The Stick Awards II: Second Edition (Best of the Thousand) [Semi #2]

[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.

The time has come to finally reach the The Best of the Thousand Tournament! Now we decide which of the strips really are the best of best of the best.

For full details about the Stick Awards, and any questions about them, 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 five listed is your favorite. Bolding the number of the comic (Like this) helps it stand out.

Voting, which only lasts five days during the Best of the Thousand Tournament will close on October 27th, 4pm EDT. Any votes made after that will NOT count toward the totals.

The winner of this semi-final will go on to the finals which will be held after the second semi-final is done. The two strips that get the most votes during the semis that DIDN'T win, will also reach the finals. So voting is extra special important this time around, as it will determine who the 'Wild Card' entrants are.

In the previous semi-final, 464 - Not for Everyone finally realized that it was about to reach the end of its path. But before it passed on to whatever fate it deserved, it received a heartfelt and at times frank discussion from the judges about its path in life. It took such talk with such uncharacteristic acceptance that the judges decided to allow it one last moment and sent it on to the finals of the Best of the Thousand tournament.

Meanwhile, 367 - Innocent Man is currently holding down Wild Card spot #1 with 15 votes while 200 - The Confrontation has a very tenuous grasp on Wild Card spot #2 with 4 votes. Thus if another strip is to enter the finals without winning this semi, it has to get at least 4 votes.

Our twilight fast approaches for these Awards. But two more battles must be fought before the sun sets for the final time. So muster up one and all as we set aim to decide who is worthy of the following to win....

................THE STICK AWARDS II:
BEST OF THE THOUSAND TOURNAMENT
...............(Semi-Final #2)

550 - +1 BFF
639 - If They Pull a Knife...
763 - Plotting Something
830 - Tidying Up
906 - Nothing Lasts Forever

[littlebum2002]

639 Familicide!

[Zordrath]

Man, this really shows how far the comic has come. Every single strip here is utterly excellent and this batch is so much superior to the first 500. 550 is the most emotional to me, but I'll go with #763 because Tarquin was just such an amazing character through and through and this is where he fully established his personality. But really, any of these would deserve the win.

[Rakoa]

Man, this really shows how far the comic has come. Every single strip here is utterly excellent and this batch is so much superior to the first 500. 550 is the most emotional to me, but I'll go with #763 because Tarquin was just such an amazing character through and through and this is where he fully established his personality. But really, any of these would deserve the win.

This guy has style. Put me down for 763, too.

[Mordae]

Holy cow. Every one of these strips is burned into my brain. None of them deserve to lose!

Normally I would lean toward strips with main characters, and indeed I voted that way in the first semi-final, which would put my decision between familicide and the Tarquin/Elan repartee. But impact on the story's end game is really more telling to me in this batch of five, which would leave me between O-Chul/MitD and Redcloak (with the possible addition of familicide, since the IFCC still has two more Defeat V buttons to press...).

C'est la vie.

Ultimately, if there's going to be a happy ending for himself as Elan is promised, the good guys are going to win and I suspect the MitD is going to play a part. Therefore, I vote for 550 - +1 BFF.

[Yendor]

Two villains, who thought they were untouchable, are suddenly stripped of their defenses and killed by other villains. Tough choice. I'm giving it to Nale over Redcloak, for the huge gap between his previously shown competence and what he pulls off here. 906.

[Mike Havran]

#763 is a go. But I like any of these more than I like any of those in the first round.

[Gift Jeraff]

#830 and #906 are very similar strips to me, but I'll go with #906 because I felt the least emotional connection (positive or negative) to Tsukiko than Redcloak/Nale/Malack. A victim of less screen time, I guess. Plus Malack killed Durkon!

[irondude]

None of them are my favs... seems people like to see cool characters die. My vote is 550 +1BFF

[ChristianSt]

Some really heavy hitters there.

I really like the interaction between O-Chul and MitD but in my book this strip is clearly only third place.
I wouldn't mind 830 either. It really showcases Redcloaks agenda/what he is capable of doing. Also plus points for the most horrific in-comic death I can think of right now.
But in the end it I have to vote for 639 - If They Pull a Knife.... Without this single word the story would be fundamental different. Without casting Familicide the whole deal with the devil thing might have still worked out ok-ish, but with this single spell V has but him/herself into a pit, crawling out will be extremely hard (if not impossible).

[serenetempest]

Man, these are getting tougher and tougher.

Famlicide was a big turning point, but imho this entry misses the climax by one strip; we see the action in #639, but it isn't until #640 that we learn the full significance of what just happened. So that one's out.

#673 is good, but not quite up to the competition here. Kind of like a certain villain who just doesn't get that he's the B plot.

#550 is one of the most heart-warming strips in the comic, and I seriously considered it, but didn't go with it in the end.

#830 and #906 are remarkably similar strips - the deaths of significant secondary characters that come along with major reveals about the motivations of their killers. However, in #906, the reveals and character development don't have big implications for the rest of the story beyond the next dozen strips or so. The reveals in #830 were potential game-changers, and are still highly relevant more than 250 strips later. And between the two, I think #830 was also slightly better executed. So it gets my vote.

[Bird]

Changing my mind. Almost went with 906 because I'm tired of voting for Familicide & Darth Vaarsuivus in various tournaments, but, eh. 639 is still the high/low point in all of OotS for me.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Hmmm, I honestly wasn't expecting some of this strips. I had honestly forgotten that 639 had one its best of 100. I will vote for #830!

[Emanick]

I've never felt that Familicide was the magnificent strip it's often been billed to be. It's all shock-and-awe. It's a big idea that is depicted well, but it's not clever or breathtaking or touching the way so many of Rich's other strips have been.

I think it would be a crying shame if we decided that Rich's greatest artistic achievement of all time was a glorified bloodbath.

My vote goes to 763: Plotting Something. More than any other strip The Giant has written, it constitutes a unique contribution to literature, IMO. I've seen bits of Tarquin's speech cited around the Internet, even in places that have little to no cultural connection with this community.

"The end of what, Son? The story? There is no end, just the point where storytellers stops talking."

That strip is real Literature, with a capital L. Literature in the classic sense, where only the greatest bits of the written word get to count. It'll be worth reading a century from now. Probably a millennium from now, too, unless by that point we're all just hyperintelligent brains-in-a-jar who tell algorithm jokes to pass the ages.

[Tentreto]

My choice for this is 550 as it is possibly just as great a turning point as any other in the comic, and one that Ochul has no obligation to do. I do prefer their follow up scene, but this is something that reminds us that there is still good among all the events in the comic.

[Dr.Zero]

All of them are good, and I'm torn between
763 - Plotting Something
906 - Nothing last forever

906 is lovely because it shows how Nale is not simply a buffoon, but his "needlessly complicated" plans can be pretty lethal, if you are not protected by a good amount of plot armour.

Anyway I'll go with 763 - Plotting Something. To put this simply, this strip is the defining moment for Tarquin, adding to him a really cool and mastermind alike aura (even if he'll lose it during the arc's final confrontantion) to his already charming and funny role. Like with Nale in 830 and his plans, we can see here how someone who has the same silly believes of Elan can be more than just a buffoon and become really scary and dangerous.

Edit: edited the strips numbers. Sorry, for the confusion, it is late night here. :)

[thatSeniorGuy]

Interesting that most of the strips are evil/villain related (but of course O'Chul easily balances that out, and then some!).
I'm going for 639.

[Arvedui]

550. In all the rest, evil is winning (or has some sort of upper hand). Whether it's Tarquin being diabolic, a black dragon genocide, Nale killing Malack, or Redcloak watching expressionless as Tsukiko is eaten alive by the things she cares for most in the world. All great comics, and all such horrible things. But 550 is a reminder that friendship is one of those forces that can overcome evil's transgressions, as we saw when O-Chul and V were whisked away to safety. 550, I feel, is what the comic is *about*, as compared to an event that happens.

[The gF]

I would love to vote for 936 - End of the Line. It marks the end of Elan's character development arc (for the time being-- he's had a few, and has definitely advanced the most as a character throughout OotS), and does a fantastic job of demonstrating it through the callback to his first encounter with Nale. The part that really hits me about it, though, is the end-- Tarquin screaming after the escaping Mechane, dissatisfied with the resolution. He's an older Elan; Tarquin loves tropes, but he's not very original-- 90% of his ideas for how it should go down with Elan are basically Star Wars. Elan has learned, on the other hand; he still loves his tropes, but he represents the newer generation of literature, film, comics... he subverts tropes as often as he obeys them. It's poignant, and powerful. But I suppose, as the end of a book, it really should be.

But since I can't vote for 936, I'll put my vote behind 830, for similar reasons. It was clear for some time that Redcloak has his own pro-goblin agenda-- he's spent so much time keeping Xykon in one place, delaying the search for the gates, in order to establish the goblins with their own city and sovereign lands. But this is where it really came together for us that Xykon was really Redcloak's tool, and not the other way around. Not to mention the effortless demonstration of his undead-as-tools philosophy. I dunno, this one just stands out to me. Props to 550, though, for being the counter-perspective to the others in this semifinal.

[Belksworth]

763It's awesome.

[137beth]

639: Other-strips-cide!
639 eliminates all other strips, as well as all other strips related to those strips, except itself!

I'm still disappointed that 657 didn't make it this far, but 639 is still a great strip.

[Laurana]

I disagree that the first half of the comic had far inferior strips: it's just that the better ones didn't make the best of thousand for some reason. IMO, naturally. There were lots of truly awesome strips in the first 500. In fact, I believe that most of my faves come from that part.

As for this batch, none makes my absolute favorites, but they are far less disappointing (as a selection) than semi I. All of them are truly excellent strips. Bit doomy and gloomy, as a general mood, though.

If I had to put them in order (which is a bit silly, but I like to do this kind of things) I'd say Familicide on the bottom, then Tsukiko's death, then Malack's death, then Tarquin's explanation at the top. All of these are well deserving strips.

My selection is #550 +1 BFF (I had to look it up, it stands for Best Friends Forever, doesn't it? Which makes it even better), probably because I'm a positive kind of bloke. Heart-warming, indeed.

I'd have liked to have strips about main characters (OK, one was about V, but it was his nadir) to select, but among these, that is my favorite, and I love both the MiTD and O-Chul rather a lot.

ETA: I agree with Emanick that 763 is a great literary achievement for the Giant.

[Domino Quartz]

#830 for me - it was just so satisfying to see Tsukiko get what was coming to her, and to see Redcloak be such a Magnificent Bastard.

[ti'esar]

For me, I think it's down to 550 by process of elimination. I'm still not quite sure why 906 beat out 936 in the Best of the Nine Hundreds - Malack getting his just deserts was cathartically satisfying, but I thought Tarquin's defeat was more so, and the latter felt like much more of a culminating moment then Nale managing to win big for once only a few comics before his own death. Likewise, while I like 763, I think people sort of buy too much into Tarquin's hot air in regards to the metafictional stuff; 758 was a better Evil Plan Moment from him. And while 830 is definitely the number two, I think it suffers a bit in that on the one hand it's sort of an introduction to the online comic of information that people who had read SOD already knew, but on the other hand it also can give you a bit of a misleading impression if you haven't read SOD. So +1 BFF it is.

Although the unfortunate thing is that I don't think either 464 or 550 is the best OOTS strip of all time.

[declinator]

I do like a clean slate, and one has to be appreciative of Redcloak's way of 830 - Tidying Up. That strip was a showstopper (literally for Miss T), it revealed SoD material to online-only readers, and it removed a minor piece of the encounter map.

I also have a suggestion for the Time after 2nd Edition of Stick awards: We could run a (single or double) elimination tournament on a number of nominated strips. Everybody nominates their favourite strip(s), and we'll just run them off against each other. That should keep us busy for some time and will not involve going through the strip linearly.

[Mordae]

I'm still not quite sure why 906 beat out 936 in the Best of the Nine Hundreds - Malack getting his just deserts was cathartically satisfying, but I thought Tarquin's defeat was more so, and the latter felt like much more of a culminating moment then Nale managing to win big for once only a few comics before his own death.

Tarquin is not the real villain, so we should not fete his moments in the sun.

[ChillerInstinct]

If picking one from the first semifinals was hard because there were three that deserved to win, then this is hard as diamonds because every single one of these is spectacular.

But alas, process of elimination time:

+1 BFF is touching and pretty funny, but I don't think it's "best OOTS strip EVAR" material.

Familicide was HUGE, but I feel like it lacks... something on its own. It's the chocolate to the following strip's marshmellow, good on its own, but great together.

Tidying Up... oh geez. I've got a thing for brutal deaths, and Tsukiko's was NASTY. The strip also cemented Redcloak's REAL plans... overall a masterclass in drama, which is why it breaks my heart that there's one that does it even better.

And alas, then there were two, and what a pair they are.

But as much as 906 knocked the wind out of me like no strip ever has... as beautifully horrific as Malack's death is... and chillingly effective as Nale's plans were, for the first time ever...

...there's no denying that, at the end of the day, 763 is quite possibly one of the greatest villain speeches ever written. A ripping deconstruction of the entire "hero vs. evil tyrant" trope, heck, it gets dangerously close to turning the concept of heroic fantasy entirely on its head. It is THE strip I would show anyone who I wanted to get into OotS, and it is THE strip that proves just how great of a writer Mr. Burlew really is.

Honestly, I'm of the mind that it'll be a travesty if this thing doesn't win it all.

[Will22]

763, which narrowly beats out 830 (both great villain moments) for me as not just great in-story but in meta terms as well. The others don't match up as much.

[Nazzo, the 102nd]

I did not have a chance do answer some comments in the Semi#1 thread, so I'm gonna do it here to avoid bumping said thread. I don't want to confuse people.

Nazzo!!!!!
You're certainly a welcomed guest in this thread!

Thank you, Angel. It's an honor to be here.

So glad to see you here at the end of all things of the Awards.

Couldn't have done any of this without you. I truly thank you for starting all of this and allowing me to continue on in your stead.

Hey, I just created it, you were the one that did all the work. Think of me as the writer of the book and you as the producer/director of the movie.

Also, I began it, so I HAD do be here in the end. All things come full circle.


Now, for my vote... I'll go for 639. Familicide is, literally, a world-scale event. And this counts a lot, it affects so many parts of the story that it can't be ignored.

[137beth]

Now, for my vote... I'll go for 639. Familicide is, literally, a world-scale event. And this counts a lot, it affects so many parts of the story that it can't be ignored.

And lo, the great Creator of the Voting, Nazzo, agrees with me. I feel so validated right now