his name. I had to find out his name by translating a French website that he linked to where he's selling a calendar. Honestly, I can't even be certain if that really is his name.

Conclusion
This is a short review because a comic like this doesn't warrant much attention. In fact, the only reason I even took the time to review it at all is because it was in the list of comics that we haven't reviewed yet, and I hadn't written a review in a while and it seemed like an easy target. Still, I feel like I spent more time on this than I should have.

I struggle to think of anything to write for a conclusion because I don't know what else to say about it. Elftor is stupid and boring, and I can't even get angry at its offensive content because it's so lacking in sincerity that it just comes across like it was written by a fourth-grade class clown, and like how a fourth-grade class clown only amuses himself when he makes farting noises in class, Alex was only amusing himself when he made Elftor, and then he decided to use the internet as a garbage can to dump his shit into.

Links

 * The Elftor website