This comic would make a lot more sense if you played a lot of Overwatch 2.
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This comic was originally planned a year ago (link to tweet teaser), but beyond just the first, second, and final panels, I couldn’t come up with a good idea for the real meat of the comic. After taking a year break from SFM and its community, I was reading the Overwatch community’s discussions around the hero Kiriko, who received the most premium cosmetics compared to other characters. This inspired me to focus on microtransaction strategies, Fear Of Missing Out, and the abundance of cosmetics.
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The final panel was made in the same session as the Homer Simpson donut and Kiriko and Hanzo’s lunch, seen in the tweet above. Those fanart are across my socials, but I will share them here in due time.
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Some of the Kiriko models, especially in the fourth panel, were improperly ported to SFM by a known “quantity over quality” porter. These models lack proper bones, making posing extremely difficult and more time consuming to accomplish. I originally thought about using those models to to pose as “presenters” showing off Witch Kiriko, but with these restrictions, I decided to come up with making them look creepy.
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Cut ideas include: Using a drawn gender neutral doodle instead of the TF2 Civilian (tweet teaser shows the Apex Legends dummy, which was meant to be a base for the doodle), but I dropped the idea as it wouldn’t look good in other situations; Kiriko taking a dollar out of the guy’s pants and sniffing it, but it was too sexually suggestive; the guy already owning a good Kiriko skin, but it ends up contradicting the first panel; all the Kirikos chanting “Buy me! Buy me! Buy me!”; and the guy’s and Kiriko’s reaction (it’ll be funny) to the buy screen in the seventh panel, but I realize their faces won’t fit after constantly trying to find a good angle for the audience to read what’s on the monitor.
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I released the final Kiriko panel as its own image across some social media sites last year cause it was funny.
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I made a lot of Kiriko fanart because I like her personality. The comic is also based on my cope for buying her various skins in OW2.
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Upon sharing it in the Overwatch subreddit, I expected for it to die in “New” since my comics generally don’t do well in Reddit. It surpassed my expectations with 5.3k upvotes and 896k views at the time of this writing. However, the reactions to the comic verged in two directions: Those who understood the meaning of the comic and those who didn’t. For the latter, I was accused of promoting a kink fetish I didn’t know existed; and having too much of a serious parasocial relationship to a fictional character. This hate also devolved into users commenting “cringe” (or any variation), making direct insults to my character, and a few death threats (someone told me to “please commit suicide”). Yeesh.
A cut panel, where he is shouting Kiriko’s voiceline from the Season 1 Battle Pass. While it was a “meme” in the Overwatch community, I realized it wouldn’t work to those who joined OW2 later and those who aren’t OW players.
