I'm farklempt - discuss John amongst yourselves.

It sounds harsh, but I just don't think enough effort goes into this comic.
It feels like it was just casually thrown together with hardly any thought or effort.

Well let me just go ahead and talk a little about John here then;

I started this comic in a time when I felt my only skill was in writing, and my art and animation skill were very lacklustre. So, in this depressive state of not feeling like I could handle any big projects without the talent to convey them, I decided to make John as a little way to poke fun at amateur comics. The jokes are often poking fun at a certain type of joke rather than the joke itself (poor layout, comics in which nothing actually happens, characters that hate eachother for the sake of it, gross-out humour and that kind of thing). However, I see now that alot of people don't have time to see through the layer of irony, and the poor layout and jokes can just come off as, well, poor. I thank you for the review, if only for making me realise that not many people will like a comic that's bad on purpose.

Two things:

One, I love bottom down comic layouts. As long as I only scroll in one direction, I think it works well. I actually prefer downward comics to sideways comic. They seem to be able to hide and reveal panels that have a punchline.

Two, although the humor can sometimes be too absurdest, I'm a fan of it. To commit to absurdity that much is interesting. The one thing I think this comic needs to make sure is to make sure the chronology and story is comprehensible. Even when the story is irrelevant, a sense of chronology helps in the delivery jokes.

Bocaj I've just seen this kind of silly humour done better else where (like Pancakes!)
I can see what Saint is saying about this aiming to be a parody of badly done comics, and it places that comes through (like my favourite "Stop saying whistle" gag) but a lot of the time it just seems to become the thing it is trying to parody.

Saint is right that a bit more insight should have been offered, so I'll try to elaborate a little.

If all of John's strips were like the one I touted as my favorite, I think John would be outstanding. Parody or no, it has such an oddball personality that you can't help but laugh, and more importantly, it's focused on an actual joke!

This element is sorely lacking from the large majority of the archive. I understand that goofiness with a bad look is what you're going for, but more often than not it looks more lazy than deliberate. I love absurdist humor, but it works best when it's going toward a real joke as opposed to just underlining its own weirdness.

It would be unfair to say that John never hits the mark, it most certainly does here and there. It's just inconsistent - so much that it can't really be anything more than frustrating, though not enough to be outright bad.

I think Kev is being too generous here.
John fails to find the mark a lot more then it works.
It has its moments but they are often few and far between.

I think YOU'RE being generous.

I think you smell.

YOU KILLED JOHN! YOU BASTARDS!
:'(

*cries for a bit before calming down.*

...like roses?