Webcomic popularity news

The ComicMix March Madness Tournament is going on. Surprising upsets:

• Ava's Demon (never heard of it) beat The Oatmeal (has a huge fandom).
• Grrl Power beat Scenes from a Multiverse and Order of the Stick.
• Commander Kitty beat Dresden Codak.
• Unsounded beat Homestuck, which has the most fanatical fandom on the web.
• Weregeek beat Cucumber Quest.
• Not A Villain beat Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
• Namesake (underranked at circa #350 on TopWebComics) beat Slightly Damned (ranked #2).
• Two Guys and Guy beat Penny Arcade and Sinfest.
• Girls with Slingshots beat Dr. McNinja and Unsounded.
• Romantically Apocalyptic beat Lackadaisy and Awkward Zombie.

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Edit: With eight comics remaining, I predict the winner will be A Redtail's Dream beating out either Ava's Demon or XKCD in the final. I expect Ava's quality and novelty to beat out XKCD's fandom when they meet, and it even has a good chance to take the top spot itself since ARtD is currently going through a slow and boring story, while Ava's Demon is in a highly interesting storybuilding phase.

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Edit: With four comics remaining, we have another surprise: Sandra and Woo knocked out XKCD. Compared to XKCD, S&W is in a better position to defeat Ava's Demon, having adequate art and matching Ava's in characterization and emotion. It is also the last comedy comic in the running and could take the whole competition for that reason, and its upbeat attitude may be an advantage over the downer storylines of the remaining competitors.

Yet another surprise is Bittersweet Candy Bowl beating Girls with Slingshots. I had thought BCB to be one of the weakest of the last eight and that any comic that could beat Dr. McNinja and Unsounded, as GwS did, must have a formidable fandom. Wrong on both counts, apparently.

So, a prediction: ARtD over S&W by a sliver in the last round, credit to the breathtaking full-page art. Let's see what actually happens.

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Edit: Could I have been any more wrong? The two finalists are BCB and S&W. I would have placed both in the bottom half of the eight semifinalists, while my favourite ARtD got the least votes of the four. So now the question is which fan base is larger (or has more money), furries or lolicons? I predict Sandra and Woo will win because its author is making a bigger deal of the contest and turning out new artwork to invite readers to participate.

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Edit: And the winner is: Bittersweet Candy Bowl, which annihilated S&W thanks in part to its fans' ability to buy more votes than were actually cast for it. And so ends any notion that I have a finger on what's popular on the web.

The media lies... by omission

News item: The Syrian rebels named US technology executive Ghassan Hitto as their leader.

Meta-news item: "So far, U.S. media has completely failed to identify any of these [Muslim Brotherhood leadership] positions held by Mr. Hitto who has now become the fourth U.S. Muslim Brotherhood figure to be identified as part of the Syrian National Council." ( Read more... )

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As a side note, Syria and the "rebels" are trading accusations of using chemical weapons on Aleppo. Reuters says that the victims were treated at two specific hospitals. These hospitals are in the western part of Aleppo that is still under Assad's control. In other words, the victims were Assad's people.

Assad is not going to risk being caught firing on his own supporters. He needs all the help he can get, and anybody who would believe the state media is already with him. The attack was almost certainly done by the "rebels".

"Diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means."- Zhou Enlai

This 2012 quote from Ambassador Jonnie Carson sums up the advice that Nigeria has been getting from the US for responding to a foreign-funded war based on pure sectarianism:

Security efforts aimed at containing Boko Haram’s violence must avoid excessive violence and human right abuses and make better use of police and intelligence services to identify, to arrest and to prosecute those responsible for Boko Haram violent acts. Boko Haram thrives because of social and economic problems in the north that the government must find a way of addressing.

A coordinated government effort to provide responsible, accountable government for Nigeria while creating opportunities for economic growth will diminish the political space in which Boko Haram operates.

In another 2012 speech, Carson would "stress one key point ... that religion is not driving extremist violence either in Jos or northern Nigeria."

How is that working out? According to Rev. Jerome Ituah, "Out of the 52 Catholic churches in Maiduguri diocese, 50 of them have been destroyed by Boko Haram."

This has been going on for four years. How can Carson still have a job in the Obama administration when he says things like that? Because he says things like that. Or because everybody in that administration is incompetent beyond belief. It's getting hard to keep presuming incompetence before malice after all this time.