The Webcomic Overlook #28: Applegeeks

There is no person in the world more obnoxious than an Apple elitist. Boston sports fans come pretty damn close, but typically those are somewhat pudgy guys with hilarious accents and not nerdy hipsters with smug faces you are sorely tempted to slap or punch.

It’s always, “Why would you waste your money on a PC when you can get a Mac?” Or “Macs are way more reliable than PC. Have you ever seen a Mac get a computer virus?” Or “Look at that god-awful Zune. Why would anyone ever pick that over the graceful simplicity of an iPod?” Or “Microsoft totally stole their Windows interface from Mac. God I hate Microsoft.” Or, if you ask them to help you out with a computer, they snicker and shake their heads with mock sadness and say things like, “Well, if you’d gotten a Mac, none of this would’ve happened.”

It’s like some sort of inferiority complex, bourne by the ubiquity of Microsoft PCs. They’re the sorts who laugh and nod at those “Mac and PC” commercials, which every normal-brained person finds obnoxious. Dave Barry was right when he said, “To this very day, Apple is not considered by us cyberwonks as a truly serious computer. It is viewed as a computer that is popular mainly with your flaky or artsy-fartsy type of individual.”

By the way, I’m totally writing this review on an Apple PowerBook*. Suck on that, PC users! Or should I say, PC Looooosers! Yeah!

So today, I’m reviewing a webcomic by two of my fellow Apple elitists, artist Mohammad “Hawk” Haque and writer Ananth Panagariya. It’s a webcomic called “Applegeeks”, a love letter to the wonderous products that Apple Inc. provides. All hail Steve Jobs!

The main character of Applegeeks is a character named Hawk. He a bald little fella with a bandana bearing a power symbol, and … wait a minute. The writer’s nickname is also “Hawk.” Could this be some sort of self insertion? Could comic Hawk be the same as real life Hawk? I, for one, hope not. This is mainly because comic Hawk is the most obnoxious, unlikable pissant to ever grace a comic page ever.

Now, it’s not impossible to create an obnoxious character who is also likable. Ken Begg at Jabootu.net is a fan of the boorish British officer named Flashman, and Hugh Laurie says that women send him love letters because of his sneering Dr. House persona. My tastes run a little more lowbrow, since my favorite obnoxious character is the wrestler known as The Rock (Dwayne Johnson). While playing a heel (i.e., a wrestling villain), The Rock did everything he could to make the crowd hate him. He was a well-groomed pretty boy who bragged about his expensive shirts. He would firmly suggest to rivals that they know their role and shut their mouth and threatened to shine things up real nice just to shove things straight up someone’s posterior. He boasted that he was “the most electrifying man in sport’s entertainment.” Intially, the audience booed him. But then, something curious happened. Fans started cheering for him, chanting for “Rocky! Rocky! Rocky!” Part of this was because The Rock’s promos were hilarious. But another part was because The Rock was so convincing and charismatic, fans started to believe that he really was the most electrifying man in sport’s entertainment.

Hawk is none of these. He’s not a clueless lunkhead, a sarcastic doctor, or a pompous wrestler. He’s just an arrogant brat who thinks he’s funny. He’s the kind of guy who thinks he’s fun-loving and wacky because he’s dressing like a superhero called “Cap’n Power” or hilariously overreacting or acting like a virgin around girls and being oh so wacky! Instead, you just want him to pull him by his dumb goatee, shake him up a bit, and say, “Shut up. You’re not funny. Stop it.”

If I had to sum it up, Hawk is like Scrappy-Doo in human form, only worse … because he’s also an Apple elitist. I understand that his constant “Get a Mac” gags are supposed to be a parody of snobby, obsessed Apple users. The joke, though, isn’t funny when it first shows up, and it doesn’t get funnier on repetition. The fact that Panagariya keeps coming back to the gag makes me wonder if he was egged on by the cadre of Applegeek groupies clamoring for jokes about Apple douchebaggery.

If that’s the case, I renounce my iPod on principle.

The rest of the main cast do not fare much better. While not as grating as Hawk, they are pretty much non-entities. Jayce, for example, plays the straight man. He dates girls (which Hawk is too socially awkward to do, that little scamp!) and tut-tut’s Hawk’s crazy plans. However, Jayce has the personality of a loaf of bread. The other characters don’t fare much better, and seem to solely exist just to comment on how shocking Hawk is. The girls — Alice, Gina, Josie, and Naku in the earlier part of the run — are barely even one dimensional. I strongly suspect that they were introduced into the comic just to give Haque an excuse to draw cheescake pin-ups.

I am most disappointed in the way Gina was handled especially. We first see her as a tomboy who — surprise! — looks pretty hot in a midriff, and it’s downhill from there. It’s as if the guys were thinking, “Oh, man, let’s make her totally cute! Only she likes to hang out with the nerdy guys! Except she never gets really close because real relationships are a hassle. And she drinks a lot! LOL! And she’s, like, an ultimate fighter! Hotttttt!!!!” (This, by the way, represents the total geek fantasy woman ever since Ryoko busted out on the scene in Tenchi Muyo. Trust me: I’m the guy with the banner headings depicting female boxers and mountaineers.) Yet, somehow Haque and Panagariya never bring these male fantasy elements together into an actual character.

But the bottom line is none of this is even remotely funny, despite some of the most desperate and torturous attempts at trying to elicit a laugh. Jokes that try to poke fun at clueless people outside the Applegeeks friend circle only make the creators seem arrogant and snobbish. Haque and Panagariya add random talking funny animals, which is not just derivative but also totally lame. Attempts at doing pop-culture parodies are just sad.

To be fair, Haque and Panagariya seem to have come to the same conclusion. After about 150 issues, they decided to shift gears and transform “Applegeeks” into a new and different webcomic. Unfortunately, change is not always for the better.

They turned “Applegeeks” into an action-adventure webcomic.

It starts when Haque and Panagariya create a new female character because their roster of pin-ups was missing a crucial fantasy standard: a female robot. Or, to be specific, a female robot that looks like Rei Ayanami. Hawk, if you remember, is a social paralytic around girls, so using his goofy technological expertise, he builds his own girlfriend. Her name is Eve, and to her credit she at least has a little bit more personality than the other girls. Sure, that personality is of Vicki from the TV show Small Wonder, but at least it’s a start.

And as if the gag we’re already played out, Eve has a violent hatred of PCs. Sigh.

This is where the story gets really weird and yet keeps continuing its unstoppable slide toward hell. Haque and Panagariya more or less put a halt to their jokes, which is a relief. However, they replace it with some incredibly hammy drama, which is really, really terrible. The first salvo is when Eve goes on an uncontrollable rampage. Haque switches style to something straight out of Ghost In A Shell. Was this a genuine stylistic shift — like maybe Hawk was having a Calvin & Hobbes moment and imagining himself as an indestructible superhero — or was he pulling off an elaborate joke about comics that take themselves too seriously? I have no idea. I suspect it was a bit of both. It doesn’t matter because it was absolutely f***ing dumb. Are we supposed to accept that the buffoonish Hawk is now some sort of Batman-like grim avenger who can fight Eve to a standstill? And the domestic Alice is now an Oracle-like superbabe? And throughout all this serious macho posturing, are we to believe that yet another Mac-based joke is supposed to be funny?

Here’s the biggest problem: I just don’t give a damn about the characters to make me care either way how this turns out. They already had flimsy personalities. But now I’m supposed to accept that they have these awe-inspiring acrobatic moves that were in no evidence in previous strips. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of how they were portrayed, since they started out as nerdy computer geeks.

Again, I’m not sure if the first Eve arc was supposed to be a Kaufman-esque joke. After the story concludes, we’re back to the old art style and the “jokes.” Yet the events of the action sequence are regarded as canon and become the basis of future storylines. In fact, the pacing of “Applegeeks” gets pretty schizophrenic. It’s an action-adventure! No wait, it’s funny! No, wait, it’s some sort of family drama and a transparent attempt at trying to make the characters deep, man! Wow, it’s like failure on three different levels!

After these hijinks, Haque and Panagariya seem to reboot the series yet again and seem to turn it into a roommate comedy with a twist of magic and science fiction. This is probably the best and least obnoxious iteration of “Applegeeks.” The art shift is a bit unsettling; the characters now look younger than when the webcomic first started. However, it looks like Panagariya learned a few lessons about comedy on the way. Most Apple-centered jokes are gone. Hawk doesn’t act much like a stupid asshole anymore. I’d like to think that Haque and Panagariya are a little embarassed about their earlier run, and they’re doing penance for all the bad that they done.

The artwork of “Applegeeks,” though continually shifting, is not terrible. It’s perfectly serviceable and is often attractive. Much of this has to do with the excellent coloring, which is crisp and gives everything in the comic a nice three-dimensional feel. Haque tries all sorts of different manga styles before finally settling on the current “Precious Moments” look. Sometimes, the art is detrimental. The earliest illustrations made the characters look incredibly smug, s***-eating grins and all. You may argue that this goes with the whole “Apple elitist” theme, but I’d like to think that Haque and Panagariya wanted us to actually like the characters they created.

I would go so far to say that Haque’s character designs greatly contributed to my overall distaste of “Applegeeks.” How can I tell? In one of the most recent “Applegeeks,” guest artist Yuko “Aido” Ota took over the artistic chores. Ota’s character designs are more subdued, solid, and, best of all, humanly expressive. I came to the conclusion that I’d rather hang with these guys, the “Aido” Applegeeks. To hell with the Haque Applegeeks!

“Applegeeks” was originally going to be one of my earlier reviews. It was originally going to be out on October 2007. However, reading the comic was like walking around with a huge stone tied to your foot. I could only get so far before I would bookmark the page and turn off the computer in disgust. Fighting off the urge to gnaw off my own leg was incredible. I’d come back to “Applegeeks,” only to discover that the story had improbably gotten more ludicrous and abhorrent than what I’d read before. Many times, I was tempted to quit and escape with my life. But “Applegeeks” had thrown down the gauntlet, and if I turned tail now it would hoot and holler and call me a coward. Besides, I had this feeling. “Applegeeks” may just be so bad that it might be The Webcomic Overlook’s very first 1-star rating. I had to plow through until the bitter end to make sure.

My instincts proved right. As I reached the final, bitter page, I felt as if a great burden had finally been lifted.

I have seen hell … and it is “Applegeeks.”

Rating: 1 star (out of 5)

* – (Full Disclosure: all the above quotes have passed my lips at some time in my past. Well, at least as long as I’ve had an Apple laptop. In related news, my girlfriend would like to say: “Apple, Apple, Apple! Godammit! Stop talking about your goddamn Apple!”)