CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED
A Quick One Before I Put My Nose To the Grind
BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG
I’m home for less than two weeks and need to get a buncha issues out to artists by the time I leave. So this newsletter is going out now! Then I’m chained to a desk! Remember, TIGRESS ISLAND is on shelves now. GEHENNA IN TOKYO is up for order now. And in a month-ish, THAT NEW NEW goes up for order. Busy times!
PAGES IN MY INBOX
THEMES
I recently had a moment where I was enjoying the shit outta a clunky, silly exploitation movie. And then I needed something else to watch on my 24hr travel from Dallas to Hobart. I scanned my options. And I reached for another clunky, silly exploitation movie.
It occurred to me that I’ve gotten 6min into Anora. And 8min into Eddington. Maybe they are good films. But I’m completely unmotivated to give them a shot.
And the reason is: I don’t trust critics. Their approval amounts to reverse advocacy. I hear something is darling, and I kick at it. I don’t want it near me.
I suppose the democratization of criticism has impacted all media. But in comic books it’s especially glaring. There’s no consensus outlet. No single critic that readers assign weight, forget trust. These are largely unpaid positions and turnover is high. Very rare that anyone develops a voice as a critic and even rarer that readers care.
Part of the problem is how little education there is in the craft of comics. Most film critics are failed filmmakers. At least they have a handle on the vocational aspects of movies. Comic critics, on the other hand, tend to be still-aspiring creators. Which could be a good thing, but typically they are stalled early in their careers. This means their base of knowledge is not sufficient to be critics. Because a critic’s job is not to tell us if they liked something. It’s to tell us why a person with taste may or may not like something. You need to know the craft to explain why something is an achievement or a failure.
The sample is further tainted by critics who are political actors. Youtube in particular is scattered with those land mines. But the blogs are prone tot he same partisan thinking. Related, ‘theory’ isn’t for the actual readers of a work. It’s for a network of commentors who are speaking an ingroup language exclusively to each other.
Another problem is specialization. While it may be the fact that SPIDER-MAN, ASTERIX, ATTACK ON TITAN, and EIGHTBALL are all ‘comic books,’ none of them are useful points of reference for what I do. Right now we have critics who need to talk about DAREDEVIL to maintain website SEO and we’ve got critics who want to talk about YUMMY FUR to collect snob tokens. But nobody is truly committed to middlebrow genre fiction. Which is what I do.
And more to the point- it’s what I love.
Reviews are a red flag.
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
I consumed a ton of media coming home from tour, so we’ll make this quick to conserve space.
Beyond Sunset is built on the Doom engine and manages to do a lot with it. However its setting and story did nothing to inspire my imagination. So it’s a VERY SOFT RECOMMEND for the fun gameplay.
If I called this one “impressionistic” or “dreamlike” I would be doing my best to rationalize a mostly gibberish movie. But an entertaining one. RECOMMENDED.
This is the most engrossing thing I’ve fallen into in a long time. By the end I was living the life of a doomed mob boss who speaks in dense London colloquialisms. BIG RECOMMEND.
I don’t think this franchise would pass the twitter test. Salute to the writers of The New Seduction. It was stupid and low-quality, but at least the lead’s motivation was clear for the first time in the series. NOT A RECOMMEND.
The last few Brubaker / Phillips books feel a bit anecdotal to me, for better and for worse. This one comes off confused because it’s relatively stand-alone, until it’s not. Then you’re in something that reads much more serial than what’s promised in the opening third of the book. I enjoyed it, despite some reservations. RECOMMENDED.
A refreshingly straightforward, high-quality Batman series. Smart enough, but not showing off. Not every reveal works, but none insult your intelligence. It inspired me to think about my own Batman ideas. Which I didn’t know I had. RECOMMENDED.
Would I prefer to see these talents on something grounded? Yes. Will I take this? I will. Jason Aaron’s Marvel work has run its course. Financially, I can’t tell him what to do. But creatively, there’s nothing left for him there. A few years of creator-owned series should get him back in shape. This was a decent start.
FROM THE DESIGN FOLDER
These are from an artist named Natsumi. I’m always curious what non-comic artists I can successfully put in front of comic readers. Would a variant in this style get some traction?
THANKS
Order some comics (of mine)! And if you wanna tip, the Paypal is below. All money goes towards the VARIANTS FROM WILD-ASS ARTISTS fund. Do for self.
That final scene in Long Good Friday seeing the range of emotions on Bob Hoskins face… doesn’t get better