I have a lot to say about this comic
This comic, and many others like it, can be found here.
let's get the requisite "goddamn it we're just doing sweet bro and hella jeff again" comments out of the way. Yes and no.
Yes, the comic is an absurdist send-up of the format of webcomics, however the joke is subtly different. Part of the joke with SBAJ was that Dave was making the comics himself in MS Paint utilizing techniques to A) make the comic look as terrible as possible, and B) produce strips in as little effort as possible (often drawing over old panels rather than recreate expressions from scratch).
At a time when the web comics scene was being flooded with low effort submissions by people who thought they would be the next Penny Arcade, that sought to be the new breakout hit in the microniche of "web comic about two ironically detached guys who play video games," SBAJ stands as the ad absurdum of their combined efforts. It sends up the medium of "gaming web comic" by showing just how low the bar can go.
Works like this, however, from Cad-Comic, are not aiming at the goldpanners of the webcomic scene, the producers of low-effort trash. Instead we are taking aim at the large names, the ones who shaped the space, the ones who set the rules about ironic detached gamers being the de jure main characters of every story. We're taking aim at giants. In particular we are taking aim at the works of Tim Buckley, who is remembered popularly in the webcomic scene for being "the worst of the best."
For a time, Ctrl-Alt-Del (abbreviated CAD) was a "successful" webcomic. It had a (self-funded) animated adaptation, it had a large following of people sharing the panels, and people who authentically enjoyed the humor and writing and characters. While today it's remembered for being memed into oblivion as the archetypal "bad webcomic" one must pause and remember how the internet has remixed Garfield. If one assumes from the mere fact that people make joke edits of Garfield strips that they aren't that good and that people don't like them, one would be misled and unable to explain the fact that Garfield is one of the most internationally recognizable characters on the planet, and has been for decades before the present internet culture. Garfield is a successful comic. Within the niche of webcomics (and the subniche of gaming webcomics especially), so was Buckley's CAD.
Cad-comics then is a distinct phenomenon from SBAJ. SBAJ was about making fun of low effort clout chasers wanting to be the next Tim Buckley. Cad-Comics is about taking aim at the thing that those low effort attempts were emulating. SBAJ was about the accidents: how the art was bad, the humor stale, the characters being flat and empty vessels. This edit by Cad-Comics is about dismantling the very forms of art. It is about shattering the paradigm of the "gamer webcomic." It is asking a very specific question. "Why the hell were we trying to be like this in the first place?"
With that out of the way let's consider some of the specifics of this piece.
Most conspicuous here is the use of white space within speech bubbles. The speech bubbles themselves are relatively unchanged from the original comic, but the words have been deleted. This mirrors parallel trends, such as removing the middle two panels of a given CAD strip to improve the comedy. There are countless examples, please enjoy this one from twopanelcad on tumblr 
The effect is obvious, it draws attention to what is missing from the strip: Buckley's writing, commonly pointed to as the weakest element of the series. Buckley's long dialogue has been replaced with a curt 33 words that must be blown up to large font sizes and be lengthened with unnecessary letters and excessive punctuation to even come close to filling up the speech bubbles, and yet large vacuums of space still remain. Yet the first line of dialogue, "Yo, What's up!!!" is nonetheless shoved into a speech bubble way too small to fit the greeting, and in the third panel we see the word "found" approaching the edge of the bubble, being scratched out and continued on the next line. These errors and imperfections heighten the clear intent of the artist to show up Buckley's verbose style. If Buckley's work is overwritten, this comic is underwritten to excellent effect.
And yet, while having fewer words, this comic still finds it has a lot to say. It manages this incredible efficiency of word to meaning through excellent use of the technique of defamiliarization. The otherwise forgettable act of purchasing a soda becomes, for these characters, a drama all unto its own. The desire for 'soda' is immediately conflicted with the demand for payment, 'money in.' To obtain what we desire is to always sacrifice, to suffer the loss of another desire in its place. Yet this is not merely a meditation on the natural state of humanity, but raises more challenging questions.
It is one thing to say of money 'I like it,' but in a capitalist system the surrender of money is the surrender of agency, the diminishment of your self and the totality of your possibilities for the sake of an anonymous other who profits by your diminishment. And what is the alternative? Deprivation. Without money in one will never have the nourishing soda. At first, our protagonist is merely reacting emotionally to the event, a plaintive 'no' and a declaration that he liked that money that has been taken from him. But in reflecting on the self, he comes to a deeper awareness of his situation. He recognizes the barbarism of a system which deprives others of sustenance unless they sacrifice some of their very life and existence for another. Now the eyes of the protagonist are opened, and rather than helplessly grieve the 'bye money,' he is outraged that such a thing can be allowed to occur. Despite the social narrative of humanity as the highest order of life, that which we use as evidence of our superiority to nature is instead the proof that we are baser than the animal, crueler than nature and more heartless than savage beasts. "Truly the cruelty of man can be found in its civility." This statement the protagonist delivers with such defeated, forlorn expression one cannot help but share in his grief.
But to succumb to hopelessness is not the answer. Instead, though it requires sacrifice, desire can be fulfilled, and life and its needs are affirmed. Though deprived until the sacrifice of money, the desired nourishment is finally delivered. Though the world demands cruel sacrifice for our efforts, the fulfillment of desire, the ability to attain the Good, is within the human grasp. The cruelty of humanity need not be victorious, instead we can be victorious over cruelty. Despite the sacrifices that Capital demands of us, the working class is capable of victories and nourishment and fulfillment and small joys that they cannot take away from us. In recognition of this truth our protagonist offers a final, affirmative, jubilant declaration that, yes, desiring, seeking, and striving are fundamentally good parts of us, and that a better world is possible:
Oh Shit!!! Mountain Dew
Is this a lot of intellectualizing about a shit comic edit? Yes. Yes it is. I can't help it. This comic elevates itself, and the only thing I can do every time I see it is become enamored, again, with its brilliance. Am I perhaps exaggerating the comic's artfulness? Am I attributing purpose and meaning where there is none?
Who Give A Shit
First of all the artist titled this edit "ART". Clearly the nature of this piece as art was on their mind.
Second I would rather risk exaggerating the artfulness of a shitty internet meme than to become so absorbed in narrow signifiers of value that the only "meaningful" art is that which has been produced by the ruling class for consumption by the ruling class for the approval of the ruling class. I would rather risk taking a joke edit of a bad webcomic way too seriously than sincerely believe that the only piece of art allowed to be "meaningful" is that which satisfies the values of the ruling class. Dismissing art because it is insufficiently intellectual, because it is absurd, because it remixes existing panels, because it lacks technical polish, because it's "low effort" is a mistake. The only thing that such a perspective can produce is trash.
That's right, that contrast with SBAJ at the beginning was just the set up, motherfuckers. Time for the Payoff.
SBAJ was about sending up bad internet webcomics trying to be CAD, but also about sending up the criticisms of those comics. It was showing that if you attempt to mock and belittle the "low effort trash", then the only art you can produce from such a mindset is, itself, low effort trash. Cad-Comics mocks Buckley's writing and uses his panels for delivering more effectively on absurdist humor than he could. But it does so by making the comics, according to the values of the ruling class, "worse." Making the dialogue more confusing and abstract, less naturalistic. Including explicit mistakes and errors. And yet this version contains a surprising and emotionally resonant message that Buckley struggled to express. It is the glorification and exaltation of "low effort trash" by fundamentally re imagining an artistic paradigm that exists beyond the desire for the respect of those with money. It is a question: Why Are We Trying To Be Like This In The First Place? Why are we seeking the values of the ruling class to affirm the worth of what we create when we can create meaningful art by chopping up old CAD-Strips to make us laugh? Why sacrifice our agency to the ruling class when all we desire is that sweet sweet mountain dew?
This comic kicks ass.
