Vegan Artbook
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WARNING: The creator of this webcomic is a giant douche, even by internet standards. Their behavior may include, but is not limited to: Rampant displays of racism, sexism, homophobia and/or other forms of bigotry and douchebaggery. May spew invective at critics and fans alike. Avoid real-life interaction as much as possible. |
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| Original review author: | Izzus, TheNobleSusieHaltmann, and kissthis92 |
| Webcomic name: | Vegan Artbook |
| Author: | Priya Cynthia Kishna (A.K.A. Pupastuff, VeganArtBook, PupaVegan, Yerdian) |
| Start Date: | June 01, 2014 |
| End Date: | Ongoing |
| Genre: | Propaganda |
| Defining Flaw: | This comic fails in every way at promoting the vegan lifestyle. |
Rating Summary
| Art: | 
This gets two people yelling at a brick wall. The author draws well. Then copy pastes the drawings without end, occasionally taking the time to draw a blob with squiggly arms, or an anime with a melty face. |
| Characters: |
Five guys yelling at a brick wall for strawmen and holier-than-thou jackasses. |
| Miscellaneous Details: |
Five guys yelling at a brick wall because if you eat meat, the author thinks you're stupid, and she's going to educate you by calling you stupid until you quit it. |
| Overall: |
Five guys yelling at a brick wall, this does for Veganism what Assigned Male is doing for the transgender demographic. |
Background
Before God created humans, He created monsters. It was only in time that one of us had managed to dredge their memory back to the living world, the mere thought enough to give them life once again. Aberrations to all that is known, incomprehensible to what insignificant scraps of logic we might cling to, silently peering at us from the vast shadows between stars. In the distance, heard around the world, so subtle that most simply ignored it, a heart began to beat.
It's been days. Growing louder. More noise, queer weather. I can hear it now, I see something in the distance. The sky is turning a strange hue of red and orange. There is thunder, or is it a rumbling of the earth itself? Winds blow, wailing, nay, howling. They seem to speak whispers, sounds unknown to the human palette, and yet a language all the same. They slip maddening thoughts into our minds, "Any argument you make toward me is futile, for I am inflexible." Another whisper, "You are only here for me to make fun of, because my lifestyle is better than yours." And yet still, "I will educate you by using characters nobody can identify with." Hundreds of thousands of syllables folding between each other in impossible ways, each one brittling the human essence.
The din of the gales grows as their force magnifies. The women flee and men grip to hold on. I clutch my hat and cry, "Oh, ye great thunder, storm of storms! What hast thou brought upon us? To Hell with you! And beyond!" Debris of rancid vegetables and bean curd pummels me, I am thrown into a rock.
All is warm and silent now. Through scratched eyes and confused mind, I catch a glimpse of the approaching juggernaut, be it a great monster, an army of Lucifer or other foul demons? Great Jove! Lord beget! Can it be? By mine quivering soul, it's the dread ramblings, the animus whose name we wince upon, Vegan Artbook!
Downfall
Even from the very beginning, it sucked as hard as a cumslut.
Writing review
Vegan Artbook uses the gag a day format. There have been two-parters. They're uncommon. It would probably suck as hard as more than one cumslut if it followed a constant narrative, so the current format is pretty fitting.
There are two formats to the dialog. The usual setup is that an omnivore says something, and then the vegan contradicts them with what the author thinks is a checkmate zinger. Or the vegan will make a distressed face at the omnivore. Sometimes both. The other setup is where the comic strip only focuses on the vegans. They'll worry about something until the end of the strip, or they'll worry about something until the end of the strip. So pretty much that. There are also single panel pages and quotes (sometimes the author quotes herself), always soap boxing the same sentiment. Countless platitudes, falling upon our heads like manna from heaven. Except the manna isn't manna, it's shit that only the author and her echo chamber cares about.
The entire thing is a soap box for the author to say "Hey! Look at how stupid these carnists are! They say stupid things! Vegans are much smarter!" Except for the times where she just hand waves the comments because she can't think of a comeback. It's the equivalent of a kid drawing a picture of a school teacher they don't like, and then writing "Big smelly doo doo head" next to the image. She pretty much pours herself into the comic, making it difficult to identify when she's trying to be funny and when she's saying something she really thinks. Which as far as we know is probably everything in the webcomic.
The comic is advertised as educational but it does fuck all for anything close to that. All I learned from the comic is that the author likens meat eating and animal farming to slavery, the holocaust, fascism, and so much more. Now that's how you educate people. Just call them names and say they're bad people until they shut up and agree with you.
Really, this comic fails at everything it's trying to do. It's an excuse for the author to talk shit about people she doesn't like.
Characters
Every vegan in the comic is one of the author's hivemind mouthpieces. Add them all together into a single entity and you have an image of the golden Seraph in the vegan heirarchy. It has no asshole, and it does not speak. It only sings in a voice that makes you weep with joy. Then it finds out that you eat meat and it smites you because you think wrong. You're not allowed to have your own thoughts around the Seraph, you're only allowed to have vegan thoughts.
Every character is jobless, yet they somehow have money to spend on whatever the hell they eat. Like trees and cigarettes. Possibly sod, as vegans have been known to consume.
The vegans are portrayed as a noble, righteous group of people. Imagine the most obnoxious and self indulgent fucker who sniffs their own farts because they're so perfect, that's every vegan in the comic. The omnivores, referred to as "carnists," are portrayed as idiots who say idiot things. Imagine your average Joe with character flaws who tries to do the right thing but gets constantly shut down by the vegans because the best you can do isn't good enough, and that's every omnivore in the comic.
Brie/Plausibell is a punchably sweet and kind girl, and is featured most prominently through the comic. She often keeps a cool head and never resorts to yelling. She is portrayed as infallible and flawless, from her looks to her personality to her quick wit. Nobody in the world can identify with how perfect she is. She was previously named after a very tasty kind of cheese.
Shawn is the brother to Brie (renamed Plausibell), and he's an omnivore. He's never level-headed and he is featured as the usual punching bag. Most non-vegans who read the comic see him as the underdog and root for the guy, as he takes the most abuse throughout the comic. The vegans go as far as physical assault, to teasing, to even stealing his food. Those greedy fuckers.
Dolly used to be an omnivore but she turned vegan eventually. She was once treated like the rest of the omnivores, spouting the same nonsense that nobody says ever, until she finally became a vegan. Then she turned into a stellar role model at that moment. Not before, not after. At the moment she became vegan, she became perfect, reciting wisdom to rival that of Confucius and Plato.
Legua partially resembles the author herself. Her design resembles a character from a different webcomic Priya deleted. She has been seen kicking Shawn in the nuts in order to make a point. Vegans are fun to look up to, aren't they? What with their chanting eerie mantras of peace and tolerance as they violently assault people they disagree with.
Rohit is Legua's cousin. He's a vegan body builder who is never seen at the gym or working out. Or talking to other body builders. He's the only one who exists in this comic. He has yet to wrestle the strongest man in the world, who always has been and always will be a meat eater.
Lilith is a walking Hot Topic. She hasn't been featured in a while, and has hardly any personality aside from "pretending to act jaded." My personal headcanon is that she subsisted on the overpriced pants that Hot Topic sells, and couldn't afford another $40 pair of slacks covered in belt buckles and chains and zippers and useless shit. She starved. Her funeral was very respectful.
Cherry is Shawn and Brie-eer-Plausibell's little sister. She's more or less a mini version of her big sister (God save us all!). She's being raised vegan by her sister, or more accurately indoctrinated by her. Even though the narrative presents her as being wise for her age, it's disturbing to see how already at this age she harbors a great hatred for anyone who doesn't think like herself.
Sterk is the other Hot Topic in the webcomic. His design resembles another character from that webcomic Priya deleted. He thinks killing omnivores is okay, and turns the dial from 1 to 11 in order to impotently make a point. Like the time that he refused to help anyone because of a comment Shawn made. Then everyone got mad at Shawn and kicked the shit out of the guy because apparently Sterk's inaction was totally Shawn's fault. Adults have no self-determination or personal responsibility, right? You can just blame it on people you disagree with. There's also the time he killed a farmer's wife and child just because of a comment the farmer made. Trust me, this is all educational. It's teaching you that your actions are justified no matter what, especially if your cause is righteous.
Cuntons/ Maura Clemmons is another omnivore who appears through the comic. Is one of the characters based on a real life person, which is allegedly Priya Krishna's years long stalker. She has buck teeth, pimples, bad hair, a potbelly, and beady, lifeless eyes. She's hardly beautiful, much like the majority of people in the world, who could probably identify with her appearance. The only good point the author ever had her say was that vegan diets are too restrictive, but the author didn't portray it as a good point. The same point was echoed by Shawn, who probably would have come back with an encyclopedia of answers if the comic had a third panel. So I did it for him. Hint: The answer is everything on that website.
Diva is the third omnivore appearing regularly. She's pretty much the female equivalent of Shawn, sans taking any physical abuse.
Korean monk (yeah that's his name, don't ask me why) is a one-shot guy made at the request of the author. His main purpose is to epitomize the perception that vegans are peaceful. I think.
Sanc is the previously off-screen love interest of Legua, and is a hardcore activist. He's a douchebro with red eyes and looks more like a character from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure than someone from this comic. Which is why I'm pretty sure Priya traced a frame out of that anime for his picture.
Raziel is some edgy chick who sucks on lollipops all the time, clearly indicating that she just plain sucks all the time. Her hair is shaped like devil horns and she wears a halo on her head. Her shirt is covered in blood. It's typical shit you find on DeviantArt.
Mike is a chick who is an obese vegan. She loves being likened to cows and pigs. No, really.
Priya for one strip introduced a character named Scourge, who is supposed to represent the meat industry. He is definitely a completely original character.
Chanel a bucktoothed girl, who was a frequent character in the Veganventure series. Just like Cuntons, she is drawn in an unflattering manner to show how unpleasant non-vegans are. She made a very good point about how vegan diets are restrictive for poor people, which is twisted into her just wanting to keep eating bacon and that the poor wouldn't go hungry if grain wasn't used to feed animals (which is false). And just like Cuntons, she is based on a real life person that Yerdian hates.
Azusa is the token gay character of the group, who looks like a New Ager that got into the movement decades too late. He always has his eyes shut like a stand in for how the series vegans are always closed to other perspectives.
Younger and Older Bongo is the younger and older versions of the same person, who was non-vegan in his youth and became vegan when he became older. P.S. his younger version is of course much saner than his present counterpart.
Alice Natanya Moore is another character based on a real person, who Priya dislikes for standing up to extreme vegans. She is one of the plainer looking omnivores and is dressed like a stereotypical nerd, while wearing a hair clip with a different word that changes each book. In many of her appearances, she throw tantrums while arguing with the vegan characters, so that they look better in comparison. Once had the misfortune to be targeted by Sterk and some other nameless characters to be grounded into meat, due to rightfully calling out Sonia Sae for forcing a fennec fox to be vegan. The fox appeared to enjoy the meat anyway.
Lulu is a black vegan introduced like Azusa to fill minority representation. She is also Shawn's ex-girlfriend, who dumped him after being influenced into veganism by Brie/Plausibell. The narrative blames him for the breakup, but then again creator's biases are strong in this case.
Sonia Sae like Alice and Maura is based on a real life person, however, since she is vegan she is given the purity sue treatment. And the narrative sees nothing wrong with her forcing a fennec fox to be vegan.
Art review
Priya is capable of making good stuff. Most of the art is anime-esque, simple and clean chibi designs. She is very good when she wants to be, with characters that have cute faces and wear clothing and hairstyles that are interesting and unique. Then you get cockslapped by the art for liking the art because Priya's art is fucking unmotivated as hell.
She's a lazy artist. She draws the characters doing a bunch of poses, then pulls a B^U and abuses the copy-paste function. If she really wants to end abuse, she should start there. The only times she tries to draw anything from scratch, she ends up making it look embarrassingly animu, and sometimes lopsided, and other times just resorts to a simple opaque outline with squiggly arms (which she also copy pastes). This leads one to come to the conclusion that she's lazy most of the time. And when she's not being lazy she's stabbing your eyes with anime faces.
Her backgrounds are simple and pleasing to look at. But they're also hilarious. Nearly every strip of this comic is set in a grazing field or a farm. I'm left to question why a bunch of vegans are hanging around the place they hate most, and instead of freeing the animals or talking to a farmer, they're just shooting the shit with each other. Sounds to me like they only want to preach about their glorious lifestyle instead of acting on it. And who owns the farm they're always hanging out on, anyways? Are they just farmhands who have to begrudgingly work at the place they hate most? Oh wait, they don't have jobs. The fact that Priya sets the comic on a farm brings up so many questions.
Priya often includes those squiggly blobs mentioned earlier. When a person appears as a squiggleblob, it's meant to show that they're acting stupid. Really guys, she's educating you, not just calling you names by proxy.
That isn’t the worst art the comic offers. Try on this for size: social justice torture porn. The same kind of gory and/or explicit images of animal suffering that PETA uses. Sometimes they’re not suffering. Sometimes they’re dead or going through a procedure like artificial insemination that isn’t actually as bad as it looks. There are even times where she includes images of roadkill, images of dead animals that aren't even from slaughterhouses, or images of animals from slaughterhouses taken completely out of context. The author's totally not a con artist. It would be mean to call her that.
In this image (gore ahead) we have in this order: A malformed fetus. You can find it on the page I just linked by hitting ctrl+f and pasting "schistosoma reflexus calf" in the search box. It's not from a slaughterhouse, it was stillborn. Second image is the ritualistic killing of Halal meat, for Muslim religious purposes. It's from a slaughterhouse and it's performed as part of a religion. I couldn't find the source of the third image. It could be from one of those illegal slaughterhouse operations that got shut down in the 80's. PETA loves using those more than Priya does, despite the images being over 30 years outdated by now, making the image older than the internet itself. Vegan education is totally legit.
All of the images are incredibly graphic. This does not come with any kind of NSFW tag or warning. In fact, it isn’t uncommon to find the social justice torture porn placed right into a random page of this webcomic, nestled between the alluring soft tits of two cutesy and smug pages. Which is funny since she categorizes her books by how violent the imagery is. The website is apparently exempt from this rule. If the attempt was to catch you off guard, it failed. It just comes off as a shallow attempt at playing with your emotions. It doesn't work for the same reason anti-smoking ads don't work. They've heard it all before. Shock images don't work, they're just pathetic at this point.
She literally only uses them for shock value. Considering how they’re often accompanied with cutesy stuff, sarcasm, silly antics, and other callous douchery, not once do I ever get the impression that she legitimately cares about the animals and people that she depicts as suffering. Priya is an artist who should know better but doesn't act better. Any merit derived from her good art is undone by her bad art, and her use of graphic imagery is exploitative of the very animals she claims she wants to protect.
Factual Inaccuracy and Willful Ignorance
Most of the comic is spattered with myths, long debunked claims, and willful ignorance, despite Priya's unrelenting insistence that she only wants to educate people. It's like a humanities degree. They want to sell you something that you'll never be able to get a job with.
It gives vegans a bad name and shows just how far the author is willing to reach in order to make a point. If you're going to make a comic about educating people, factual inaccuracy is probably the last thing you want to include. There's a lot that Vegan Artbook could improve on, and fixing this hobo ramble crap should be step one. If you can disprove half of your fuckery with a Google Scholar search then you have some serious issues with your message.
So far it only makes the comic batshit insane. Being batshit insane is reserved for satire. This comic missed the train on being advertised as satire, Priya is genuinely trying to educate people. What a Cuntons.
To any vegan who agrees with the comic's statement, brace yourselves. I'm about to drop some hot goss that omnivores have kept to themselves for millennia. Don't let them know I told you this, but omnivores can eat animal products and vegan food. Hopefully you'll stop spreading the myth that they only eat five things, vegans. I can't tell you how many times I went to a restaurant and when an omnivore ordered a chicken caesar salad, they only delivered the chicken!
I'm also gonna drop another secret on you. You get two for one, you lucky shits. Omnivores can eat more than just cow milk, beef, pork, chicken, and lamb. They can also eat turkey, duck, rabbit, gator, shellfish, regular fish, goat milk/meat, squid, octopus, venison, squirrel, pheasant, honey, gelatin, aspic, bone broth, eggs, cheese, and every food on the planet. They have quite the menu available to them, including yours.
Pus forms in the udder usually because of mastitis. Dairy distribution centers test for pus and antibiotics, both of which are illegal in the US (and most of Europe) to include in store bought milk. The entire shipment is thrown out when either is detected, and the farm gets penalized. When a cow develops mastitis, they're moved to a nursing pen and given antibiotics until it's treated, and then kept until the antibiotics leave the cow's system. All milk from infected cows is discarded.
Source: Every fucking dairy farm. Make an appointment and visit one. They'll probably be able to condense the information you'll find on the FDA's website.
Point at anyone and I can compare at least some aspect of them to Hitler. Take for example:
You like dogs? Hitler loved dogs. How about women's rights? Hitler claimed that women were the backbone of Germany. How about socialism? Hitler had many socialist policies put into action, such as the distribution of wealth and restrictions on what banks could do. Oh and here's a good one: Gun control. Hitler heavily restricted who could own firearms in Nazi Germany.
I just did the exact same thing Priya did, and now dog-loving liberals are also like Hitler. Comparing anyone to Hitler is easy. And dumb.
Absolutely, not true! Most of the grain used for animals are not made for human consumption, along with the the fact that grazing land is not good for farming which is why it's a terrible idea. And most of all wealthy countries already produce enough grain to feed the world, but the problem is that it's not properly distributed to those who really need.
If we did what she said, then we would have another dust bowl on our hand.
More Debunking
A brave forumite posted a thread in 2023, listing a bunch of the Vegan Artbook pages, methodically debunking or disproving the strange claims made in them For your viewing pleasure - Its a nice and easy read, but your brain will likely melt from exposure to actual Vegan Artbook comics
Tips for Improvement
I'm just gonna list a bunch of shit that would probably make the comic less of a joke than it already is. The cringe is massive. The least Priya can do is try to cut out the militant vegan shit like a juicy slab of flank steak. If she wants to improve, this is a good place to start.
- Bring back Sterk. Make the other vegans horrified over how he casually kills people. Then Sterk gets arrested and goes to prison for life. If vegans are level headed individuals, it would make sense to have them turn on one of their own when that person acts phenomenally out of line.
- No more strawmen. Sure, you can cherry pick the stupid shit omnivores say. That doesn't make the other 99% of what they say suddenly become stupid, and it doesn't mean every vegan in the world agrees with what the characters say. Let your characters have a discussion instead of making the omnivores vomit easily deconstructed arguments.
- If the centerpiece character, Brie/Plausibell, has the motto of "live and let live," why not also have an omnivore with the same motto? You know, like how most omnivores act. Someone who most people in the world can identify with instead of just having a cartoonish portrayal be their mouthpiece. New character: the omnivore who just wants to play it cool and not get into arguments. Fucking imagine it. The character goes up to a vegan with a burger in hand and he's all like "Hey how's it going?" Completely innocent conversation. Everyone gets thrown off their game. Or a vegan offers him some vegan food and he goes "Yeah that's pretty good. I'll keep eating meat tho." But meat eaters are required to be the villains in this comic according to Priya. It's gotta be nothing but passive aggressive jabs at omnivores.
- Cut the clipart. Priya is capable of drawing more than one pose, there's no need to copy paste everything.
- The gore porn has to go. Shocking people into being vegan doesn't work. And if she does want to include gore porn, it would only benefit her to not fucking lie and imply about the context of the image.
- No more "Us vs. Them." Painting vegans and omnivores with a broad brush, separating each into a single group like a fucking hivemind doesn't do anything to convince anyone. Fun fact: Everyone thinks differently. The webcomic is attacking the Borg, which is why it doesn't get anyone to go vegan. It's targeting a fictional entity that the people it's trying to "educate" can't identify with. No omnivore who reads it is going "hey, that carnist sounds a lot like me!"
- Riding on the "Everyone thinks differently" fact, have the vegans disagree with each other sometime. Less hivemind, more individuality. It's just fucking creepy when everyone thinks the same.
- No more radically fucktarded claims. The comic needs to stop regurgitating information found on vegan websites. They are wrong.
- What the fuck even is a carnist? Omnivore. Say it out loud as you read it. Omnivore. Carnist isn't in any dictionary and fuck you if you think it should be.
- The comic missed out on framing itself as satire. It would have benefited by being satire because it would have looked like it was making fun of both sides. There is no recovery at this point, just delete it from the internet.
Author Biography
Priya once had trouble with a stalker, which is why I'm taking careful steps to use only public information. She even thought her Encyclopedia Dramatica page was written by them. It's possible that her "stalker" could just be an amalgamation of people who just want to mess with her. I won't be including information from deleted accounts here, that stuff is easy to find yourself.
Priya is a staunch advocate of wolves. Animals in general, but wolves mostly. You know, those creatures that prey on cattle and other livestock, threatening to upset the food web through overpopulation? The source of retarded phrases like "lone wolf" which completely disregard the fact that lone wolves tend to starve because they suck at hunting alone? Yeah, those things.
She has also gone as far as to claim that humans are the worst animal on the planet. This often incites an apathetic shrug from nearly everyone, a round of ass patting from her echo chamber, and in some cases, absolute revelry in the fact that humans should be feared. People who disagree with her, or simply don't care about what she has to say are usually portrayed as an enabler of animal abuse, an animal abuser, or some sort of misguided idiot who needs a shove in the right direction at gunpoint. Her webcomic isn't making fun of you, it's trying to help you. Really.
She has a tendency to buy and resell products that other people make, with her boner at full mast as she marks up the price. She drips with excitement as she grabs item after item, then resells it. The biggest example of this is the reselling of a certain necklace. This doesn't mean that she doesn't sell her own products, as can be seen on her Store page. There's a lot of garbage to pick from, such as shirts for 35 euros, a few less shirts for a slightly more reasonable 20 euros, her books for 25 euros, or 6 euros for an e-book version of the books, and so on. Her prices are all over the place, but at least she found a market to sell to. If she's making a living off of it (which is unknown), good for her.
There is a pattern of doubling back on her comics, either changing them due to backlash or outright deleting them thanks to a bunch of people pointing out how flawed it was. All we have left of this one is my gorgeous edit. RIP in peace, you beautiful bastard. This is the reason I uploaded every linked image to this site. Priya also uses robots.txt on her site, which makes it more difficult for webcrawlers to archive her blunders. You have to do it manually.
Conclusion
-paraphrased from plarblman
Personally, I don't care if you're vegan and I have nothing against vegans. I couldn't care less how you live your life, go for it. Just don't let Priya be your mouthpiece. You can speak for yourself.
The comic just fails time after time. Like the Cyndi Lauper song but in reverse. The only implication it could give is that vegans are violent, self righteous pricks who auto-fellate themselves at every chance they get. Priya seems to think that calling your opponents stupid is how you change minds. And everyone knows that aggressive namecalling totally works and proves your point. Attacking people you disagree with is how you get your way.
Oh, wait.
Priya intertwined her personal self with too much of the comic, and the end result is a giant shitpile of flotsam that rivals the Pacific Trash Gyre. Vegan Artbook only succeeds at being a podium for the author to shout off of, and the only people who like her message are the ones who think the same way as her already. It's nothing but a big echo chamber and if you're omnivorous, or a vegetarian, or a vegan who disagrees with her, she'll just make a comic where one of her strawmen hyperbolizes the shit you say so that your statements sound stupid.
The lifestyle promoted by the comic is the only lifestyle that's acceptable, according to the author. She thinks you should change yours so that you live by her rules, and if you don't, then you're just ignorant and she'll use the comic to tell you how dumb you are. If you call her out on it, she'll turn around and pretend to be all cutesy and calm while at the same time remaining stoic in her assertion that veganism is the only good way to live. "I'm not forcing you to go vegan, I'm just calling you a bad person for not being vegan. Tee hee." Is what it usually amounts to. The comic in no way represents vegans, it only represents the author. If you want a good cringe session, go and read it.
