Subnormality

    The shores of furrydom have been suitably pillaged. Their homes (basements) have been reduced to ash, their treasures (moldy mangas) have been relieved, and their women (despite their pleas) have been left unravaged. However, the time for reveling is not yet upon us, for as you know, not everyone can receive a happy ending, thus the wounds I had suffered from the genocide against all logic known as "Better Days," refused to heal, and now the ravens are plucking the eyeballs from my desiccated corpse.

    Things could be worse. After all, certain comics could go unscathed. It has become difficult to prepare for Ragnarok as I write this review from Valhalla via stone and chisel, however, this comic is so brain-fuckingly stupid, it can wake the dead.

    I would like you to imagine a non-furry "Better Days." Imagine if it were in color, if the characters were less memorable and talked even more like Naylor, if it were less subtle and even less funny. If every comic Naylor drew while masturbating to Ayn Rand was replaced with a comic about how much Bu$h sux, and if every single female character in Better Days was no longer a slut, but rather a helpless shrew being victimized and tormented by the male oppressor, and their only retribution was quiet, brooding desperation.

    If you followed my instructions carefully, then by now, Winston Rowntree, author/artist of Subnormality would kindly request you stop infringing on his intellectual territory, or else the Canadian government will stop sending him welfare checks for drawing a comic twice a month (that one's in speculation, but connect the dots).
    You may think it would be impossible for any other comic to be more irritating than "Better Days." You might believe it is highly unlikely for an ego to surpass Naylor's. You probably have surmised the soapboxing in the previous comic could not get any more blunt, forced, or intrusive, lest it be charged with sexual assault. In fact, that's exactly what this is. Winston Rowntree forcibly put his unwanted opinions into my mind.

    Where to begin? Well, as mentioned earlier, Winston Rowntree is Canadian, but if I focused on that, we'd be here for a while. Let's start at the beginning, shall we? The first comic starts off just fine. My expectations are set up thinking this is going to be another humorous webcomic. The author is endorsed by Cracked and featured in many of their videos. But just like when you're expecting Santa Claus to fill the tree with all kinds of gifts on Christmas Day, you soon come to realize this is the day your parents treat you like an adult when you discover your father has gotten drunk and jerked off inside your stocking and blamed one of the reindeer. Subnormality fulfills all of your expectations in ways you never wanted.

    What is it that I'm looking at here, Winston? It's not a joke, it's not clever, interesting or informative. Make sure you bear in mind the style of Rowntree's humor. For him, it's all about quantity, not quality. It doesn't matter what's in the "joke." Who cares about content? The set-up is there are a lot of words, and the punchline is one of the characters saying only a few words! Har har!

    I suppose I am being unfair. These comics were made years ago, and every artist's work improves over time. So, let's take a look at a more recent one! So, here we have a witch, and she needs to spell out everything... she wants... to say in the sand... for some reason... oh! I get it, this is one of those comic strips where you laugh *at* the author! Rowntree, the only way you could ever make anyone laugh is if your coroners found your brain tumored your sense of humor to death. Oh, and nice job with the "Gandhi 2" joke in the bottom left-hand corner, Winston. I'll admit, that was pretty funny when the movie UHF came out with it two and half decades ago.

     Apparently, when Rowntree is incapable of writing jokes, he takes them from other writers. You know, Rowntree, I take back every negative thing I said about you. It's pretty ballsy of you to insult the people who write your comic. Take a gander at this comic. Oh, yes, the 72 unwashed, greasy, nerdy virgins awaiting suicide bombers joke. Then there's that scathing jab at Family Guy which he half-obscured (possibly out of shame) in the lower right corner of the sixth panel. I would commend you had Family Guy not aired that same suicide bomber joke... what was it... two years before this comic was made.

    This asshole tries every gimmick conceivable, to the admirable effort of breaking the fourth wall, to the LOL RANDUMB. I know I will never love comedy as much as this man hates it. Thankfully, the humor does not make up the majority of his archives. Unthankfully, what do are his social and political commentary, and boy does Winston shake things up in this department.

    His 500-word essays devoted to profound messages about society vary from the obvious to the wildly obvious. Wow, Rowntree! Nazis killed people?! Here, one sees the ultimate problem with all of these comics which provides us a little bit of insight into the author himself: all of the morals and themes are only relevant up until 1941. It's too bad I'm outside Winston's intended audience of "sociopath," or else I might have actually learned something here.

    When Winston needs some filler, he tells his readers a little bit about himself. Not as if that's special or anything. He regurgitates his views on the audience every single comic, and rather than just wiping off the vomit, leaving the theatre and demanding a refund from the guy in the ticket booth as well as reimbursement for their ruined shirts, they just sit there, wide-eyed, nodding, as if it's an essential part of the plot. This is the lowest common denominator of entertainment. This is equivalent to Twitter accompanied with a visual aid. How would you all like it if in place of a review, I just posted a picture of me typing away on my computer with the caption, "Wish I hadn't spent my time razing the Irish countryside. I barely have enough energy to update."

    But I digress. Every single Subnormality comic that vomits a moral philosophy on you can be effectively summed up in three words. "Faith is stupid." "People are morons." Straight from my mother: "Eat your broccoli." "Trolls are basement dwellers." Whoops! That was four words. I guess I was wrong, Rowntree! It also showcases you his tremendous ego, "They don't like my comic? They must be trolling! I have to get back at them, but how...? I know! I'll spend hours creating a comic and uploading it to my site while commenting on my blog how I'm easily able to ignore these people."

    Winston, you don't need to add padding to whatever message you're trying to get across. Three words does not need to be stretched to 3,000. You're making a webcomic, not writing a high school essay.

    Which brings me to this comic. You gotta love how the woman who has a "toned mind" is also rather slender. In fact, I think the only unattractive things Rowntree could draw on her were some baggy clothes and glasses. I know Canada is only just now playing The Breakfast Club in theaters, but some thick-rimmed frames and some baggy clothing does not make an ugly girl, despite what 80's romances have taught you.

    If you'll notice, it mentions, "Maybe anything is sexier than photoshopping," yet ironically enough, Winston was praised and interviewed by a correspondant from Glamour magazine. Here, he gave a response that instantly destroyed any guilt that might have lurked inside your conscience if you were the one who gave him a swirlie in high school:

"The comic was actually directly inspired by the website womenwithmustaches.com, a 'humor' site that features pictures of women with facial hair alongside jeering captions like 'this is what nightmares are made of.' I ran across the site last week and was just absolutely disgusted by it and what it represents--the kind of brain-dead ultra-juvenile sexism that's unfortunately so easy to find on the internet--and so the idea for the comic came together pretty quickly from there.


I really wanted to make a statement in the other direction, as well stick up for comics as a force for positive messages (the womenwithmustaches.com site is incidentally the creation of one the most popular internet cartoonists going today, which is the other aspect of it that's so offensive to me personally). Beyond that, I just generally feel like the popular stereotype of "sexy" and what people are actually interested in in a meaningful way are completely at odds, and that's to no-one's benefit, hence I really just wanted to convey that sexiness maybe could be thought of in a different way."

    Yes, he really wishes to change the world via webcomics. Who are you to accuse people of being shallow, Winston? After all, I don't think I've ever seen any fat women drawn in your comic, nor any black people. In fact, I think your entire comic's universe consists of a few skinny, white nerds, a couple of fat guys, the occasional Asian/brownish woman, a whole shitton of skinny, white girls, and the sphynx. In all fairness, if that list included Rowntree himself, that would sum up everything Winston masturbates to.

    Oh, scratch that. Here's what Rowntree considers fat. So, tell me, Winston: was it the vagina or your taste in music that made your parents realize they raised a 16 year old girl? Perhaps it was your own maturity? Maybe it was your poignant political commentary regarding the last American president?

    Let's talk characters. There is one character in the entire comic: Winston Rowntree. He goes around possessing the souls of hapless victims and espouses his own abysmally verbose views upon their loved ones. Thankfully, his imagination is so bland, he can't think of anything else to do to them other than make them do exactly what they were going to do. Occasionally, he will manifest as the sphynx, where he will wreak vengeance upon mankind for making the horrendously stupid choice of creating him. I'll bet you wish you had that sign, amirite, Rowntree?

    Let's see his host of avatars...

You have pink-haired bitch. Her personality trait is she is so selfless, she is completely unable to say, "no," to anyone. Whoops! Guess not, lol.

You have blonde bitch and Asian bitch. Comepletely interchangeable

You have redhead bitch and goatee bitch. See above.

    To prove I'm not sexist, I decided to call all of Winston's hosts "bitches." Some of you might still take offense to that, and well, to quote Kat Williams, "I'm only calling you 'bitches' 'cause I don't know your names individually."

    So that's Subnormality in a nutshell. Why is it so popular, and why is it featured on Cracked? Well, a couple guesses would be the art doesn't scald my eyes from hazel to white, and a passing glance reveals no twincest, so I suppose it's bad not for the content, but rather its fanbase. All of you are the reason this mockery of the first amendment exists, and you should feel ashamed. I realize some of you might actually enjoy this comic, and thus have been offended by me calling you an easily-manipulated imbecile for liking it. Please feel free to prove my suspicions about you by posting your concerns in the comments section.

    Alternatively, if you require an urgent message to me regarding the content of this article, you may scream your comments aloud in front of my erect, naked genitals. The art is the only redeeming factor in this comic.

Want proof?

Here's a Winston Rowntree original:

And here's a modification done by our very own Chance Svavarsson:

    So, for those of you who still like this comic, I ask you, "why?" The humor is stale at best and plagiarized at worst. There's nothing particularly memorable about any of the morals in the comic, as you can easily discover them firsthand if you're old enough to form coherent thought. There is a total of one character masquerading as a half-dozen in this comic, and if you weren't keeping score, that's one less than fucking Moon over June had. Worst of all, the soapboxing and preachment is even more blatant and cumbersome than Better Days, and if you think Rowntree gets a free pass because "at least he's not preaching objectivist views," you're a hypocrite, and your parents should have really sued the manufacturers of their condom.

    Now it's time for the part I've been waiting for... personal attacks on Rowntree's character. Rowntree's ego is so massive, he fellates himself, believing no one else can trump his lovemaking skills, and the only person who deserves him is himself. He is such a delusional prick, that he once saw George W. Bush stutter and promptly gave himself a high-five for creating a comic that could so effectively shake the president's nerves.
  
     Rowntree secretly hates women, but he created an opposite alter ego, because the only intellectual adversary worthy of his attention is himself. He is such a gender-confused moron, that he once screamed his girlfriend wasn't respecting his rights by not getting an abortion. The only reason Winston made this comic was so he could use the grasshopper to rationalize living off creative welfare. Speaking of that comic, Winston thinks any sort of observation is observational humor. "Bwahahaha! What a stupid story! What wolf disguises itself as a sheep, anyway?! They should have called this, 'A Wolf in a... Wolf's clothing! 'Cause it's a fucking Wolf! It doesn't need clothes!' Oh man, I am so witty..."

    I would like to do the normal three paragraphs of unbridled hatred, but I've probably given this asshole more attention than he already deserves. I'm done with you, Rowntree. I'm a Viking. Suck my dick.



-Kris