"As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create."
Spock, Star Trek II
I've been doing some thinking. Yes, I know the immediate reaction is to run to the hills with your families and pray that the Nerd Gods don't rain heavenly fire down upon you for reading that sentence, but hear me out, here. As it were.
Some discussions with people who better inform and help shape my opinions in regards to my preferred medium of comics have led me to a conclusion: I'm not going to bother with comics that I don't like anymore. I'm not going to talk about them for the most part and I'm going to, for lack of a better phrase, ignore them whenever possible. Why? For the same reason I dismiss movies featuring Hillary Duff and Chad Michael Murray with soundtracks featuring that new single from Faith Hill or whatever - it's obviously not me who they're aiming for with this stuff.
As you can see from this CBR poll, I'm in the vast minority in regards to DC Countdown and I've realized that's just fine. If they're going to smack readers like me around in search of a reaction, I'm going to do exactly what they don't want - walk away and go to another playground. While the "mainline" DCU is suffering tragic consequences, yadda yadda yadda, I've got Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers to enjoy. While Marvel shakes everything up with House Of M, I've got...well, Daredevil, for now. Obviously, a lot of the comicsblogospheriverse agrees with me, but we're not driving sales for DC or Marvel as much as we'd like to think we are. During the poker tournament this past weekend, I heard a lot of people speaking very enthusiastically about Countdown and how "freaking awesome" it was that Max Lord was behind it all. Hey, good on DC for getting people talking - it's just not a discussion I want to join.
I'm fine with being a bit of an odd duck in my choice of comics - I'm not completely indie, even if I find plenty to like there and I'm not a continuity-studying superhero fiend despite the fact that I think very little beats a cool Batman Moment or Superman managing to save the world again. Most manga doesn't appeal to me, but when it does, I get The Tingle and want to wander around, preaching about it until people buy it to avoid my holy wrath. In other words, I'm all about The Good Shit - that's what I'll be focusing on more.
Instead of disparaging something completely, I'll talk about another work that's quite nice and maybe people who've liked X will want to check it out. It's easier to tear something down and tell you why you shouldn't read it than it is to tell you why you should check out something new and different. Think of it as The High Road (Hi, Ed) Approach to looking at comics and whatever other media I end up discussing here. And for those of you worried that I'm going to become some sort of Zen saint, worry not - I'll still crack wise on occasion about a book, but in the same way I'd dismiss Everybody Loves Raymond, not how I'd go on about how horribly misguided a Ken Burns Documentary Series About Something Important could be. As the website says, Comics Should Be Good and I'll try to point you towards the ones that I like best.
And on that note, we have Or Else #2 from Kevin Huizenga, whom I've seen quite a lot of work from in collections and anthologies, but never actually read a full-length comic by. Glenn Ganges is, I suspect, a thinly-veiled Huizenga and serves as our lead character for a neat little book that that manages to disassemble time, explain optical illusions, and talk about basketball in the space of 96 pages. Reprinting the Gloriana minicomic, this is a skillful bit of cartooning that is, frankly, amazing in how much information is imparted to the reader. It starts off simply enough - we see Wendy Caramel-Ganges at work, and then she and Glenn go home, where he watches her unload groceries and thinks about the baby she's going to have. All very nice, very domestic, very still-life. It's then that Huizenga starts to play with time, showing possible futures for the child from the point of view of both Glenn and Wendy and their reactions to the horrors and triumphs that may be coming for them. The first part of the book seems to end not at all, with a non-sequitur coda that mirrors real life a little too closely.
The second part of the book is where Huizenga really cuts loose, turning Glenn Ganges's relating a trip to the library and return home into Koyaanisqatsi meets 2001 meets Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control . The reader scans over repetitive, out of sequence images that go into a completely abstract universe for a while before turning into a proper science lesson, which is when you get to the meat of this issue - a scant eight or ten pages that took me twenty minutes or so to read as Glenn tells you why the moon looks bigger when it's rising and setting than when it's high in the sky. It's not as epic as Clan Apis, but it's funny, fascinating and informative even if you're aware of the science behind optical illusions like this and I think that a slightly reworked version of this piece would make a great addition to books that actually wanted to teach science to kids instead of just relating facts.
Finally, there's some talk about basketball as an abstract in a boy's life as he grows up, and that's more memorable for the invoking of nostalgia for a time you never had than the actual content - rather the point, I think. I'll be ordering Or Else #1 and diving into the minicomics thing a little more, even if I have no plans to become the great Tom Spurgeon, master of the minis.
Spock, Star Trek II
I've been doing some thinking. Yes, I know the immediate reaction is to run to the hills with your families and pray that the Nerd Gods don't rain heavenly fire down upon you for reading that sentence, but hear me out, here. As it were.
Some discussions with people who better inform and help shape my opinions in regards to my preferred medium of comics have led me to a conclusion: I'm not going to bother with comics that I don't like anymore. I'm not going to talk about them for the most part and I'm going to, for lack of a better phrase, ignore them whenever possible. Why? For the same reason I dismiss movies featuring Hillary Duff and Chad Michael Murray with soundtracks featuring that new single from Faith Hill or whatever - it's obviously not me who they're aiming for with this stuff.
As you can see from this CBR poll, I'm in the vast minority in regards to DC Countdown and I've realized that's just fine. If they're going to smack readers like me around in search of a reaction, I'm going to do exactly what they don't want - walk away and go to another playground. While the "mainline" DCU is suffering tragic consequences, yadda yadda yadda, I've got Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers to enjoy. While Marvel shakes everything up with House Of M, I've got...well, Daredevil, for now. Obviously, a lot of the comicsblogospheriverse agrees with me, but we're not driving sales for DC or Marvel as much as we'd like to think we are. During the poker tournament this past weekend, I heard a lot of people speaking very enthusiastically about Countdown and how "freaking awesome" it was that Max Lord was behind it all. Hey, good on DC for getting people talking - it's just not a discussion I want to join.I'm fine with being a bit of an odd duck in my choice of comics - I'm not completely indie, even if I find plenty to like there and I'm not a continuity-studying superhero fiend despite the fact that I think very little beats a cool Batman Moment or Superman managing to save the world again. Most manga doesn't appeal to me, but when it does, I get The Tingle and want to wander around, preaching about it until people buy it to avoid my holy wrath. In other words, I'm all about The Good Shit - that's what I'll be focusing on more.
Instead of disparaging something completely, I'll talk about another work that's quite nice and maybe people who've liked X will want to check it out. It's easier to tear something down and tell you why you shouldn't read it than it is to tell you why you should check out something new and different. Think of it as The High Road (Hi, Ed) Approach to looking at comics and whatever other media I end up discussing here. And for those of you worried that I'm going to become some sort of Zen saint, worry not - I'll still crack wise on occasion about a book, but in the same way I'd dismiss Everybody Loves Raymond, not how I'd go on about how horribly misguided a Ken Burns Documentary Series About Something Important could be. As the website says, Comics Should Be Good and I'll try to point you towards the ones that I like best.
And on that note, we have Or Else #2 from Kevin Huizenga, whom I've seen quite a lot of work from in collections and anthologies, but never actually read a full-length comic by. Glenn Ganges is, I suspect, a thinly-veiled Huizenga and serves as our lead character for a neat little book that that manages to disassemble time, explain optical illusions, and talk about basketball in the space of 96 pages. Reprinting the Gloriana minicomic, this is a skillful bit of cartooning that is, frankly, amazing in how much information is imparted to the reader. It starts off simply enough - we see Wendy Caramel-Ganges at work, and then she and Glenn go home, where he watches her unload groceries and thinks about the baby she's going to have. All very nice, very domestic, very still-life. It's then that Huizenga starts to play with time, showing possible futures for the child from the point of view of both Glenn and Wendy and their reactions to the horrors and triumphs that may be coming for them. The first part of the book seems to end not at all, with a non-sequitur coda that mirrors real life a little too closely.The second part of the book is where Huizenga really cuts loose, turning Glenn Ganges's relating a trip to the library and return home into Koyaanisqatsi meets 2001 meets Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control . The reader scans over repetitive, out of sequence images that go into a completely abstract universe for a while before turning into a proper science lesson, which is when you get to the meat of this issue - a scant eight or ten pages that took me twenty minutes or so to read as Glenn tells you why the moon looks bigger when it's rising and setting than when it's high in the sky. It's not as epic as Clan Apis, but it's funny, fascinating and informative even if you're aware of the science behind optical illusions like this and I think that a slightly reworked version of this piece would make a great addition to books that actually wanted to teach science to kids instead of just relating facts.
Finally, there's some talk about basketball as an abstract in a boy's life as he grows up, and that's more memorable for the invoking of nostalgia for a time you never had than the actual content - rather the point, I think. I'll be ordering Or Else #1 and diving into the minicomics thing a little more, even if I have no plans to become the great Tom Spurgeon, master of the minis.
