(Potpourri) Bloodied but unbowed by this week's cockamamie technical difficulties, here's today's items of interest:
- Staunch pro-Israel watchdog group The Committee for Accurate Reporting
takes aim at Joe Sacco's recent Gaza Strip reportage for
The New York Times. The beef seems not to be that
Sacco lied about anything, so much as that he presented Palestinian viewpoints at all and didn't draw the exact report CAMERA wanted him to draw.
Gosh, watching others refusing to do their propaganda work for them must be awfully frustrating. (Thanks as always to Jeff Mason, for posting the CAMERA
link to our message board.)
- Reporters Without Borders continues to express concern about Moroccan editor Ali Lmaberet's health;
IFEX has the press release.
- In continuing Marvel Movie Doomsday Theory news, Associated Press commentator David Germain
notes that people seem to be getting sick of sequels and superhero movies.
The
Baltimore Sun has the story.
- Newsarama is reporting that Marvel is revising its ratings system slightly
by replacing the "PG" designation with an equivalent euphamism; the report notes that "PG" is a registered trademark of the Motion Picture Association of America.
- Maryland's Herald-Mail is noting that Charles Town's
Fat Boys Subs is shutting down after the city suddenly decided to object to the eatery's longtime cartoon mascot, a little fat guy named Chubb Chubb.
I played this story for its sarcasm value back in May, but when stupidity ruins
people's livelihoods it ceases to be amusing.
- A question posed to me by email: which company is this advertisement recruiting for,
do you think?
- Pennsylvania's Lewistown Sentinel profiles science professor and cartoonist Jay Hosler.
- Comixpedia's
Leah Fitzgerald has an interview with Bruno creator Chris Baldwin.
- The Pulse's Jennifer Contino, meanwhile, speaks to recent
Xeric Award winner Julie Yeh about her new comic, Poppies' Adventures.
- This week's DivaLea Show features Kurt Busiek, as well as critiques of Sinfest and the
new Scott McCloud webcomic.
- San Francisco Bay-area newspaper The Daily Review has your
general-interest webcomics article for the week.
Finally, Official Guide to the Marvel Universe author Peter Sanderson has a new column on FilmForce
(warning: annoying ad-page intercept), which he uses to bemoan the fact that movie critics just... don't... get... how superhero comics can be involving and nuanced
art when writing reviews of the movies they spawn. A sample quote should suffice, which begins in turn by quoting New York Observer film reviewer
Andrew Sarris:
"Sarris concludes, 'Suffice it to say that I was steadily engrossed and entertained and ultimately moved by a drama that is, in the end, more human
than mutant. Even if, like me, you consider yourself too serious-minded to sit through an already certified blockbuster not entirely of this world with a cryptic title
like X2, give this prolonged splash of special effects a chance. It is better than its genre.'
"Actually, no, it isn't. X2 does not transcend its genre because it is good; it demonstrates the excellence of which the genre is capable. Why shouldn't we judge a
medium or a genre by the best material it can produce, or by its potential for greatness, rather than by its bad and mediocre examples? Is there a genre in literature
or film or any creative medium that has not produced bad work as well as good?"
To the extent that the superhero genre has? Romance novels, I suppose. Maybe. I'd have a less difficult time sympathizing with Sanderson if the vast majority of the
last sixty years of superhero comics were not, in fact, exactly the sub-literate junk they're reputed to be. The general public is quite aware of what our "proud
tradition" consists of, thank you very much, and it's just this tradition that today's model must overcome. Does this mean that superhero comics are always sub-literate
junk? No it does not. It does, however, mean that the bar for overcoming current stereotypes is set rather high, and jumping it will require the continued production of
superior works, not whining like a schoolgirl whose haircut has just been dissed. Some of the work hitting the shelves today is substantially better than what came
before, to be sure, but this is by no means an adequately-proven track record, and pretending otherwise helps no one. The fact that a good chunk of the works currently
being produced still insult the intelligence of the average reader is a stumbling block, but let's face it: for most of the people who once read comics, the medium's
"potential for greatness" has in the past best been demonstrated by such lofty writers as Stan Lee and Mort Weisinger. Neither of these men could write for shit, and to
the extent they tried the results were usually good for little more than camp value. (Yes, three works written by Stan Lee did in fact wind up in the Journal's
"Top 100 Comics of the Century" issue; so far as I can tell, this only proves that Journal writers have just as much of a weakness for the rose-colored glasses of
nostalgia as anyone else.)
Finally, while X2 is a perfectly enjoyable bit of escapist fluff, to use the word "excellence" in referring to it is to demonstrate that you don't have the slightest
idea what the word means. There's nothing wrong with escapist fluff, per se, but the notion that even the best X-Men comic equals a "potential for greatness"
is patently absurd. That works on the level of X2 are considered the genre at its apex -- as opposed to the rare work that does hit the lofty heights, such
as Watchmen -- is exactly the problem that Sanderson refuses to face.
