The Stick Awards II: Second Edition (#0941 - #0950)

[Porthos]

Welcome to The Stick Awards II: Second Edition!

The Stick Awards are handed out to the best strips of all time as chosen by our fellow Playgrounders.

This week we are covering the comic strips 941 through 950.

For full details about the Stick Awards, please check out the main thread here.

To read more about the original Stick Awards, created by Nazzo, the 102nd, please read his thread here.

To vote in this thread, simply state which comic of the ten listed is your favorite. Bolding the number of the comic (Like this) helps it stand out.

Voting for this week will close on Aug 27th, 4pm EDT. Any votes made after that will NOT count toward the totals.

Last time, 936 End of the Line won the day over strongest rival yet in rather convincing fasion. And even though one of the vanqusihed strips screamed that this was a TERRIBLE vote, the judges were unmoved and on to the Best of the Hundred 936 went.

And now that climatic battle is well and truly (and finally ) over, I suppose it's time to settle in for a minor resloution or two. Perhaps a foreshadow of some sorts. But, all in all, probably nothing too earthshattering coming up. Certainly nothing that would make us question months (or even years) worth of strips that preceeded it. And even if we somehow got one of those, I'm sure we aren't getting two.

The only way to be sure, though, is to look at and then figure out which of the following strips deserves to win.....

.THE STICK AWARDS II: 0941 - 0950

941 Relatively OK
942 But He Probably Has a Halberd Now
943 Everyone Hates Goodbye Scenes
944 All of the Above, Actually
945 Jumbled Up
946 It's What's Inside That Counts
947 Keep in Mind
948 Behind the Eyes
949 Method Doctor
950 Spell It Out

[Gift Jeraff]

#946 was the better cliffhanger to end the book on, but #945 is prettier and invokes a far greater sense of terror.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

I think it's gotta be #946 for me. 945 comes close, but the impact of the reveal in 946 was a lot more immediate and surprising.

Also, looking ahead to the next round, I think I have a pretty good idea of what I'm voting for.

[kivzirrum]

This is impossible! You've got the hilarious punchline in 942, the lovely quiet moment in 944, the suspense and cliffhangers of 945 and 946, and the gorgeous art upgrade in 947.

Alas, I'm going to have to roll a die to decide this one. Or just go with 945. Cause hey, it's the first time we see the Snarl, not counting flashbacks. That's a pretty big deal.

[Sylian]

944 gets my vote. I like well-written discussions on ethics.

[Hydre]

It's close for me between 945 and 950, but I'll go with 950 because
a) V
b) Blackwing
c) V and Blackwing

[Elenna]

This is impossible! You've got the hilarious punchline in 942, the lovely quiet moment in 944, the suspense and cliffhangers of 945 and 946, and the gorgeous art upgrade in 947.

Also the moment of awesomeness from one of my favorite characters in 950. But I'm mostly debating between 944 for ethics discussions and 946 for the rallying speech followed by the big reveal.
When I put it that way, it really sounds like I should vote 946. But oh well, I really do like 944 better.

[Emperordaniel]

It's a tough choice between #945 and #946, but ultimately the latter wins it out for me.

[declinator]

946 - for quashing any hopes that Count Durkula was just Durkon with a few modifications to his character sheet.

[littlebum2002]

944 was a great insight as to how far V has truly developed.

On a side note, looks like we're going to be able to do best of the thousand tournament!!

[Laurana]

946 was hugely impactful with its big reveal- how do I hate the HPOH! - but my favorite is 941 for the great Haley\Ian moment, with Elan for good measure.

[Mike Havran]

I will go for #945 and actual confirmation that the rifts are hiding something scary. #946 would be a close second.

[D.One]

This is a hard one. I really loved 950, with V's fire extinction and interaction with Blackwing. 946 confirms what many talks in the forum already said, that VampDurkon was up to no good. 944 goes deep down in V's development (and I just love V and Roy talking), but I'll go with #945 - Jumbled Up. Its sequence is fantastic, it plays with our doubts about what is really happening, and then puts us in doubt again. Perfect.

[Bird]

945--we get the tail-end of V & Roy's excellent discussion, and then the visually stunning rift tendril reveal. Not to mention, I quite enjoyed the dialogue between Miron & Laurin. There's something refreshing about spending all this time on an obligatory extended climax action scene, then watching two characters for whom that scene was just a minor encounter that isn't even worth discussing a few hours later. Also, I like seeing (probably) evil characters behave like normal people. Also, the way the Giant worked in the bit about the marids (thus explaining why water can't get pumped in from the plane of water to the desert) was real slick.

[AGD]

#944 gets my Vote.

[nogall]

Do you, in fact, have any vote for #942 at all? Certainly!

[Killer Angel]

a close match between 945 and 946.
I'd say 946, by a very small margin.

[137beth]

Tough one! 945 and 946 are both amazing, but I think 944 is under-appreciated for Roy's discussion.

[Euclidodese]

945 Snarl is a Tentacruel confrummed.

[ChristianSt]

The end of book 5 has some darn nice strips/reveals going. I also really like the art at the start of the new book.

That being said I cast my vote on one of the most hilarious callbacks this comic has to offer: 942 - But He Probably Has a Halberd Now

[Emanick]

I can't think of a single set of 10 strips in this comic's entire 999-strip run (s/o to Herman Cain, by the way ) that is comparably excellent for such varied reasons. Often I have trouble deciding between different strips because they're all so equally good, or because some individual strips are so clearly excellent only because the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.

I can't remember the last time I had to make what seems to me to be such an artistically subjective call. 942 is clearly the funniest, 944 is fascinating philosophically, and 945 and 946 are simply stunning reveals. Those are just a few of the factors to consider.

Still, 947: Keep in Mind debuts an entirely new art style, and starts with such a radically unpredictable and profoundly revealing scene that I think I'm going to vote for it. There are plenty of good arguments for it not being the best strip, but I think this is a much more subjective judgment than usual - it's much harder to rank totally different kinds of drama than it is to rank similar examples of drama within the same general type (i.e. ranking "big reveals" or action sequences). I don't think I'm ever going to get over the silly sausage-fingers, which I am now firmly convinced were a mistake, but hey, that's really not a big deal.

I also want to go on record as saying that I think voting for "shock" strips is probably a little overrated (in my totally subjective judgment, obviously). Those strips are only excellent because earlier strips set up the payoff for them, and I think those earlier strips deserve a large share of the appreciation that tends to go mainly to the "shock" strips. That doesn't mean that the shocks aren't excellent; I just think that it's a bit unfair to give them so much love relative to the more subtle, stand-alone clever strips.

On a side note, looks like we're going to be able to do best of the thousand tournament!!

You have no idea how thrilled I am about this. Heck, it's even cheering me up about my thesis's moribund progress. (Three guesses as to why this post is so unnecessarily long.)

[thatSeniorGuy]

Easy vote for 946.

[LadyEowyn]

945. Close between it and 946, but 945 is more important in the long run, and the full-page illustration of the Snarl is one of the best pieces of work that Rich has done in this comic.

[Porthos]

An extremely close vote between three heavyweight strips. So close in fact, that I can't vote for one of the three, lest I create a tie between two strips by doing so.

...

So to preserve the situation as it is, I'm going to go ahead and weasel out and vote for 942. Sure, 944, 945, and 946 might be "better" when we are talking about impact on strip and other such considerations. But, to this day, I can not help but laugh at the completely and utterly unexpected resolution to that comic. Thus it earns my vote.

And with that....

VOTING IS NOW CLOSED!

945 Jumbled Up is the winner this week. It now moves on to the Best of the Hundred tournament.

Full Results are as follows

........THE STICK AWARDS II: 0941 - 0950

	Comic Number	Votes Received	Vote Percentage
	941	1	4.17
	942	3	12.50
	943	0	0.00
	944	5	20.83
	945	7	29.17
	946	6	25.00
	947	1	4.17
	948	0	0.00
	949	0	0.00
	950	1	4.17

Please join us for the next round of voting for Strips #951 - #960 which can be found here.

[Gift Jeraff]

Why are you so against creating a tie?

[Bird]

Looks like 945--not 946--won this, right? & looks like 5 votes for 946.

Thanks as always for running these!

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Why are you so against creating a tie?

Probably because there needs to be one winner for the best of rounds to run well, and solving a tie would take a lot more time.

Looks like 945--not 946--won this, right? & looks like 5 votes for 946.

Thanks as always for running these!

Yeah, I count 7-5 as well.

[Porthos]

Looks like 945--not 946--won this, right? & looks like 5 votes for 946.

Ah what a massive brain fart! Was running REALLY behind and didn't check things out properly.

My bad everyone. Will rectify reall soon now.

Why are you so against creating a tie?

Because I don't feel like having runoffs. Ruins my schedule amongst other things. Also, in this case, and in my current mood, I did feel like voting for 942 and didn't want to figure out which which of 944/5/6 I felt was marginally better than the other.

Point taken, however. I will say that this is something that will be addressed a bit in Stick Awards III, should it ever come to pass.