My new weekly column for CBR, "When Words Collide," debuted today, and I'm sure that plenty of new readers will be stopping by to check out this here blog.To them, I say, WELCOME. I update this sucker every day (or close to it), and you may be interested in some of my topics of note, listed over there to the right, under Grant Morrison's cocky smile. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you like what I'm doing at CBR, and what I'm doing here as well. Comment away!
And to my regular readers: go read my CBR column! The first installment's a good one: "In Defense of Superhero Comics." Maybe next week I'll tackle an equally controversial topic: "Why Superhero Comics Suck," followed up the following week with "Superhero Comics: Meh." Probably not, though.
Oh, and if anyone out there in blog-o-land is graphic design-inclined, I could use a "When Words Collide" logo to post instead of this lame Shakespeare pic. I could also use a "Geniusboy Firemelon" logo for the top of this blog, but now I'm just starting to sound pathetic. But if you know anyone who works cheap (as in, free), let me know.
Comics! Tally-ho!
Good column, but I was already in agreement with its central thesis, so... You don't spend as much time discussing the work of Joe Casey as I have without considering superhero comics literature.
ReplyDeleteOh, wait, you agree with me?
ReplyDeleteJust wait till my "In Defense of Punching Joe Casey's Crappy Comics in the Face" entry.
Comics don't have faces... I mean, maybe a drawing of one, but...
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteA lot of good ideas and observations in your new column, but in my opinion, the primary reason superhero comics get a bad rap (as opposed to "literary comics") is because a number of them just aren't written very well, regardless of any genre expectations. The biases you list magnify the extent of the perception that superhero books are poorly written, though.
ReplyDeleteDefine what you mean by "aren't written well."
ReplyDeleteOh, and I forget to mention that the greatest poem of the 20th century was the result of a collaboartion: The Waste Land. Without Ezra Pound's arrangement of Eliot's writing, it would not have been nearly as fantastic.
ReplyDeleteDefine what you mean by "aren't written well."
ReplyDeleteThe usual suspects... clumsy and laborious dialogue, poorly executed exposition, uneven pacing.
That being said, it's not as if "literary comics" are immune to the same things. If anything, the lack of professional polish, effective editing, and practiced craft in many self-published/indie "literary comics" results in some particularly awkward reads (although I guess to fans of the "literary comics" genre, this is part of its quirky appeal).
I guess what I'm saying is that bad writing in superhero comics is no different from bad writing in "literary comics," or bad writing in fiction, television and movies, both in its distribution (Sturgeon's Law a.k.a. Sturgeon's Revelation liberally applies in all cases) and its core deficiencies.
Yup. Exactly.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the column very much. The earlier comment is makes a good point, in that a lot of super-hero comics aren't well-written... but they're also hastily drawn. This has more to do with being the dominant genre, though: a lot of comics in other genres aren't good, either, and a lot of material in any medium is similarly bad.
ReplyDeleteI understand not liking super-heroes because you just don't enjoy the genre, think it's limited, or flat-out resent its dominance. If 90% of all movies were action movies (or romance ones), I'd be pretty pissed.
What's CRAZY is thinking that, out of all those super-hero comics, which attract a lot of the top talent because they PAY, there aren't any good ones that interrogate the genre, the nature of fiction, or the experience of life. THAT is what's nuts.