Comments on: Can anyone here tell a story?

by: Friday conundrum « Precocious Curmudgeon

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:23:41 +0000

[…] Friday conundrum Filed under: DC, Houghton Mifflin, Linkblogging — davidpwelsh @ 1:23 pm Here’s a thinker. This piece by Tom Spurgeon on DC’s refusal to allow a Batman story by Paul Pope to be included in the next Best American Comics anthology from Hougton Mifflin has two competing effects. On the one hand, it makes me want to read Pope’s Batman 100. On the other hand, it makes me not want to give any money to DC because… well, because that’s really dumb. I mean, people were complaining about how narrow the focus of last year’s Best American Comics anthology was, and here’s a gift-wrapped opportunity to partially reverse that while showing that DC can produce interesting, innovative stuff, even with one of its cornerstone trademarked properties, and they not only decline, they take forever to do so. Oh, work-for-hire… you’re not having a good week, are you? […]

by: Comics Should Be Good! » “Autibiographical” Comics.

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:22:36 +0000

[...] More’n anything, I’m a fan of good comics. And a lot of ‘em are memoir or memoir’s kissin’ cousins. (I could throw in The Dreamer, It’s A Good Life if You Don’t Weaken, and Alias the Cat here…) So I felt a little put off by the furor that built up round’ Heidi Macdonald’s Essay which was sort of a review of the Best American Comics 2007, sort of telling us that Jeff Smith and Jason rock, (Yes. Yes they do.) but mostly about the overabundance of memoir (dammit!) comics, in the independent sector. It was called “Can Anyone Here Tell a Story.” [...]

by: Comica vérité and the narrowing respect for “graphic novels” » Undress Me Robot

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 06:15:55 +0000

[…] A few weeks ago, Heidi MacDonald (of the PublishersWeekly comic blog The Beat) posted a half review/half commentary dealing with The Best American Comics 2007. One hundred comments and a few days later, she responded to the controversy her post had spawned. Hardly wanting to admit any fault, she quickly reveals that any vagueness was on purpose; a product of her writing style and a means to “inspire debate” (and debate they did). Just like my short digression was on purpose; a means of allowing me to say her dodging any blame was a motherfucking cop-out. But I digress. […]

by: Five sucky stories about comics « Let’s you and him fight

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:01:43 +0000

[...] Various people have whined in one way or another about current trends in high-brow/middle-brow/respectable/quality/”art”/cancer comics. Their complaints don’t necessarily have much in common, so that it’s probably misleading even to say that they have a unified target. Perhaps the best description of their target is that they’re the sort of comics that can call themselves, with a straight face, “graphic novels”; or, the sort of comics that, if they were real books, would be filed under “literature” at your local Barnes and Noble. Some of these complaints remind me of the complaints that old-timers make when their neighbourhoods are gentrified by what used to be called yuppies: “These damn snooty upstarts with their ‘cafe lattes’”. Still, I do share some of their concerns (as I ought to, considering where that first link leads). [...]

by: Elias Hiebert

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:27:59 +0000

I’ve never liked Jeff Smith.

by: Charles

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 16:45:48 +0000

Is it the lack of desire to publish more Trondheim or Tardi over here due to the socalled indy audience not wanting to read them, or because there’s not enough of the socalled mainstream audience willing to read them? The obvious answer to that question demonstrates a crucial problem with the above essay.

by: gene phillips

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:14:30 +0000

So is there a “middle ground” that’s getting squeezed out by two extremes of narrative, or not?

BONE might represent one success story of this hypothetical “middle.” However, BONE’s song has been sung.

Several manga-series can fairly be deemed a success. But how much of that validation spills over to positively affect the works of “first-run” creators in the American marketplace?

by: Anthony

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 04:09:57 +0000

You mean comics like,
‘Good bye chunky rice’
‘Superfuckers’
‘worn tuff elbow’
‘Glen Ganges’
‘Cave in’
‘ice haven’
To name a few…

by: Foot2Mouth - A Mouth Kicking Comics and Gaming News Source » Blog Archive » The Comics Blogsphere Finally Admits that Most Indie Comics are Awful

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:46:08 +0000

[…] There is a current crisis on the Comics Blogshpere that is opening up a bit of discussion. Essentially well-known comic blogsphere pundit Heidi Macdonald has killed a few sacred cows over at The Beat. She pointed that indie comics are often not entertaining, and that almost all indie comics are essentially all mope filled depressing “first person essay comics” that purposefully do not tell stories of fiction because they find the very idea of fiction to be ‘substandard low-art’ or ‘beneath them.’ […]

by: Come on, you want to throw pie at these guys too « Picture Poetry

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:24:10 +0000

[…] Heidi’s much-maligned piece about Chris Ware’s Best American Comics 2007 book for Houghton-Mifflin is the talk of the blogosphere. She’s put up another post processing the attacks and defending herself a bit. […]

by: The Russellian Incorporated Innovations Corporation

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:47:59 +0000

[…] Well, it’s probably no surprise to anyone who spends all day looking over my shoulder, but I agree with Heidi MacDonald’s take on comics these days. Hers is my most consistently read blog, so I must kind of catch her drift in an important way. She semi-reviewed the newest BEST AMERICAN COMICS, edited by Chris Ware, recently and got all kinds of flak for her take on it. To summarize, she basically says: “Angsty, autobio comics can be pretty good, but there’s way too much of them and they are getting a little tired — why not try doing some cool-yet-meaningful stories?” Here’s a quote I liked. Call me a comics hick, but I think it’s one of the greatest strengths of the comics medium is its ability to create lasting iconic characters, from The Yellow Kid to Popeye to Snoopy to the Silver Surfer to Maggie and Hopey. But the current generation doesn’t seem to be able to create any character that isn’t themself. […]

by: John Carter

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:30:28 +0000

“I have read your blog for years now, and I am now compelled to respond for the first time. I am a 34 year old attorney, who has fought every angst-ridden fight an evolving nerd can fight. I also have read more than enough about those same battles.

I am tired of bleak, depressing stories about the travails of geeks — no matter which nuance of geek it is you’re pursuing. Emo or gamer or neo-goth, I don’t care.

Newsflash to Indie creators — you don’t have to be dreary, you don’t have to be autobiographical, you don’t have to have to limit the range of your stories to your smug, pseudo-intellectual worlds, where you are so smart, and the world is so dumb.

You’re better than that. If not, then you have no business in the industry.

How about this? Tell me something I don’t know. Tell a story. Smile.

And don’t make me go to the mainstream rack for the only stories that are (at least sometimes) uplifting and entertaining.

Get over yourselves. Appreciate Bone.”

All of this indicates a very surface reading of “indy comics” - reducing them to angsty-autobio, when the collection goes far beyond that. If these comics were the evidence for an argument you are making, I am not sure that your side would win.

by: John Carter

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:19:03 +0000

“But is it really BETTER than Sergio Aragones? Isn’t it maybe AS good?”

People get so worked up over the word “Best” -

When some Authority - the publisher and the editor - do not validate the readers’ preferences they take offense. Just pretend the book is titled Chris Ware’s Best American Comics 2007, and there you go.

by: Ken

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:01:31 +0000

“What I meant was that an anthology — in its strictest sense — is meant to be a representative collection, especially when it is attached to a specific year.”

Nowhere does it say that it represents all of the work published in that year. Does best American Short Stories 2007 have to have a western, a romance, a slice of life? The main editor picks an issue editor because of that person’s knowledege; this issue represents Ware’s tastes - there is no other mandate.

by: Brad

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:55:05 +0000

This response is from way up in the pile.

What I meant was that an anthology — in its strictest sense — is meant to be a representative collection, especially when it is attached to a specific year. Yes, the editor does and should have final choice, but (as I say) not at the risk of completely misrepresenting the year in question. When I heard a few years ago that they were going to do a
Best American Comics” it excited me because here was a text I could use in school (I’m a teacher), much as a I use “Best American Poetry” or “Best American Short Stories.” But these anthologies claim and define comics ONLY as independent and self-referential. This is ok, and is great if that’s the class you wanted it for — but that’s not “Best American Comics.” And it makes them all — for all their independence — strikingly the same. It’s perhaps a small point yes, but an important one, I think.

Brad

by: Don

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 05:09:06 +0000

I have read your blog for years now, and I am now compelled to respond for the first time. I am a 34 year old attorney, who has fought every angst-ridden fight an evolving nerd can fight. I also have read more than enough about those same battles.

I am tired of bleak, depressing stories about the travails of geeks — no matter which nuance of geek it is you’re pursuing. Emo or gamer or neo-goth, I don’t care.

You’re better than that. If not, then you have no business in the industry.

How about this? Tell me something I don’t know. Tell a story. Smile.

And don’t make me go to the mainstream rack for the only stories that are (at least sometimes) uplifting and entertaining.

Get over yourselves. Appreciate Bone.

Bravo Heidi.

by: Michael

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 02:03:32 +0000

Hear, hear, Ace.

by: Ken

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:46:16 +0000

“Can anyone here tell a story.”

Some cartoonists DECIDE to create comics that are not traditional narratives. If a cartoonist is doing something less narrative than you would like, it makes no sense to criticize her ability to tell a story, when she has made it clear by her work that she is doing something different.

by: Devlin Thompson

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:57:54 +0000

First: sure, Jeff Smith is a swell cartoonist. But was his Captain Marvel comic among the BEST COMICS of the previous year (I’m inclined to say “no”, since I realize that I forgot to read the last issue)? And, even if so, has no-one taken into account the fact that neither DC or Marvel particularly like to license their product to other publishers? That factor takes a lot of the proposed candidates off the board. As does the fact that a lot of the names being thrown around didn’t actually publish during the year in question. It seems like a lot of folks aren’t really thinking about the publishing realities involved in the project in question.

by: (Cult)u're Magazine

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:01:05 +0000

Why is everyone always talking about how people refuse to “name names” in these arguments? Isn’t it obvious that when people are dissing these depressing self-obsessed autobiographical art comics with “no story” what they mean is Joe Matt comics?