If you want to know when I gave up on Narbonic, it was at the 6th page of MadLibs…
Narbonic is a webcomic that has won a number of awards, and that many folks who know webcomics speak highly of. In particular Websnark's Eric Burns counts it as one of the best comics on the web.
I can see that there are things to like about it. The writing is interesting, if a bit repetitive. The art is serviceable, and improves as the archives move forward.
Several things, though, put me off it quite strongly. First and foremost, I only tried to catch it up this week, after I found out it is now free. Previously, it was subscription to view the archives; I hold "professional" subscription comics to an extremely high standard, and was skeptical Narbonic could meet it. In particular, a professional web cartoonist should either have the decency to use a font for dialog or else carefully and neatly hand-letter. Narbonic's lettering is awful enough to detract from the readability of the strip for me, even after reading several years' worth of archive.
More importantly, though, the bewildering amount and variety of filler material, most of it contributed, completely broke the continuity of the story for me. Even if it was possible to filter it out in the archives, I suppose I'd still have to put up with it once I caught up and added Narbonic to my troll. I don't think I can go there.
I'm sure I'm missing the virtues of this highly-praised strip. I have to be true to myself, though. Nobody makes me read MadLibs. (B)