Life on the Fourth Floor

Whilst I’m fully aware that this has nothing to do with anything, I’d like to comment on the latest range of Lynx deodorant adverts. You guys in the states will know the company as Axe but I know for a fact you get the same adverts a couple of months after us. I don’t know why it’s called Axe, though. Maybe it’s because they thought you wouldn’t know what a Lynx is. Still, a lynx is sexy and stylish…  in a big cat kind of way. An axe, on the other hand, has no obvious sex appeal, unless you’re a dwarf. But I digress. I don’t know if anyone has seen these new ‘Spray more get more’ adverts on television recently. Something about them disturbed me to my core.

In the past, Lynx adverts have operated on the simple, if preposterous, principle that spraying this brand of deodorant on your body will make you irresistible to the opposite sex, as if the very absence of smell is inherently attractive. Every advert has presented variations on this theme: if you spray it on you the women will think you’re nice. How does it work? Magic. No further explanation is needed. Until now, that is. Now they’re writing more rules for the magic system. They’re world-building, in other words.

The latest advert shows a guy spraying Lynx on some mud. Two passing women (I think they’re horse-riding) smell the mud — yes, the mud — and feel the urge to wrestle together in this swill before inviting the guy to join them. The tag line reads as follows: spray more get more.

Sooooooo there are rules now? If you spray more on yourself, you get more women? What? The advert implies there is a scientific process at work, that a principle operates: the amount of Lynx sprayed is directly proportional to its effectiveness. Of course, there’s more. It doesn’t just work on humans. If you spray it on some mud, women will want to have sex with the mud. God, what happens when you spray it on other things like walls and mugs? But the women in the advert aren’t just attracted to the mud, they feel the weirdly specific urge to mud wrestle. How does the Lynx know? Are there special chemical receptors which detect what type of matter the spray has come into contact with and, based on this information, calculate what it can make women do that will turn a guy on the most? Can’t we go back to how things used to be?

Of course, the target audience for these adverts has always been desperate single men who can’t get a date; men who don’t think they’re attractive to women. The adverts aim to convince these men that spraying Lynx on themselves will get them laid. And they offer nothing more than that promise because these men ask for nothing more. Now, however, these pathetic singletons are being told that by simply spraying the Lynx on their environment they can turn their world into an improv porn film.

This is unfair, it’s patronising and, worst still, it could lead to all sorts of trouble. If someone sprays Lynx on the back end of a bus by mistake they could unwittingly causes the deaths of the hundreds of women who run in front of traffic in an attempt to screw the exhaust pipe. These adverts need axing with a big, sexy axe.

I’m a big fan of alternative comics. They’re a great idea. I’m not talking about webcomics as an alternative to syndicated comics. I’m talking about webcomics that are an alternative to that alternative. That’s twice as alternative as syndicated comics.

You see, most webcomics fail to realise that on the internet, there are no pages. There are web pages, but they’re not like paper pages. Web pages are rectangular areas of any size where you can see stuff like images and words, whereas regular pages are different because… they don’t use electricity. So, if there are no pages, we need not adhere to the tyrannical form of panel comics. Panels were invented to oppress the minds of readers. They were invented so that space could be used efficiently. But on the internet, there is no space (apart from web space) and there are no pages (apart from web pages).

This fact was brilliantly exploited by Scott McCloud when he invented infinite canvas comics. They’re just like normal comics but with one important difference: they’re infinite. They go on forever. That is, until they stop. But they go on for a super long time. They could go on forever, though, if that were possible.

I read McCloud’s comic I Can’t Stop Thinking. I can’t stop thinking about how much I agree with it! I found it logical, well-thought-out and unpretentious. That symbol of an infinity sign with an eye in it was especially unpretentious. It looks like he had lots of fun making the whole strip using either Paint or an etch-a-sketch. I can’t believe that the beautiful landscape he’s drawn halfway down this page is only 4k!

And it’s true that online comics’ greatest promise is the chance break out of the rectangular prison that is paper, not the opportunity to cater to any interest without having to pander to a majority demographic or censor content. Escaping paper is the most important thing.

This is where Scott’s brilliant invention of ‘trails’ comes in. Instead of ordering panels left-to-right, top-to-bottom as they would appear on a dirty, evil page you can just place them anywhere you like and draw arrows linking them together. It may be confusing, it may take up space unnecessarily and the process of following the ‘trials’ may detract attention from the actual contents of the panels you’re trying to find… but at least it’s original!

Just because the convention of ordering things a certain way to aid comprehension has been around and stayed around since written communication was invented, it doesn’t mean we need that convention. In fact, I’m going to go one step further and break free from the convention of spaces between words. Yousee?Everythingissofreenow,nottomentionattractiveandeasytounderstand.

But, wait! I’m, still ordering the words left-to-right in the restrictive, rubbish way of the page. Convention pointless that of tyranny the escape to need I. Horizons my expand should I!

This gives me an idea. I’ll escape the restrictions of ordering the letters of a word from left to right as well. After all, this is the internet! ?yawyna ,ecnerehoc fo tnaryt eht ot rednap ot deen ew od yhW

But I’m still rigidly adhering to the convention of consonants in words. This is the internet! Surely, in this new medium we can express things perfectly adequately through a new, made-up convention that doesn’t alienate anyone at all. From now on, I will only communicate with vowels. The greatest promise of internet blogs is the chance to break out of the prison of consonant-usage. Allow me to demonstrate: Aoiueoiaueioaioueoiuaeoiaoiueaioieaoeuoaieuaeoaueaoieuaoieiaeioaeuiaeoiaeeeiaei!

Thank-you, Scott McCloud, for expanding my mind and showing me how to escape useless, unnecessary conventions such as pages and page-ordering. And thank-you to alternative comics for showing me that comics don’t need to be funny, relevant, unpretentious, likeable, readable, free, well-scripted, well-drawn or even drawn at all. What’s important is that they’ve been re-invented. Oh yes.

Hope you liked Friday’s extravaganza of a strip. Eight panels long with zombies and ducks. Not only do you get to read a bit of Jack’s work but you also get to see what Michael’s ducks look like. You may be confused now but everything will be clear. Trust me.

I’ve gotten even more feedback about the design of some of the characters, which leads me to this announcement: I am going to redesign Charlotte and Amy. Not beyond recognition, just a tweak here and there. I hope you’ll like it. The way things are playing out now, you should get to see it some time around Christmas.