Following popular request and my own opinion, I've moved two recent failed attempts to start new comic competitions, Bad Comic Competition 1: Test Run and MINSA # 1 : Make It Not Suck Anymore, to the Fights Go Here forum.

As a general guideline, I recommend that, before starting a new type of comic competition, a stripper ask him- or herself the following questions:

1. Am I respected regular? Have I been making comics and participating in the SC community for several months? Am I generally well liked? Have I won at least one comic competition already (preferably more)? If you answer "no" to any of these questions, your efforts to start a competition are likely to fail.

2. Does the competition I am starting feature a new format? Is it a fun and original idea? Or is it just a theme that could be used in an existing type of competition? Both of the recent attempts fail this test. In fact, both have been done before. Have patience; wait until you win a contest (and if you keep making a genuine effort, I promise you it will happen eventually), then run your contest idea. If you're not that patient, just start a theme thread in Comic Showcase or RMDC, and don't present it as a competition.

3. Is there room to add a new type of competition? The answer to this is currently "no". I count at least five different types of comic competitions going on right now, and if you ask me, that's two or three too many. (To say nothing of the Photoshop contests.) Don't make people split their focus. Work on higher-quality entries and quick turnover for the existing contest types.

Possums claims the "Bad Comic Competition" was a satire of all the other new types of competitions, which is well and good. I'm not chastizing anyone, I'm just offering advice in plainer language.

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The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!

I love you, evil_d.

Did you ever know that you're my hero?

How have you not been on my favorites list yet? Shame on you!

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

I agree completely with evil_d - I must confess, I've given up entering comic competitions now because there are just far too many different types. Call me a traditionalist, but I preferred it when there was just the original CC and the occasional Comic Cup now and again. The rest are all things which could easily be subsumed by the original CC and the presence of so many different competitions makes the Comic Competition forum unbearable to cope with.

What is more, part of the joy of entering and winning the CC was that it was *difficult* to win - precisely because lots of people entered (it being the only competition, Comic Cup notwithstanding) and hence there really was *REAL* competition. With so many different kinds of competition now, the actual 'competition' is being watered down.

I'm not saying "change it for me and perhaps I'll condescend to entering again", but I really think we ought to cut down on the number of competition types. CC and Comic Cup are more than sufficient, in my opinion.

Yeah, I agree, FTC was amusing at first because I thought it would have the same frequency as the "Serial Comic" or 'What Are the Rules to This Comic?" which was like 3 times a year but it's evolved into a twice-weekly award-me-do, then there's Begin This Contest which I've never even clicked on.

I'd like to suggest that there be two Contest Forums, I am quite willing to spend the time moving every FTC and BTC thread into another one so we've got a seperate thread for CC's and Comic Cups.

One more forum isn't going to kill us.

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Dad was flammable

I'm agreeing with the Chi man here, well said.

The World's Worst and BTCs seem rather invaluable if you ask me, I'm sure they have their fun, but World Worst's could work in RMDC or Comic Showcase, and perhaps you could have an alternating BTC/FTC rota in order to compromise nicely [eg winner of FTC starts a BTC and thus winner starts FTC]. I think that'd allow all the competitions, but with more time between them, rather than a new competition starting every day.

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I am not 16 going on not 17, I know that I'm naive.

I'd like that too - if you wouldn't mind doing it. It would clear things up a lot, if you ask me.

What should I name the second contest forum?

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www.bradsucks.net

Is it because you know he can rock?

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I think, therefore I make comments on a forum.

How about 4LosersWhoCan'tWinAContestOnTheirOwnSoTheyKeepMakingUpNewOnesBecauseTheyAreLame?

The Tool Box.

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Poop.

How about 4LosersWhoCan'tWinAContestOnTheirOwnSoTheyKeepMakingUpNewOnesBecauseTheyAreLame?

Actually, I made up World's Worst (the first time) because I did that as a theme for one of the CCs I won, and didn't feel fufilled with just one "World's Worst".

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

One way FTCs could be changed is that they could be made to only happen once in a while, but that all of the hosts would be required to make most of the awards new and themselves, unique to that competition. That's sorta why ftcs were fun originally.

//This post gets the award for worst use of kaddar's time

I like the comic comps. It's always fun to run your own contest, so I try to enter as many as I can.

I like all the contests myself, but I think we can condense a few.

I personally believe the reasons for the other contests cropping up is that the older contests have a tendency to play favorites and just rotate a few winners around.

Although users like kaufman have totally been changing that scenario by really paying attention to all the comics, I think the contests still fall victim to favoritism and what not.

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

I admit to suffering from being overwhelmed by all the contests out there. As a side effect, I haven't felt the urge to enter many, if any at all. I definitely understand the Mikey's feeling that the same folks win the CCs but I'm not sure if saturating the place with contests is the answer. It reminds me of when, a few years ago, they started making those bumper stickers that said "My child is an excellent citizen at (wherever) Elementary" for those kids that weren't honor students.

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Peeing sitting down is the gift you give yourself.

I like the different comic competitions. There's what, four of them? How in the name of Zeus' butthole is that confusing?

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

I enter for fun. I don't expect to win jack diddly. I just play it like a game, which is why I liked the ultimate run on sentence thread, word association, etc. I like that kind of inspiration, and thats how I use most comic contests (hence the whole reason I entered the bad comic contest). Its like those random little threads that have a single subject matter that everyone posts related comics to.

If it were to split into two different forums (mentioned before hand), why not treat the other comic contests (other than Comic Cup and CC) as games and make a separate games forum? That way, it wouldn't ruin the competition for the mainstream contests. It would also take care of the little issue with some regulars getting irritated at all the pointless little games clogging up the General Discussion forum.

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I will rate you hard, and unendingly.

Zeus' butthole notwithstanding, there's nothing confusing about there being any where from 5 to 7 contests running simultaniously, it just cheapens the idea of the competitions. Think of it like all of the awards shows on TV. How many people actually care who wins an MTV Award? Or a Golden Globe? Or a Daytime TV Award?

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Peeing sitting down is the gift you give yourself.

They hand out a lot of medals at the Olympics, but that doesn't cheapen the validity of each seperate competition. Some of the comics competitions are better-suited to three-panel or series comics (like the CC), and some are for one-liners, blackouts, and extrapolations (like FTC, BTC, and WW). And if someone thinks that only one or two of them are really worth entering, then I don't see how the existence of additional ones that a lot of other people enjoy should affect that.

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

To me the whole point of a Comic Contest was to make the best comic out of everyone, winning a CC was something to actually be proud of. Winning a Comic Cup was even more rewarding because it meant that you beat several good strippers to be crowned the champion.

With the FTC's, not only are you adhering to the same rule EVERY SINGLE TIME, you are also pretty much gauranteed to win one of the 50 awards available in every contest. Ending a 2-panel comic with a joke about molestation or drug-abuse will almost gaurantee you'll be in the shortlist of winners.

If that's your bag, fair enough, but I think that the BTC, FTC and WW comics should be put in their own thread, for those people who actually enjoy that kind of thing.

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Dad was flammable

How about something nice and not so unfriendly, like "Extracurricular Activities"? Or something not so lame sounding...

Furthermore, my thoughts on competitions is this: I rarely enter anymore because there are so many of them. It was fun when everyone was trying their hearts out in one or two competitions (and the threads were more than 3 pages long within the week--with the added bonus of people commenting on other people's comics or how much they just suck), but now it's like everyone enters everything and everyone wins something. It's more like an equal opportunity thing or a "no-feelings-hurt" approach. Fuck it. Hurt people's feelings. There's always next competition. And the one after that, and the one after that... I had to enter a million contests before I won one, and it made me feel all the more better when I did win. I'm not knocking anyone here by saying this; If you need to win several awards in a one week period, that's your own psychological defunction. I'd just be much prouder to win out of a large number of entries, rather than the smaller numbers there are now.

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Mediocrity at its most average.

Sure, rub it in, funny boy.

Well, sure, but look at those 50 awards. A few are true honors to win, some are fun to try for on a lark if you care to, some are meh, and some are practically insults. The presence of a jpeg of some hardware doesn't change that. So if someone wants to shoot for "corniest," go ahead, but I wouldn't be proud of it. Zinger, Silver, Bronze and Creativity reward good work, and I have a partiality to Pun and Title just because.

You'll notice how cavalier I was in giving out many of the awards last time; I certainly take it all with a grain of salt.

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

quote:

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I personally believe the reasons for the other contests cropping up is that the older contests have a tendency to play favorites and just rotate a few winners around.

Although users like kaufman have totally been changing that scenario by really paying attention to all the comics, I think the contests still fall victim to favoritism and what not.

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I think we need to take this issue a lot more seriously. After all, we're making comic strips.

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

Hence why we should have a separate forum for the non mainstream comic contests. This is getting into a huge fight, and I dont think that a lot of the newer people like myself think of the contests as anything more than fun games anyway.

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I will rate you hard, and unendingly.

Look Chi, I am all for keeping certain comic competitions to a different forum. Totally. I agree that the current forum is saturated right now.

But while it is true that some people are consistently funnier than others, I am not the only one who notices that there can be a little favoritism. And while it is true that there are some regular users who may just always suck, I think that a lot of newbs tend to get overlooked.

FTC awards, most of them are just little pats on the back, which I don't take very seriously. Some people are really proud of their FTC awards, which is one of those shoulder-shrugging things. It's like, "Okay, if THAT's what you want to be proud of..." But I definitely put more stock in winning a CC or the creativity, silver, and zinger awards in the FTC. And to win a comic cup, well, that's probably one of the biggest honors here.

Maybe we should have an "Official Comic Competitions" forum, like the CCs, FTCs, and Comic Cups, and another "User-created Competitions" for the WWs, BTCs, bad comic comp, and whatever flotsam people want to toss in there. Any takers?

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.