The post we don’t want ESPN to read

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Two weeks ago I did a post on the biggest sports TV ratings of 2008, which went beyond its Sports Media Watch inspiration to cover every sports rating I could find over 2.5 (well, 3.0 anyway), and a few over 2.0. I mentioned that I had found the original post to be one of the most useful references I had in the new year. How useful could such a post be? What can we learn from that post?

 

We can learn just how devastating the BCS’ move to ESPN really is.

 

It should hardly be surprising to most people who are paying attention that the BCS Title Game is the biggest event on the sporting calendar outside the NFL or Olympics. It’s got a full two-point margin over its biggest competition, college basketball’s National Championship – but that could easily change with the distribution penalty the Title Game will take from being on cable, especially if the economy drives people to ditch cable or satellite and just go with their antennas. If the depression stretches into 2011, I have a feeling, or at least hope, that ESPN will move at least the Title Game to ABC (and keep the Rose Bowl there).

 

But if what happened to the BCS Title Game is the wave of the future – big sporting events moving to cable en masse – it becomes imperative that we find real competition to ESPN. ESPN will now not only have the biggest sports property on cable, but the top two in the BCS and Monday Night Football. You have to scroll down to 7.9 to find a cable sports rating held by anyone other than ESPN, and 5.4 to find a second (still behind an unusually strong Home Run Derby). Throw out the Red Sox-Rays series, as you undoubtedly will have to do with TBS picking up the weaker NLCS this year, and you have to go down to 4.8.

 

The future could be one where ESPN bullies its way to capturing virtually every sport imaginable, marginalizing all but the biggest to smaller channels like ESPN2, and dominating what gets said in the sports conversation. The allegations that it’s guilty of an East Coast/LA bias show that a monopoly is not really something we can trust ESPN with. But no one’s even daring to challenge ESPN’s dominance. Versus was thought to be trying its hand at it… but last week, its president Jamie Davis, interviewed by the Washington Times, denied that ESPN was “what we want to become” and that “we are trying to serve a fan base that we believe has been underserved in the past”. I’m hopeful that Versus’ prior attempts to take baseball or the NFL reflect that there’s more to this than meets the eye, but I’m not optimistic. Other than ESPN and sport-specific networks, the only other cable networks to even appear on this list are TBS and TNT. We’re in trouble if the closest thing we have to competition for ESPN doesn’t even see itself as a sports network, and the biggest non-ESPN sports network doesn’t see itself as competing with ESPN.

 

Unfortunately, there are pretty slim pickings for a network looking to establish itself as a competitor to ESPN. Aside from the BCS and MNF (and ESPN won’t let go of the latter without a fight with all the NFL programming it has), there’s not much in the way of big events for a cable network to pick out, and before the BCS deal it may have seemed that whatever network controlled the NFL cable contract controlled the world of sports. The NCAA and the major sports are under pressure from Congress to keep their big events on broadcast; the only reason the BCS could shore up with ESPN was because it’s not under the banner of the NCAA, and the non-BCS conferences have been talking about pressing antitrust charges against it anyway.

 

The only options may be those opened up by the BCS deal, namely the Masters, the Triple Crown races, some high-profile college football games like BCS conference championships and the Capitol One Bowl, and the Final Four and earlier rounds of the NCAA Tournament. I don’t know what their relative commitment to broadcast is; the Masters will probably stay on broadcast for a while, and the Cap One could bolt to ESPN at any moment. But ESPN’s second highest rated MNF game got an 8.7, and the above list consists of the only events I could think of that would top even the fourth highest rated game (7.9). The highest rated of the bunch is an SEC Championship at 9.3 that was an effective BCS semifinal, which you can’t count on; is the Cap One Bowl at 9.1. Even 80% of the 14.4 the BCS Title Game received would be an 11.5, two full ratings points ahead (almost 2.5 over the Cap One). (You might be able to throw the Daytona 500 into the mix as well, but THIS year, it fell below 10.0 if my memory serves me correctly…

 

(There’s the Olympics, but the Olympics are still legitimately valuable for the broadcast networks.)

 

The prospects are even bleaker for long-term competition. ESPN has two networks, a connection with a broadcast network, the top sports news web site, a nightly sports highlight show, an international arm, a web-streaming site, a mobile deal and mobile-TV channel, a radio network, a sports news network, a classic sports network that serves as an overflow channel, a college sports network, and a Spanish-language network. To create a compelling bid for just about any sports entity and to truly be seen as an equal with ESPN, you need to be able to compete with almost all those revenue streams.

 

Fox may be the best positioned with Final Score, News Corporation’s international presence, Fox Sports Radio, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox College Sports, and Fox Sports en Espanol. Indeed Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of most of the regional sports networks was made with creating competition for ESPN in mind, and its failure may have scared off Versus, but what was supposed to be Fox Sports Net’s strength – local programming – turned into its weakness, as many regions pre-empted national programming. The Big 12 and Pac-10 tried to abandon ESPN for a time and put their top cable football games on FSN and TBS, but it only led to people making fun of them for being on FSN. Now FSN has been selling networks like there’s no tomorrow – Chicago, the Bay Area, and New England have all gone from FSN markets to Comcast SportsNet markets, and that’s not counting the ones sold to third parties like FSN New York (now MSG+) or the ones sold to Liberty Media in the DirecTV deal.

 

Ideally, competition for ESPN would reduce the need and demand for ESPN2, by moving some events that would be on ESPN2 to ESPN. The four major networks all have some online presence, though their streaming capacity varies, as does CNN and Time Warner with SI, USA Today, Sporting News, Yahoo Sports, and AOL Sports/Fanhouse. Yahoo in particular may already have the most popular non-ESPN sports site, so if for some unfathomable reason you don’t already have such a presence, shacking up with Yahoo might be a good approach. (NBC is learning of the perils of launching your own site at too late a date.) Alternately, embracing blogs can help with marketing your brand. An international presence is one of the biggest obstacles unless you’re Fox. For radio, Fox Sports Radio and Sporting News Radio are out there, and Westwood One may be an actual competitor for sports rights (which helps CBS, which owns it). CBS has a top-quality college sports network as well, while NBC would be best positioned other than Fox to launch a Spanish-language sports network alongside Telemundo. (There’s a part of me that wonders if the acquisition of what’s now Universal Sports was made with an eye to becoming a competitor to ESPN.)

 

Of the above, I think the most important aspect may be the sports highlight show. It may not get a lot of eyeballs, especially in the age of the Internet, but it helps further that notion that you’re a major player. Even if you get the same number of eyeballs as ESPN for big events, people might not associate you with being a leader in sports. Besides, it’s with time on SportsCenter that ESPN blackmails lesser leagues into joining them, or at least that’s the perception. But you need something to promote. You need a reason for sports fans to come back to your network again and again.

 

Ignoring the NFL, and assuming the BCS moves back to ABC and other big events stay on broadcast, a good way to establish your presence is to have at least an even split of MLB, the NBA, and NASCAR with ESPN. All three are held by ESPN, but all three also have alternate contracts with TBS or TNT, alternate contracts that make them at least equals to ESPN in at least one respect (one LCS, one Conference Finals, and most of the biggest cable races not held at the Brickyard, like the second Daytona race). But even if the Turner networks were to start a sports highlight show and turn one of its networks into a sports hub, they wouldn’t be convincing people to keep coming back again and again nearly as often as ESPN. It’s college sports and other relatively lesser sports that are ESPN’s real hook (not to mention shows like ATH and PTI).

 

For a network to hold up in comparison to ESPN, at least in my view, it needs to at least tie ESPN by comparison. For all practical purposes, it needs to come close to tying ESPN in the ratings. Outside of the NFL, the largest cable sports ratings in 2008 were:

  • 7.9: ALCS Game 7 (TBS)
  • 5.5: Home Run Derby (ESPN)
  • 5.4: ALCS Game 6 (TBS)
  • 4.8: Western Conference Finals Game 4 (TNT)
  • 4.7: ALCS Game 5 (TBS)
  • 4.6: Western Conference Finals Game 5 (TNT)
  • 4.5: Champs Sports Bowl (ESPN)

There’s a pretty small list of events with ratings 4.5 and above. I didn’t like the move of one LCS to cable, partly because only one LCS was moving there. I might have been okay with both LCSes moving to cable, but Fox needs some sort of presence in the playoffs like ABC does, and you see above that the LCSes can be a more significant property than the NBA’s conference finals. Before the BCS deal, a cable sports rating higher than 5.5 or so may have been sacrilege.

 

You also see it driven home that not only is Turner the closest thing to competition to ESPN in terms of events, the three networks combine for every cable sports rating over 3.4 in 2008. (Their high ranking may be because the closest thing they have to a connection to a broadcast network is the CW.) FSN and Versus do not even register on the chart at all, failing to break 2.0 nationally even once – but the list does provide a possible template for which sports to go after. First, they need to keep up with ESPN in the acquisition of big events that are currently on broadcast – the ones like the Masters and (what I think is likeliest) the Triple Crown races. In addition to those and the ones listed alongside them above, the US Open in golf, baseball’s All-Star Game, the World Cup, and the Pro Bowl (which will be on ESPN in 2010) should all be targets.

 

On a larger scale, though, the above list of events that are already on cable provides a basic framework to go after. Simply put: NFL, MLB, NBA. More specifically, the cable NFL package (which I explicitly excluded from this list), Home Run Derby, and the baseball and NBA playoffs. Choose at least one to start building your empire. The easiest picking would probably be baseball, as ESPN is identified too much with its NFL coverage and TNT is identified too much with its NBA coverage. Pick out at least one of the ESPN weekly packages for baseball, plus the Home Run Derby, plus at least a piece of TBS’ playoff coverage. TBS’ Sunday afternoon games are almost a complete flop.

 

There isn’t much need to go after much else, because taking something away from Turner creates a nice balance between ESPN, Turner, and what I’ll call EK, for ESPN Killer. As long as you seize the Home Run Derby and, if necessary, at least one LCS, you can throw ESPN whatever’s left of the bone you want. And it’s very much within the grasp of Versus to follow through on this in my opinion.

 

Let’s continue down the list below 4.5:

  • 4.3: Spurs/Hornets Game 7 (TNT)
  • 4.3: Eastern Conference Finals Game 5 (ESPN)
  • 4.3: Allstate 400 at the Brickyard (ESPN)
  • 4.3: Miami (FL) @ Florida (ESPN)
  • 4.2: Eastern Conference Finals Game 6 (ESPN)
  • 4.2: USC @ Oregon State (ESPN)
  • 4.1: Western Conference Finals Game 1 (TNT)
  • 4.1: Tennessee @ UCLA, Labor Day (ESPN)
  • 4.1: ALCS Game 1 (TBS)
  • 4.0: Eastern Conference Finals Game 4 (ESPN)
  • 4.0: Emerald Bowl (ESPN)
  • 3.9: Pocono 500 (TNT)
  • 3.9: Alabama @ Georgia (ESPN)
  • 3.9: Angels/Red Sox Game 3 (TBS)
  • 3.9: Meineke Car Care Bowl (ESPN)
  • 3.9: Alamo Bowl (ESPN)
  • 3.9: Holiday Bowl (ESPN)
  • 3.8: NBA All-Star Game (TNT)
  • 3.8: Coke Zero 400 (TNT)
  • 3.8: Pennsylvania 500 (ESPN)
  • 3.8: ALCS Game 2 (TBS)
  • 3.8: ALCS Game 4 (TBS)

Highlights of this relatively small section include the second NBA contract – the one with ESPN’s half of the conference finals – plus both NASCAR contracts, the NBA All-Star Game, and both regular season and postseason college football games. Only one NASCAR contract and the NBA All-Star Game are on Turner. The rest are on cable.

 

I’ll get to college football in a second. It goes without saying you want a piece of that action, preferably the top cable contract (not second fiddle like FSN and Versus get with the Big 12 and Pac-10). Throw out the regular season college football, and you want to limit ESPN to half of the second NBA contract, both NASCAR contracts, and bowl games. The bowl games can be thrown out as well, but if both LCSes move to cable, the contract that includes the second LCS comes into play here.

 

Basically, claim one, and make sure you have no less than one less of what ESPN has. As Turner’s only presence is one of the NASCAR contracts, you probably have to take on ESPN directly here.

 

I’m going to start my discussion of college with the regular-season conferences, which take care of your needs in football and basketball, so the consideration of balance needs to be made with regards to both. In football, the two “weakling” conferences are the ACC and Big East. In basketball, the two “weaklings” are the Big 12 and Pac-10. Claiming one of each leads to the obvious conclusion that you need to claim one of the remaining two conferences, the SEC or Big 10.

 

It’s been suggested that recent megacontracts signed with the latter two conferences will give them an edge over the field, especially in college football, so signing a deal with both the Big 12 and Pac-10 and thinking that counts just as well towards your three will lead to a perception you’re signing with two runts, or positioning yourself as a “West Coast network”, especially in conjunction with the Mountain West. I’m looking at you, Versus. But there are major problems going on here. ESPN doesn’t want to give up the Big East because they’re in Bristol near UConn, they don’t want to give up the ACC because they don’t want to lose Duke-UNC, they don’t want to give up the Big Ten and lose Ohio State-Michigan (even though that technically airs on ABC), and you just missed the boat on a hefty 15-year deal with the SEC. Sports on TV as we know it could be dying by the time that deal ends.

 

The Big 12 and Pac-10 already play a basketball series against one another, so why not split the difference on the other two series, ACC/Big 10 and SEC/Big East? That means the other two conferences are either the SEC and ACC, or the Big 10 and Big East. Whatever you go with, you need to have the first pick of cable networks for at least one conference, and the more bones you throw ESPN the more you need to build your empire even further to compensate.

 

(The Mountain West could become a BCS conference soon, but the reasons they moved to Versus and the mind-boggling lack of flex scheduling suggest they don’t want Versus to develop the regimentation of time slots in football ESPN has, which is probably required by having so many conferences. That could cut it out of the discussion, and the Mountain West is generally in the lower portion of the BCS conferences anyway.)

 

Non-BCS conferences are also an important part of the picture, but I’ll get to that later.

 

What about bowls? FSN’s not going after any, that’s for sure, because of local hockey and NBA coverage. Versus doesn’t want bowls because they want “total immersion” or some such malarkey, but it seems to me that the Las Vegas Bowl – top-line Mountain West against a team from another Versus conference, the Pac-10 – would be perfect for them, serving as a continuation of the “immersion” Versus already provides for those two conferences. Turner has zero presence at the bowls, meaning ESPN dominates the bowl landscape. 23 of 35 bowls, nearly two-thirds, are on ESPN (two more on ABC, the BCS Title Game to air there next year, and three more to move to ESPN in the form of the BCS, bringing the total to over 80%); ESPN is the chief beneficiary of the proliferation of bowls. Not all bowls are equal, but sadly, ESPN tends to lump in even its top bowls with bowls like the Independence Bowl or New Orleans Bowl in its “Bowl Week” promotion.

 

I averaged the 2005-6 through 2007-8 ratings of all the bowls and came up with these average ratings for the non-BCS bowls (courtesy here):

  1. Capitol One (6.7)
  2. Chick-fil-A (5.0)
  3. Alamo (4.7)
  4. Holiday (4.5)
  5. Cotton (3.63)
  6. Liberty (3.56)
  7. Gator (3.47)
  8. Emerald (3.41)
  9. Outback (3.37)
  10. Meineke Car Care (3.04)
  11. Champs Sports (2.96)
  12. Music City (2.8)
  13. Independence (2.6)
  14. Sun (2.4)
  15. Motor City (2.32)
  16. Las Vegas (2.28)
  17. Armed Forces (2.10)
  18. Hawaii (2.07)
  19. Papajohns.com (1.97)
  20. New Mexico (1.89)
  21. Humanitarian (1.58)
  22. GMAC (1.56)
  23. Insight/New Orleans (tie) (1.55)
  24. International (1.45)
  25. Poinsettia (1.447)
  26. Texas (1.3)

Some notes: The EagleBank and St. Petersburg bowls only started this year and aren’t counted. Ratings for the Texas and Insight bowls are depressed by being on NFL Network. Ratings for the Outback Bowl are depressed by airing at 11 AM ET (8 AM PT) against many other bowls, and it deserves better ratings given its conference tie-ins and payout money. Fixing its gametime problem, either by moving to a saner hour or earlier in the week, should be a top priority for the Outback the next time its contract comes up for renewal.

 

And a shocking number of the highest-rated bowls are on cable.

 

The broadcast non-BCS bowls are the Cap One on ABC, the Gator and Sun on CBS, and the Cotton on Fox. The Chick-fil-A, Alamo, and Holiday bowls all beat all the broadcast bowls except the Cap One, and the Liberty Bowl beats both CBS bowls. The position of the Sun on broadcast despite iffy ratings is probably because of the potential of Notre Dame going there, which also explains why the Gator and Sun are on broadcast instead of better conference tie-ins. (Both bowls have their potential Big 12 tie-ins ranking behind the Holiday, and ditto for the Sun’s Pac-10 . When the Sun picks a Big 12 team it picks behind the Alamo, and the Gator’s ACC pick is behind the Chick-fil-A… which itself picks its SEC pick after the Outback.)

 

Based on these ratings, the bowl payouts, and more than anything else the quality of the conference tie-ins, I came up with a ranking of the non-BCS bowls:

  1. Capitol One
  2. Cotton
  3. Outback
  4. Chick-fil-A
  5. Holiday
  6. Gator
  7. Alamo
  8. Champs Sports
  9. Sun
  10. Liberty
  11. Music City
  12. Emerald
  13. Meineke Car Care
  14. Insight
  15. Independence
  16. Las Vegas
  17. Motor City
  18. GMAC
  19. Humanitarian
  20. Hawaii
  21. Poinsettia
  22. Armed Forces
  23. Papajohns.com
  24. International
  25. New Mexico
  26. New Orleans
  27. St. Petersburg
  28. EagleBank
  29. Texas

I identified several subdivisions where the comparison was closer than others. If you’re running EK, you’re paying attention to this list of conference tie-ins, but you’re ALSO paying attention to the above list of TV ratings. The latter is what you really want, but you can turn the former into the latter if you try. Assuming the broadcast/cable status quo holds, that means, from a TV rating perspective, an emphasis on the Alamo, Chick-fil-A, and Holiday. Throw the Outback on there, since its conference tie-ins warrant it, and the Champs Sports after its gerbonkers ratings this year. I’m tempted to add the Liberty as well for its ratings and position on the tie-in list, but that’s opening up a can of worms. Of the first five, claim two – and make sure at least one more is taken from ESPN if one of the bowls you claim is the Champs Sports. (Replace the Champs Sports with the Liberty if you want.)

 

So we consider the Liberty (or Champs Sports), we throw in the Emerald and the Music City to fill the gap, and throw in the Meineke Car Care bowl as well. Split them half and half? Maybe. Consider, too, though, that the Insight would probably get better ratings if it were off NFL Network. Fairness dictates you also consider the Independence and Las Vegas bowls, and may-y-ybe the Motor City Bowl. Everything else is comparatively minor and not worth worrying about, but it might still be worth going after anyway.

 

(Note that most people don’t see it this way. A matchup between two BCS conferences is all they see that’s valuable. The Las Vegas Bowl is valued much lower than this by most people. The Pac-10 is considered to deserve better for its fourth or fifth line. The Mountain West actually does deserve better for its first – though it would suddenly make some sense on the off chance the MWC joins the BCS. Why the Liberty Bowl ranks so highly is beyond me, but tradition probably has a lot to do with it.)

 

Look at the ratings chart. By seizing only the bowls that matter, you’ve pretty much guaranteed yourself that your bowl coverage will almost exclusively (maybe one exception, two if you’re unlucky) get ratings large enough to make my end-of-year chart. Some bowls are better for this than others; I recommend getting bowls that align with your own conference tie-ins. If you’re going the SEC/ACC route, pick up the Chick-fil-A bowl and either the Holiday, Outback, Champs Sports, or Liberty Bowl (or a combination of two of those, preferably not Champs Sports AND Liberty). The Alamo might be an option as well if you have a tie-in with the Big 12. For the second tier, pick up the Music City Bowl and one other; if you pick up the Pac-10, that one other should probably be the Emerald. If you pick up the Big 12 instead, in addition to whatever you do pick the Independence Bowl is a good investment.

 

If you go with the Big 10 and Big East, a lot depends on your third conference. Align with the Big 12, and the Alamo becomes a must. Even without it that and the Holiday are good choices, though the Outback is an option as well. In the second tier the Meineke Car Care bowl is almost a must-have, just to be sure you have a Big East bowl; the Big East’s other non-broadcast bowl tie-ins fall below the cut line. The Champs Sports becomes a must if you’re aligned with the Big 12, unless ESPN throws you an SEC or ACC bone (unless you’re with Conference USA, as we’ll get to later); otherwise the Emerald Bowl is also an option. Pick up the Big 12 and the Insight is a good investment, maybe even imperative (they’ll certainly be begging to be taken off NFL Network), as well (the Big 10 and Big 12 have a lot of bowl tie-ins with each other). With the Big Ten, the Motor City becomes very interesting indeed.

 

A note on non-BCS conferences, because if you have just three BCS conferences ESPN can still push itself as the leader in college sports (and you can’t launch a college sports channel to compete with ESPNU). Non-BCS conferences become especially important with the splitting of the BCS conferences, because they could well get more play as gap-fillers. (Especially if you launch a competitor to ESPN2.) In football, there are four non-BCS conferences that matter: the Mountain West, WAC, MAC, and Conference USA. The Sun Belt is too crappy to matter, although taking away one conference like the Mountain West to Versus arguably means we should put the Sun Belt back in to replace it. But before splitting the difference we need to consider the very different scenario in college basketball.

 

The goal in college basketball, in my view, is to render BracketBusters meaningless outside of what we might call the “low-majors” or even “minors”. A comparison of four-year average RPI shows that, despite the lack of distinction I make in my annual “mid-major conference”, there is a distinction between one “higher” class of mid-major conference, and most of the other conferences, not as large as the gap between the majors and the mid-majors, but significant nonetheless – and in fact there’s a definite spectrum, where some conferences are fairly objectively better than others, even if the rankings of the conferences in-between are far from clear.

 

The Mountain West, mired on Versus, doesn’t participate in BracketBusters. Is that because they want to see themselves as a major conference, or because ESPN is excluding a conference that doesn’t have a deal with them? If someone took away enough mid-majors, you wouldn’t want ESPN to put conferences into BracketBusters far ahead of the rest of the field simply because they had a deal with them, would you? That would appear to be favoritism.

 

Three conferences in particular are strong enough to occasionally approach the status of the major conferences. I dare you to find a conference since the shake-up of Conference USA to finish first among the mid-majors not named the Missouri Valley, the Mountain West, and the Atlantic 10. The Mountain West is mired on Versus and ESPN sometimes seems unnaturally obsessed with the A-10 in mid-major terms, leaving the Valley for EK – although after several years of the Valley occasionally finishing ahead of the major conferences in conference RPI, they finished behind the A-10 last year and similarly have only one serious at-large contender this year, so they may be on the decline.

 
The other true mid-majors are Conference USA, the WAC, the WCC, the CAA, the MAC, and the Horizon League. The Sun Belt is in a weird in-between state between the mid-majors and the low-majors, though they’re closer to the low majors. Obviously, those six should be split half and half, but use caution. Conference USA and the WCC are both more valuable than the middle-pack teams in their league would suggest, because of the presence of major-caliber programs Memphis and Gonzaga respectively. (C-USA actually has a very slight lead over the A-10, in fact.) We’ve seen just how much Gonzaga adds to the value of the WCC to ESPN. Taking at least one of those is imperative, even if you otherwise discount the value of the mid-majors, and no way ESPN is letting you take both.
On the flip side, there’s a danger in putting both West Coast leagues on one network, especially paired with the Mountain West (the MWC and WAC together is enough of a concern for football), and getting branded as a “West Coast” network. So: either C-USA and WAC or WCC and MAC, with the CAA and Horizon split whichever way works out (although the Horizon is on average worse than the other mid-majors, except for Butler which may be joining Memphis/Gonzaga as major programs). The remaining conferences are like minor bowls: go after them, but don’t make them a priority.
(While you’re at it, pick up that “College Basketball Invitational” oddity to make it stronger – they’re trying to be an NIT competitor, not the third-tier tournament – and balance ESPN’s coverage of the NIT.)
Those are the important parts. But there are other things you should keep in mind if you really want to create a viable competitor to ESPN:
  • Golf often gets forgotten in the “major sports”, with all the talk of the modern Big Four (NFL, NBA, MLB, NASCAR) and the two college sports, but its ratings are on par with any other, even for certain non-majors Tiger doesn’t attend, and it even gets coverage on par from ESPN and others, even if it sometimes seems Tiger-centric. The whole sport has been moving to Golf Channel in recent years on all levels, increasing the importance of the majors. ESPN just claimed the entire British Open for its cable network, and the other majors could follow; even for those majors that stay on broadcast, coverage of the first two rounds is important. Split them half and half, and make sure it’s not a situation where you have two first-two-rounds contracts and ESPN has two whole-tournament contracts.
  • The NHL and IRL (along with tennis) are significantly ahead of most of the other detritus, like MLS and the WNBA, that make up the high-minor sports. These sorts of things are the mid-majors, and both of these two in particular are ESPN’s bread and butter. But ESPN may be smarting from losing the IRL and the NHL may be smarting from losing ESPN. We can allow ESPN to reclaim one, but not both.
  • Soccer has a lot of levels and competitions, and ideally there should be plenty for you. In fact true soccer connosieurs have plenty of options for their soccer palate beyond ESPN, including Fox Soccer Channel, which currently has US rights to the English Premier League and Italy’s Serie A. ESPN is making a solid play for the Premier League, and it may appear that EK’s best approach is the third European major league, the Spanish league. But both Spain and the German Bundesliga have their outpost on GOL TV, and those who have it, from what I’ve read, like it far better than Fox Soccer; the problem is it has limited distribution, and because of a bilingual gimmick is often consiged to Spanish-language packages. I don’t think it’s owned by a larger conglomerate at the moment, so trying to hitch your wagon to it and trying to grow its distribution might be a good idea. (ESPN was once rumored to be turning ESPN Classic into its own soccer network.) If all else (including, if need be, France or Mexico) fails, there’s always MLS.
  • But really, all these pale in comparison to the major soccer competitions worldwide: the World Cup, the European Championship (the title game of which, which the US has no stake in, registered on my chart, thus more than doubling almost any MLS game), and the UEFA Champions League. And all three run on ESPN. That needs to change.
  • Tennis is the same as golf. ESPN just triumphantly claimed all four of tennis’ Grand Slams, inheriting the US Open after USA pulled out of sports. The US Open considered an offer from Versus, which would have been great for Versus, bad for the USTA, and good for anyone looking for an ESPN competitor. (Now that we know Versus is the wrong place to look for one, it’s just all bad.) As with golf, split the difference.
  • Other sports: MMA? (UFC runs on Spike and sister promotion WEC runs on Versus. Various competitors keep springing up.) Horse racing? (NBC runs two Triple Crown races and ABC runs one, while ESPN runs the Breeder’s Cup.) Poker? (Look up Poker on Wikipedia and, along with ESPN’s World Series of Poker, the World Poker Tour is credited with poker’s rise in popularity. After getting placed on odd networks like the Travel Channel and GSN, it’s now on once-ESPN competitor FSN.) Lacrosse? (Split between ESPN’s outdoor MLL and the indoor, and barely covered stateside, NLL.) “Action sports”? Outdoor programming like fishing? Rodeo? (The PBR already runs on Versus.) Volleyball? Bowling? Cricket? Rugby? Don’t forget those high minors of MLS, WNBA (probably hitched to the NBA), and Arena Football (which ESPN partially owns right now and which is collapsing anyway).

This is really more important than any other consideration right now: it’s even harder to rise up to the level of ESPN right now. ESPN will stumble through the recession like any other business, but to try and start a competitor from scratch may be suicide. In retrospect, the last glimmer of a window for at least several years, maybe ever, for a competitor to ESPN may have closed this past fall with the SEC and BCS deals; for there to not even be a network on the rise, the closest things being FSN and Versus (and Turner if they wanted to become a full-fledged sports destination), does not bode well for any real challenger to ESPN to show up anytime soon. The one saving grace is that an ESPN stumbling through recession is an ESPN with less money to spend on rights fees, but chances are a potential ESPN competitor is hemmoraging money as well, or doesn’t have any and is finding it hard to get any starting capital. Although it’ll claim it’s not a monopoly because of the existence of the broadcast networks and competing sports sites, all things considered, it’s ESPN’s world and we’re all just paying the rent, and realistically, that’s not changing in the near future.

Updated posting schedule

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The post I was going to do “today”? Now coming Monday. The post I was going to do Monday? Now coming Tuesday.

“Yesterday’s” distractions ultimately kept me up late past the time it was sane, so I had to make that time up “today”. That, plus catching up on certain other things I’d fallen behind on, took up almost all of the time I’d reserved for working on the post.

Posting schedule

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A post Friday.

A post Monday.

Random Internet Discovery Wednesday.

Time-filling posts Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Next week, I’ll barely be posting about anything at all. A post that shouldn’t have taken me very long is taking rather long indeed. I think I can finish it tonight, and the next post is even shorter, but considering the post I’m working on now I originally planned to put up Monday…

(To be fair, I started working on it today, and the main reason it’s taking so long is that I was distracted by OOTS for most of the day, but still. A backlog is developing in my RSS feeds.)

Call it a non-review review.

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(From The Wotch. Click for full-sized cash-in.)

First, for the thumbnail I’m following what I call the Dresden Codak rule. When I reviewed DC the front-page image was a notification that the strip was on hiatus. This strip’s similar hiatus notification has a stronger case to be made the thumbnail, in that it will probably remain in the same spot in the archives rather than a netherregion.

Second, I hate to say this after a month without reviews (only “Webcomics’ Identity Crisis” and the state-of posts), but I’m not doing a webcomic review this week. Or next. When next a webcomic review appears – I don’t normally announce my webcomic reviews in advance, but – it will be on Sluggy Freelance, since I have plenty to say about Sluggy the site and Sluggy the comic and it should just flow onto the page (to the extent I may do it next week and leave the week after that empty). After that I’ll do the March OOTS post. (No, yesterday’s post doesn’t count.) I’m skipping next week because I have a paper I need to get cracking on for a class and working on Da Blog has really cut down on my time (and as I’ve said, I’m finding myself with less time than you’d think). I still have more posts I’d like to get through the pike than I really know what to do with.

The reason I’m skipping this week is a bit more interesting.

I never really wanted to review The Wotch – it’s no Penny Arcade in terms of popularity, and the stereotype is that strips where people flip genders a lot appeal mostly to people with a fetish for that sort of thing – but I felt that, since I used it as a thumbnail for a non-specific webcomic post, it was too much of a bait-and-switch that it wasn’t an actual review, and so I owed it to The Wotch to do an actual review some day. But even at the time, I said that “I might decide to write that review at some later date” (emphasis added).

As it turned out, the strip I used for that thumbnail was part of the denouement of that particular chapter. So as I followed along with the strip in preparation for reviewing it, I sat through maybe two strips of actual plot (bracketing fillers), several state-of strips, and a quick, three-page, probably-unrepresentative gag before the strip went on hiatus. Which, incidentially, was in late February. Which left me somewhat surprised the strip has been able to bang out three chapters a year at a once-a-week pace, considering I was around for what should have been half a chapter.

So I don’t have nearly enough information to write an informed review, and I don’t feel strongly enough about it to go trawling into the archive as a stopgap. I’m not going to wait around for several months more following a comic I wasn’t particularly interested in reviewing in the first place, so I’m cutting my losses and removing The Wotch from the “tryout space” of my RSS reader. So this week, when I had been planning on maybe reviewing The Wotch, since I didn’t feel I was quite ready to review either of the other two comics in the tryout space, I’m just leaving blank instead. (I don’t feel I have quite enough material to write a review of Sluggy right now; as soon as next week I think I would. Which sounds ridiculous now, considering I arguably had less material to work with from The Wotch.)

Because someone claimed Part V of “Webcomics’ Identity Crisis” didn’t count as February’s OOTS post. Also, mega MEGA spoilers.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized four words… or maybe three. An epic strip deserves an epic post linked to from the OOTS forum, so look for a traffic influx.)

A lot can happen when you’re on a deserted island where the only other people to step foot on it are an imp, a pissed-off dragon, and three fiends.

If you’ve been reading The Order of the Stick at all in the current book (at least when it wasn’t focused on Haley, Celia, and Belkar), or even if you’ve been reading my OOTS posts, you know that Vaarsuvius has been undergoing a slow descent into madness out of his/her desperation to reunite the group and get Roy resurrected.

V has not slept tranced in a long time, with accompanying decline of his/her mental faculties, and quite a bit of physical deterioration as well, with his/her hair and clothes becoming dissheveled and (strangely purple) veins showing. He/she’s tried virtually everything to get something, anything through to her good friend Haley – homemade scrying spell, messenger birds, the works – but despite taking part in as many battles as he/she can to collect as much XP as he/she can, nothing’s cracked the Cloister she doesn’t even know exists (well, except the birds, but that didn’t end well). In the meantime his/her singleminded devotion to contacting Haley has led to becoming rather estranged from Durkon and Elan, and rather unwilling to tolerate any sort of distraction. This came to a head late in the 500s, the last time we checked in on that half of the Order, when Daimyo Kubota, chief villain for nearly a hundred strips, plotter to overthrow Hinjo, fresh from poisoning his ex-assassin Therkla to death, freshly surrendered to Elan’s custody, suddenly gets taken out by a single Disintegrate from Vaarsuvius, who asks, “Can we PLEASE resume saving the world?”

Kubota may have been a red herring all along, but his disposal is itself important as part of V’s ongoing descent. (And Elan’s character development, but that’s a story for another day.) Elan’s argument with V on the rightness of the move leads to V dismissing Therkla as a “bundle of experience points”, insinuating Elan had an affair with her when he categorically didn’t, and ultimately threatening to take out Elan himself. At this point, V becomes convinced (s)he could no longer continue his/her studies on the boat – not out of fear for retribution, but because of the constant distractions of having to deal with this quest or that one, and even more so, the lack of any help from Durkon or Elan (who (s)he doesn’t even guarantee (s)he’ll contact back should (s)he find Haley). Elan sends him/her off and covers for him/her despite having said he wouldn’t, and the real villain here, Qarr, takes off after him/her.

At this point – and this greatly added to the anticipation for #600 and the impact when it turned out to be a switch back to Roy and an anticlimax – it looked for all the world as though V’s infamous “four words” were imminent.

As OOTS has developed a rather complex plot, one of the guiding principles of forum speculation has been the prophecies given to the group by the Oracle of Sunken Valley. So far, two have already come to pass: Haley‘s, and Belkar’s. All in all, three prophecies were cryptic (Haley, Belkar, and V), while the other three were relatively straightforward (Roy (if unhelpful), Durkon, and Elan… although Elan’s leans more towards the cryptic side, and indeed is almost as cryptic as Belkar’s, it’s also not as conducive to speculation because people don’t like to think about the end of the strip). With two of the cryptic prophecies out of the way, that leaves V’s prophecy as one of the most talked-about single panels in the history of the strip (though Belkar’s prophecy got plenty of play back in the day).

Vaarsuvius asks “how (he/she) will attain ultimate arcane power”, and the Oracle responds that it will come “by saying the right four words to the right being at the right time for all the wrong reasons”.

For three hundred strips, nearly half the strip’s entire existence, that sentence has touched off almost as much debate as the question of V’s gender or the exact nature of that thing in the dark – and as V’s descent has progressed, forum speculators have taken to looking for any four-word string to come out of his mouth to, ultimately, turn out to be the four words that trigger “ultimate arcane power”, often completely ignoring the rest of the sentence. (To show how ridiculous it can get, one theory that was actually rather popular was that when V disintegrated Kubota, she actually said the four words as “Disintegrate. Gust of Wind”, the latter scattering Kubota’s ashes into the sea.) V’s descent into madness seemed to be a perfect moment of weakness, especially as #599 ended. Anyone could see what would happen next: Qarr would tempt V with the promise of ultimate arcane power, and V would say the right four words to agree to the deal.

As it turned out (and we would have to wait for an interlude with Haley’s group before finding this out), that’s not quite how it would happen… and it seems ridiculous in retrospect that the whole deal could be completed in a single strip. And we would have been a lot poorer if that was how it happened.

You see, Vaarsuvius may be sleep trance-deprived, but he/she’s not stupid. He/she can see what’s coming just as well as anyone else could. So when Qarr tempts him, not even with the catch being any sort of damnation (or hidden entirely), but merely helping him with “a certain project of my own”, V goes almost directly to the Disintegration finger. V wasn’t about to sell his soul over this minor setback; he’s going to solve his problem on his own, without any infernal assistance.

Funny how fast circumstances can change.

Right at that moment, an ancient black dragon shows up and proceeds to own V’s ass. She explains that she’s the mother of a dragon V killed nearly 450 strips earlier (nearly three fourths of the strip has passed in the interim), waiting and watching for V to first leave the boat and then use up all his spells fighting Qarr. But for her vengeance, she won’t kill V; that would be too easy. Instead, she’ll make V suffer the same pain she feels by eating V’s own children, bind their souls to herself to frustrate any attempt at simply reviving them, and leaving the material plane for good so V can’t locate her ever again.

The dragon pops out, and just like that V’s relationship with Qarr is drastically changed. Unable to come up with any way to save his/her kids even using Qarr, V is left practically begging him to arrange some sort of Faustian deal. Qarr warns him/her that the chances of success are low, the response time is long, and so will the process of filling out the paperwork even if it does happen, but almost instantly an envelope appears from the “IFCC”, and out pops three fiends in hoods and robes.

The fiends – representing the “Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission”, out to broker a truce between the respective Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic Evil fiendish populations, who see V as a test case to prove their point – look pretty much exactly like the fiends Sabine was seen reporting to upon learning of the gates, to the extent that the forums are basically taking the idea that they’re the same as given. They offer to perform a “once-in-a-century” “Soul Splice”, grafting the souls of three powerful conjurers to V’s own, giving V power that would “dwarf that wielded by any ar[c]ane spellcaster who has ever lived” (since it’s double the power of just one fiend performing the Splice), which V would have complete control over for as long as V holds on to it. V won’t even get eternal damnation, only time with each fiend equal to the amount of time (s)he holds on to the splice.

Would you take the deal? To save your children’s lives, and their souls?

With regard to the Seven Deadly Sins, it’s easy to associate Faustian deals with Avarice or Envy. Someone wants some goal – youth, money, power – and is willing to sell his soul to the Devil to get it. Occasionally it’s Wrath, such as wanting revenge against some particular person or group. It’s far from unheard of for someone to sell their soul for rather benign, understandable ends, such as reversing a spell of bad luck (The Devil and Daniel Webster), where usually the problem (if there’s presented as being one) is having too much of a concern for earthly things rather than the glories of Heaven, or even (theoretically) for noble purposes, such as to give up your own soul for that of another or for a greater good. At first glance, this deal might appear to fall into this last category, where Vaarsuvius is sacrificing his/her own soul for not one, but two or three others, and the chief objection to these being the “four words” on the forums was that saving his/her family was hardly the “wrong reasons”. Personally, I felt it was sufficiently wrong given the larger context and the other priorities, especially if you read V’s motivation in the context of revenge, but that’s just heartless old me. But even if it was, that wouldn’t be nearly as rich of a motivation, or nearly as tragic a fall. This is an odd case of a Faustian deal being made primarily out of pride.

Already frustrated by his/her inability to find Haley and Co., Vaarsuvius is out to prove that arcane magic can solve his/her problems, and that leaving his/her home to study it wasn’t a complete waste of time that only cost her his family. There may well be several ways to save the day at less cost, and if there aren’t it’s probably better for V to just cut his/her losses rather than do something that could have far worse consequences. (Nothing says the fiends have to have his/her soul after (s)he dies.) But V is stubborn and arrogant, as we already knew, and it is proving to be his/her fatal flaw. He/she is not going to admit defeat – not for finding Haley (hence his/her problems with Durkon and Elan), not for saving his/her children, and in a broader sense, not for his/her devotion to magic. Even saving his family is secondary to proving herself right. It’s like the old saying goes, “pride cometh before a fall”, and V is falling, hard.

Rich drives the point home in the current strip (titled, in a deliberate callback to the Oracle’s prophecy and possible reference to the forumites’ problems, “The Wrong Reasons”), when the fiends present V with the alternative: kill herself, have Qarr teleport the head to Durkon and Co., be resurrected, and describe his mentor to Durkon so he can get a message through to him and get him to intervene. (Oddly, despite having a hairstyle similar to that that made me think V was female, Aarindarius seems pretty clearly male to me.) “But,” the fiends warn, “but then you would have to admit that your magic had failed you yet again. That a cleric and a monster had to run and tell Master to come clean up your mess. Hell, you couldn’t even claim to have come up with the idea, since we just gave it to you!” And the fiends know V would never do that – and the ultimate “four words” pound the message home further. This isn’t just a standard plot twist, or even a standard re-use of the Faustian deal. This is Christian morality meeting Greek tragedy, the journey into the belly of the whale (I considered making the line at the top “click for full-sized mouth of the whale”), a desperate hero’s hubris doing him/her in and leading to what will likely be a rather dear cost paid.

In Part IV of “Webcomics’ Identity Crisis”, I claimed that webcomics were not doing enough to break out of its routines, to become great literature rather than just entertain the masses (something all of comics are arguably guilty of), and that not even The Order of the Stick was “much more than a neat story for the masses, with plenty of plot upon subplot but not much in the way of subtext or meaning,” not really enough of that intangible timeless quality that would allow it to stand the test of time.

O great and powerful Rich Burlew, I hast forsaken thee, for I was wanting faith, and I was a fool to do so, and I humbly bow down before thee and beg thee for thy forgiveness. For thy story is truly great and worthy to take its place in the annals of great literature, and ist indeed in the upper eschelon of the great fantasy tales, and thy name shalt be spoken of in the same sentence with Tolkien, Lovecraft, and Pratchett. And certainly its spot in the Greatest Webcomics once the medium matures certainly seems secure now. Burlew has already presented a sort of classic tragic redemption tale with Miko, but that was fairly standard material by comparison. This is the sort of resonant, classic tragedy that’s actually rather rare in fantasy (off the top of my admittedly-not-immersed head, only Tolkien even comes close! Not coincidentially he’s the only surefire author I could think of for the above list, and the only one people could easily agree on), and it shows just how surprising that should be, how well-fit the trappings of fantasy really are for this sort of thing.

Cleverly, Rich has left some room for error as to whether or not these are really the “four words”, because two of them are really a stutter, they seem shoehorned in at the last minute and not really relevant or causal, and the fiends’ alternative is hopelessly convoluted, not guaranteed to work, and even assuming the fiends are telling the truth about the circumstances would take comparatively too long. It’s plausible – V says the four words, to him/herself, right as time is running out on the offer and time resumes, and for very, very wrong reasons – but the debate is allowed to go on as we wonder whether there’s even more ultimate arcane power awaiting him, the current debacle only sending V spiraling down the path of despair as he gets a taste of true power, leading to even more wrong reasons and even wronger reasons.

Who says comics can’t be art?

Because contrasting opinions are the spice of life.

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David Morgan-Mar wrote a reply to my recent Darths and Droids post, as I’m sure you figured would happen. It’s actually rather illuminating, so if you haven’t already, check out the comments to the original post.

Yes, I’ve read today’s Order of the Stick. Post coming, probably early in the morning. Like Vaarsuvius, I’m tormented by distractions everywhere.

State of Darths and Droids: It’s Not You, It’s… Well, It’s Both of Us

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(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized things that go bump in the night.)

I may be leaning towards removing Darths and Droids from my RSS reader.

I’ve said in the past that Darths and Droids is incredibly innovative, taking the basic concept introduced to it by DM of the Rings and building a rich, layered metaplot on top of it, creating a comic I found more captivating than either its predecessor or Irregular Webcomic!

IWC has since moved into a rich, unified plot of its own, but that’s not the only problem I’ve been finding with Darths and Droids. I still believe every word of that description – I was remiss in leaving Darths and Droids out of any consideration for the greatest webcomics of all time last week, at least in those places where it would be on the same list as IWC. Yes, I mean that; it would rank low, but its sort of innovation is worthy of notice, and if it somehow sparked a wave of “RPG screencap comics” there could be no denying its influence.

But as it’s progressed, it’s gotten disjointed.

This problem started as we entered the climax of Phantom Menace, as the strip, following the lead of the movie, split into three separate subplots: the battle between the Gungans and the droids, Anakin and R2D2 taking off on their own little mission, and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan squaring off against Darth Maul. The resulting cross-cutting can work when the comic is read all at once, but when the comic is read on Darths and Droids’ Tuesday-Thursday-Sunday schedule, each switch to a new plot, the one snippet of the story we get on a particular day, has no connection to what has come immediately before, and one is forced to think back more than a week to remember what we’re picking up on. Each strip becomes an individual moment in time. Imagine going about your day and remembering it’s Tuesday and Darths and Droids must have a new strip up, and seeing this. Oh, and imagine waiting two days later for this.

Once again, with a “long-form” comic you have to maintain that balancing act between making sure your comic makes sense read all at once, and also makes sense read in bite-size chunks. This is a major reason gag-a-day strips have held the edge over longer continuity strips to this point in webcomics.

Things calmed down a little after Qui-Gon was critically injured and we settled into Darth Maul’s flashback. That meant several strips of fairly linear, strip-to-strip storytelling. Even when we went back to cross-cutting afterwards it was mostly to mop up the aftermath. It was fairly slow-paced, but readable.

Then we went through an intermission of several strips.

Then came Attack of the Clones.

The Comic Irregulars are explicitly making each movie a separate campaign played out with several years between them. So we’re introduced to the players as they exist two years after the events of the first campaign/movie, including a Sally significantly older and wiser. It’s a significant change to the dynamic, one that’s been brought into sharp focus with the recent huddle-up involving all the PCs. It’s awkward seeing everyone all huddle up as an established group after ten game years apart.

When we actually get into the plot, it resumes the disconnectedness while maintaining a single plot thread. Now I admit, I’ve seen almost zero of Attack of the Clones, and what I have seen is nearer the end. But we basically launch into the story in media res and almost immediately are subjected to something that’s basically a gag. At this point, it feels like the Comic Irregulars are rushing through the story much faster than the occasionally stalled pace at which they moved through The Phantom Menace. They spent a lot of time in Phantom Menace trying to establish the characters and building hints of their personalities and relationships with each other. We got to know the various characters, we paced through the story and every single thing the characters did, and the characters, in turn, slowly learned about the world and the campaign. In Attack of the Clones, the Comic Irregulars basically barge into the story guns a-blazin’. We already know the characters, they already know about the world and we can take care of the campaign in one strip, so let’s take a pure utilitarian approach and get through the plot as quickly as we can.

In The Phantom Menace, the Comic Irregulars may have created a more captivating story than they ever intended.

Truth be told, that may be partly because they actually created a story. So far, Attack of the Clones has mostly felt like a bunch of disconnected moments loosely strung together. Each individual strip has mostly served the purpose of a gag. It’s almost been a reverse Cerebus Syndrome, where the strip has developed less of a reliance on the plot and become more gag-a-day in nature.

Consider the succeding sequence, where Padme/Jim meets with the Jedi Council and Chancellor Palpatine over the vote to create a Grand Army of the Republic. The first strip involves everyone discussing Padme’s character, and Padme walking in, checking the Jedi’s support for the Army, and trying to boss Palpatine around. The second strip creates the subplot of rebuilding the moon of Naboo, destroyed by the Trade Federation during The Phantom Menace. And strip #3 mostly involves back-and-forth dialogue between Padme and Bail Organa. All three are somewhat disconnected from each other, especially when read one at a time. The last strip in particular comes off as being disconnected even when read in sequence all at once.

I say that a “long-form” webcomic should take care to make each strip a complete, satisfying experience, but it’s a balancing act. If it’s too diffuse, it loses cohesion; it may come off like a complete comic when read all at once, but as a day-by-day comic, it almost no longer becomes a plot-based strip.

Two factors may make that sound absurd. The first is the popularity of gag-a-day webcomics, and the second is the specific fact that The Order of the Stick is very much gag-a-day and yet balances that out with an ongoing plot. But gag-a-day strips don’t have an expectation of a plot unless they’re undergoing Cerebus Syndrome, and OOTS substantially advances the plot with each strip, building a strong connection from one strip to the next, and still lets each stand on its own and end with a funny gag. The two share billing on OOTS while the Comic Irregulars seem to be sublimating the plot to the funny. (So you don’t think I’m showing my OOTS bromance too much here, I’ll also ask you to look at Sluggy Freelance. And the OOTS balance between plot and gags has been especially apparent in recent strips, as I’ll cover in a day or two.)

But perhaps more than any of that, is the problem that gag-a-dayness is not in Darths and Droids‘ DNA. The strip has been funny throughout The Phantom Menace, but it’s been a sort of punchlineless humor, where the humor has existed in equal amounts in every panel, a natural result of the personalities of the characters (especially Jim, Sally, and Pete, in that order), so if each strip ended with a gag, it did so as part of the natural progression of the story. That’s helped to minimize the extent to which the Comic Irregulars have had to contort the story to fit each page and actually built the sense of the strip as a long-form, drama-based, comic-book-style webcomic. While I’ve certainly laughed along with Darths and Droids, that wasn’t the reason I read the comic, and the plot is starting to fall out of focus, especially read one-installment-at-a-time (I didn’t quite grasp much of what was going on until I re-read these strips). I wonder if the Comic Irregulars are/were trying to move Darths and Droids in the direction of gag-a-day in order to avoid the Girl Genius/Gunnerkrigg Court problem, and are running into the limitations of that.

Now, it’s early in Attack of the Clones, and the basic situation is only just getting set up. The last two strips have had a bit more of a connection with each other, which bodes well for the future (at least the near future), and I think I have a better idea of where the plot is going and might better be able to follow the strip from this point forward. Part of the problem may have been the need to follow various strips I’m planning to write reviews of over the next month or two, and those strips distracting me to some extent from Darths and Droids. It might be a shame if Darths and Droids were to chase me away, because it’s become apparent, especially towards the end of The Phantom Menace, that the strip is going to be using a very different plot from the movies (on top of alternate interpretations and the things the players bring to their characters) and that would mean we might be in for more surprises than one might think. (I can’t tell from the strip; was the destruction of the moon of Naboo part of The Phantom Menace or not?) But Darths and Droids has recently hit a bit of a rough patch, falling into some easy mistakes made by continuity strips and weakened my investment in the strip. The bad news is it needs to spend some time to win me back. The good news is anyone else looking to dive in can learn from it.