Let me had one.

There.

Wow. I enjoy a good argument at the Beat better than I enjoy most of the restaurants within a lunchtime drive from my office, but this has become pretty nebulous and vague. I think it makes sense to tell your readers that you didn’t enjoy the book you just read - I quite liked the “shutting my hand in the car door” line, myself - but maybe that would be the point to stop giving any more blog time, never mind money, to comics that you know you’re not going to enjoy, and read/review/hype books that you think that you will like before you open them instead.

Unless you’re Chris Sims and the book is Tarot, or that’s the sort of blog you want to write.

Maybe we should rewind a decade or two and ask “why don’t people go to good movies” and we’ll realize that it is stupid to complain “why don’t people read good comics.” The critical darlings, the festival favorites, the award winning movies never see the business of a blockbuster release with the rare exception (the All-Star Superman of movies), but just because your movie isn’t funded by a studio and is “original” doesn’t make it any good. Similarly just because some dude wears a cape and has superpowers doesn’t mean a comic is bad, but just because a comic doesn’t have those things doesn’t mean it is any good (the originality of most these comics is usually just stolen from another medium). Here’s another news flash! Most of the comics from yesteryear are crap. People want to jump on the Geoff Johns sucks backlash bandwagon (which sure seems to be gaining momentum) but most of your favorite creators from decades past were probably viewed as crap then too.

Personally, I don’t care what others think of what I read. That isn’t to say I don’t think some things are crap (Secret Invasion, Hulk, Ultimates), but I happen to like the books I read and I read comics largely for superheroes. If I want what many indie comics have to offer (which I often do) I’ll watch a movie or read a book. I read comics for superhero stuff mostly largely because I can’t get that sort of thing in books, movies, and other forms of media.

And for anyone trying to tie this into the sales of comic books over the decades: stop it! Crap is crap today and it was largely crap 20, 30, and 40 years ago, but then people didn’t have nearly as many options in what to do with their money.

No, you are not the only one.

“Good Lord, this thread got nasty fast”

Compare this one to any thread about Dave Sim and this one’s a walk in the spring rain by comparison.

“Right Down The Line”

You know I need your love, you got that hold over me
As long as I got your love, you know that I’ll never leave
When I wanted you to share my life, I had no doubt in my mind
And it’s been you, woman, right down the line.

I know how much I lean on you, only you can see
The changes that I’ve been through have left their mark on me
You’ve been as constant as the Northern Star, the brightest light that shines
It’s been you, woman, right down the line.

I just wanna say this is my way
Of telling you everything I could never say before
Yeah this is my way of telling you that everyday I’m loving you (so much more)

‘Cause you believed in me through my darkest night
Put something better inside of me, you brought me into the light
Threw away all those crazy dreams, I put them all behind
And it was you, woman, right down the line.

I just wanna say this is my way
Of telling you everything I could never say before
Yeah this is my way of telling you that everyday I’m loving you (so much more)

If I should doubt myself, if I’m losing ground
I won’t turn to someone else, they’d only let me down
When I wanted you to share my life, I had no doubt in my mind
And it’s been you, woman, right down the line.

*****************

Evan Dorkin wins a door prize for his contribution.

“I think you are kidding yourself - would you really argue that if we took the literature genre of “chick lit”, that 99% of that isn’t pure crap? Most commercially driven enterprises are a study in compromise and that shows in the results. I don’t think Superhero comics are any better or any worse than anything else with a $ as the driving goal.”

Change your example to Harlequin romances and Heidi will have to, I don’t know, wash your car for a year.

Sometimes audiences like works that fit into well-defined limits; limits that are as ritually defined as a game of Monopoly. People like basic genre fiction the same way they like games; the challenge is just to see if the creator can do something interesting within the structure of the game.

Sometimes audiences like works that break, or seem to break, the rules. It can be argued that this “rule-breaking games” have their own rules, too; they’re just created by particular authors rather than by groups of authors.

Nobody buys a book because they *think* it’s bad. Even people looking for egregiously-bad comics want something that satisfy their sense of irony about the subject matter.

“The idea that I’m a non-super hero fan is one that’s totally off base, and if that’s what people have gotten out of that interview, then oh well, whatever. I didn’t say that, and I haven’t said that. I’m a fan of great comics. If it’s not great comics–then I hope it burns in hell with all of its friends. I don’t give a shit if it’s got Superman in it or if it’s about a lonely obstetrician’s attempt to get over the grief of losing his son. Bad is bad, middling is bad, average is bad, merely okay is bad. There’s great, and then there’s everything else.”

I find this critical statement to be really bad. Ergo, it’s “everything else.”

Yes, but back then comics were a lot cheaper and for back-issues you had to often pay ridiculous money. And you never knew how a series would develop, there was no preview or the Net. So one tended to give a book much more rope. Also the idea that comics would be reprinted was laughable. You bought it then or you would never get it for the same money.

Today this is a different game. Everything seems to get reprinted, as a customer you have the leisure to wait und see, if it is for you. So why bother buying books you don´t like any longer?

When I was much younger, I did the same damn thing: Buying scores of books that changed creative teams like socks & fell by the wayside in quality. I kept buying them anyway in the hope that somehow, someday, they’d get good again. One day, after reading about 20 shitty comics in a row, I came to the now rather obvious realization that there were certain people whose work I enjoyed & many more whose wok I did not. Why was I supporting crap with the same fervor as gold? Just so I could hold my head up high & say “I have a full run of Avengers from #1-up?”

Fuck that.

Who doesn’t, really?

So if some dude’s blog goes “Man, Nightwing #149 ATE” that seems to me a less than believable judgment than “Nightwing #149 was laden with continuity, was sexist, etc. etc.” Or even “Nightwing #149 didn’t sell squat.” That at least is something positive for them/us to think about. I couldn’t agree more that the last 5 years of DC Comics is basically rape, murder, and bad editorial moves. But that’s a bad we can point at.

Just my two cents.

DC’s flagship titles of the last decade & change seem fairly obsessed with death & murder, with the editorial rule of thumb seeming to be, ‘The louder, uglier, more exploitative & gratuitous, the better.’

To me, that’s pandering shite, but to a hardcore fan, it’s probably the superhero equivalent of good giallo. I dunno. I like horror films as much as anyone, but there’s a point at which the American conception of horror stopped being psychological and standardized itself as being slasher instead. (cf. ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ or ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ with ‘Hostel’ et al.)

If superhero giallo sounds like a mixed metaphor, well, it is. It’s also the primary reason I stopped following superheroes and started following specific -stories- and -authors-. There doesn’t seem to be anyone working the boards at DC or Marvel at present who measures up to Carla Speed McNeil or Bryan Lee O’Malley*, though I wish there were: there might be more stories concerned with love, the POSITIVE aspects of sexuality, maturity & aging, or– heaven forefend –simple day-to-day human kindness. We’re regularly informed that these things are either somehow offensive or ‘don’t sell’, but I honestly don’t see DC trying that hard. War sells, as does rape, degradation, protracted suffering, dismemberment, heartbreak, et al., but I refuse to believe that’s all my species considers entertainment.

* ‘All-Star Superman’ clears the bar, of course– by god, it soars –but one title out of hundreds with that degree of attention to quality and, seemingly, sincerity & civility would appear to be a freak. Not that it shouldn’t be cherished all the more…

I know, I know, ‘market forces’. Maybe the market should ASK once in a while. I’m frankly sick of the market forcing, just as sick as I am of having to trawl Previews, or being asked if I want a bloody Border’s rewards card every time I get to the till, despite the damned ads being plastered over every surface of the store. The market wouldn’t have to force so hard if it took time enough to properly encourage and cultivate its authors & artists. (I’m sure some killjoy will gleefully shoot me down for being overly simplistic / optimistic here. Blame it on the heady rhetoric. Or Heidi. That’s what she’s there for, right? /snark)

The ‘heavy competition of the marketplace thing’ isn’t so hot at producing fine wine, is all I’m saying.

Which is why, I suppose, I continually wind up being both invested in & repulsed by the inevitable arc of DC’s imprints: they want to attract new readers, they claim, a wider audience, women (if they can find them), yet they insist on fumbling the ball, whether it be intelligent marketing, creator’s rights, or plain old patience in waiting for an endeavor to pay out. And when it fails? The readership is kindly directed right back to the carnival atmosphere of the rape camps. “Step! Right! Up! and See! The grinding, endless horror of Basic Perinatal Matrix III!”

All that nasty negativity aside there’s still plenty worth reading, and (courtesy of DC & co.’s failures, yes) some of it’s even getting easier to find if you’re the type who’d prefer to avoid waiting on the corner in the cold for your crack. It’s getting to where you can wander into most any major mass-market bookstore and find Oni, D&Q, Fantagraphics, 1st Second, Dark Horse, Top Shelf, five lonely volumes of Yotsuba&! and… who knows? Some day soon that proud company could be joined by a new American branch of Les Humanoides.

What worries me is that, with the coming cash crunch, the number of casual walk-in shoppers will drop significantly and the core who can afford to spend the cash layout needed to buy all their favorites will get even smaller.

Well, that would certainly speed up the Internet. If we get rid of all the boards/blogs/sites that talk about stupid shit all day long, we would probably only be left with all those academics who started using the internet back in the 70s and no one else. :>

I know that I don’t buy any “bad” books on purpose, but I know not all of them are going to be as great/mind-blowing as (insert title you like here). And that’s both superhero and non-superhero books.

This “bar” Heidi suggests we raise…I’m not quite sure I follow. Okay, so I admit there’s a lot of comics trash out there, then what? Avoid it, ignore it, protest against it, form some kind of union, what? Or turn the other cheek and holler, “Hey, don’t forget the GOOD stuff!”