Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 224

Take It Easy, Man.

BEST WEEK THAT’S EVER HAPPENED IN HISTORY

It wasn’t actually. I’m just making a point about overselling an idea. It’s the theme for this edition of the newsletter.

Hope you’re doing well and had a productive one. I’ve had a lingering cough that makes me a leper in a covid-vigilant world, but I am tryna branch out from last week’s commitment to the couch.

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‘REVELATORY’ OR ‘LIFE-AFFIRMING’ OR SOMETHING

I’m grateful for any thoughtful review of my work. So much so I’ll promote reviews I think are wrong-headed, provided they’re well-considered. If you put work into thinking about my comics, salute.

So all that said, let me now crap on reviews.

I watched a film called Aftersun the other day. Restrained. Impressionistic. Fake-memoiresque. Little girl goes on vacation with her depressed father. It was touching (not to be confused with moving) and I thought a fine use of my two hours.

It was not amazing. Strong, understated, performances. Tactfully delivered script. But not amazing. Really only remarkable in the sense it’s carrying the torch of the 90s-00s film festival vibe.

My girlfriend hated it, which prompted us to explore the critical response to the film. Below are some bits of reviews. I’ve highlighted the most deranged.

Putting aside the absolute non-communication of nonsense like “visually fluid” the real prize for Complete Gibberish Talk goes to A.O. Scott’s commentary. No one -and I mean this- no one could say the above with a straight face. Mr Scott is blessed he puts his work in print, because if he had to verbalize the same sentiment he’d stop midway and apologize for laughing. It’s ridiculous hyperbole that no one could take seriously. And yet, we can presume, someone somewhere did. This is the nature of reviews.

I’m told we used to ‘trust’ critics based on the overlap between their tastes and ours. We’d connect with or reject a critic that mirrored our sensibilities. If we liked a critic, we followed their work. Certainly the weird, weird, cult of Pauline Kael speaks to that in some way. But she died over twenty years ago, and I have not seen ‘trust’ in a critic in my adult life.

What I’ve witnessed is we follow falsely-credentialed people so long as they have a platform. We treat Rotten Tomatoes like a real measure of… anything… because the ‘critics’ come from ‘outlets.’ And to have an ‘outlet’ you’ve gotta pay GoDaddy a domain fee of $28. Confirmation of its importance!

And, look, all this is fine to a point. I’ve never made a movie and yet here I am, with opinions on them. I’ll share some later in this newsletter. But a week of ‘film Twitter’ being recommended to me in my feed has taught me not all opinions are equal. Sometimes, you’re just not the guy to say the thing. However, the guy who should never say the thing weirdly ends up being the guy with the platform.

In comics we’ve got this bizarre cognitive dissonance where we do not respect the outlets, we do not know the critics by name (which means we’re putting our trust in the outlet we already established we do not respect), and yet we aggregate them and use them as proof of… something.

I started writing this newsletter early in the week when I watched Aftersun. And in the time between I started writing and today when I hit publish, two comic book professionals have referenced Comicbookroundup to me. Is it a quick data point professionals use to help add context or perspective? Alright, maybe. And there’s reader reviews on there, so perhaps there’s some theoretical value to that. But, my question would be, what context or perspective or value does this add:

So we understand what we’re looking at here, this is a late-career Alan Moore series (not a major work; still exceptional) and A $6 COLLECTION OF CATWOMAN COVERS. Take note of how both are in that 9 score range.

And if your response is, "right, but the CATWOMAN: UNCOVERED entry represents just one critic’s review while PROVIDENCE aggregates 30,” that’s very astute of you but does not at all answer for why these things even share a scale.

Professional courtesy prevents me from cherrypicking bad books and demonstrating that they share ratings with objectively great books. Every creator has books they aren’t proud of or are less-proud-of, but they do NOT like to hear confirmation from me. And I get it. So we won’t do it here, but you should take a look at last week’s list of reviews. Is it possible that DISNEY VILLAINS: MALEFICENT #5 is, at 9.6, the best book of the week? Yeah, that’s technically possible. But does it seem at all suspect that this title you’ve never heard of is creeping towards a perfect score?

My stepson plays Roblox. In some of the games within Roblox he’s got a billion dollars worth of fictional currency. It’s clear there’s an inflationary aspect to imaginary money. After a time, $100 doesn’t impress a kid playing the game. So it quickly becomes $500. And so on. Soon, Roblox is post-war Hungary, suffering hyperinflation and requiring $500,000,000 to buy toenail clippers. Comic reviews in a nutshell.

Just as comic sales charts are now completely unreliable (and therefore worthless), we’re in danger of reviews being just as unhelpful.

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MORE ABOUT THE MILLAR THING

After my last newsletter I heard from a few people about Millar’s prescription for comics. I still think everyone is talking past each other, but I did get a number of worthwhile perspectives. As it turns out, Millar is incorrect about the wins. There’s been a number of creator-owned successes the past ten years. And, interestingly, those successes outsell the books we think of as ‘big’ from the previous 10 years.

But Millar can hardly be blamed for not knowing that because the chatter is muted and there’s no detectable high tide raising all ships.

I think people are looking for a ‘class of’ phenomenon. Call it the Seattle Effect if you want. One band wasn’t enough to write about, so a whole scene is lifted by music press and then labels. One creator isn’t enough. I’ve maybe not helped my career by saying some of the Ellis Boards-era creators aren’t great, but I think even a hater has to admit there was (at least the perception of) a wave.

Maybe that’s the signal many of us are looking for.

Another point that maybe got overshadowed in the whole conversation was “what do these numbers represent? Is it all issue one sales? There’s more to comics success than that, surely?” Remender articulated it like this:

This is an aspect we maybe lost upfront. Success has several measures, and a long tail series printed in multiple formats checks many of those boxes. It’s what Marco and I are shooting for. Paul and I are enamored by the current Brubaker/Phillips model, which is also ongoing (albeit different than periodical comics). If you asked me would I rather make $100k once or $30k every quarter for ten years, I wouldn’t let you finish the question.

So now I guess the question is “do we have more ongoings than we did 10 years ago?”

Anyway, its’s all just more ideas around the same premise: how do we make the most number of successful creators?

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CORPORATE FACE

Just a stray thought: is there a ‘look’ corporate editors are most comfortable with?

Is there a ‘type of dude’ comics management likes to look at? And, no, before any strange person willfully misreads this- I imply nothing about diversity, etc, etc. Really, the opposite. I’m talking about white guys with poorly-defined lower-thirds to their faces, receding hairlines, and patchy beards.

I recognize this sounds insulting, but I’m just spitballing here and it’s also not as if I claim any type of good looks myself.

Specifically in corporate comics, there seems to be a baseline ‘face’ that everyone has. This was brought to my attention by a creator friend who is a bigtime hater. He’ll send me screenshots of dudes saying dumb things on twitter and I realized I couldn’t tell the men apart. They all have the same head.

Is this a type of person editors are familiar with in their personal lives or identify with themselves? I dunno. Or is it a reaction of some type? Maybe guys with cut jawlines and thick heads of hair have a negative association for editors? I couldn’t say.

I don’t imagine there’s any way to find an answer here. It’s just a thing that crossed my mind as I had to ask the aforementioned friend, “wait, is this the guy who said x last week or is that a different dude with the same hairline?”

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WEIRDLY, NOTHING HAS CHANGED

I watched The Sound of Freedom this week. If you’ll recall this is the film that, depending on your stripe of partisan brain disorder, is:

A Qanon call-to-arms that leverages a moral panic to incite mentally-ill right-wingers.

OR

A wake-up-call that was intentionally suppressed for years by powerful elites hoping to maintain their pedophile lifestyles.

Having now seen it, I can confirm it is neither of these things. Just a very low-key thriller in the same spirit as Argo (reality isn’t that exciting, so a semi-accurate movie of real life events can’t be very exciting either).

There’s roughly two brief moments of ‘Christian stuff’ but it tracks with the motivations of the real person the protagonist is based on, so it’s hardly a forced narrative. You could watch and not take any real notice of it.

There’s zero -truly zero, nothing, not a trace of- Qanon talking points. Yes, there’s overlap in the respect that missing children are an aspect of that worldview, but that’s the moral panic of our day and crosses all ideological divides.

It’s really just a movie with a grassroots (sincere or otherwise) marketing campaign. Simple as that. You can watch and even enjoy it without signing up for something or in opposition to something else.

Really, I would urge you to watch it. As a movie it was fine, but I think it’s more interesting as a lesson in media criticism. This thing consumed pundits for weeks when in reality there’s nothing here to argue about. Whatever outlets tried to sell you on either of the perceptions of this film should not be outlets you trust in the future.

Remember when The Joker was gonna cause an incel insurrection? You had a couple comic pros say that, incidentally. People working in the arts were actively campaigning for he suppression of a piece of art. Barf. I would say, “bet everyone feels foolish now, huh?” but the type of person who has no sense of history or perspective never feels foolish.

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SCANDALOUS MOVIE WEEK, I GUESS

I also watched Tar.

Goddamn.

For this movie to be made at all, and then well-received, is remarkable. It is not a rebuke of #MeToo, but it is a nuanced conversation about how these things play out, the motivations of those ancillary to an accusation, and the cost/benefit to all involved. And that model of storytelling -nuance- was forbidden for a number of years. So, for this film, wherein a person is guilty but also brilliant and above all human, to reach as many people as it did is encouraging. As an adult who left sloganeering behind in my teens, nuance is all I want from real discussion.

What the film has to say about brilliant people is a litmus test for your sympathies. Do you care that this individual has so much to give to the world? Or do their transgressions erase their gifts/value?

I’ll watch She Said, another late-entry into the meaning of #MeToo, this week as a type of double-feature with Tar. Both films failed to make their money back and commentators saw that as a sign people are over the moment that birthed the work. I couldn’t say. But I can speak to the impact of the movie had on me.

It depicts a type of individual I find repellent. The protagonist has actively sabotaged a subordinate’s career. She’s a person who sublimates guilt to continue achievement in a narrow art world catering to an aging audience of snobs. She’s run from her modest roots to blend in with elites. Everything about the lead, her world, and her behavior sucks.

And I was nevertheless cheering when she (accurately) assails her replacement as a nothing.

I think you should watch this movie.

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IS SATIRE OK IF IT DOESN’T KISS YOUR ASS?

I’ve got an idea for a comic. Single-issue stories, but an ongoing format. Each issue a rewarding survival story featuring the same antagonists and an always changing set of protagonists. Extreme violence. Human moments. Familiar tropes given greater purpose. And deep, rich, irony. A satisfying read for anyone willing to ‘go there.’

And it’s clearly satire to anyone literate.

But… issue-to-issue the bad guys win.

Uh oh. Illiterates will struggle.

This used to be a defining characteristic of satire (dark ending) that’s now been deemed too ‘encouraging.’ In the same respect certain news outlets refuse to say a killer’s name for fear of glamorizing them, satire without an overt (and tiring) moral lesson is haram.

But I think that’s prolly changing. Or changed already and perhaps the market is just waiting for someone to do the thing.

I’ve got a number of projects and I don’t imagine this one can see the light in full for some time. But maybe if I find the right co-creator we can do some shorts for the newsletter.

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IS THAT ENOUGH OPINIONS FOR YOU FOR ONE WEEK?

I’m off! It’s Father’s Day here in Australia and I’ve got a date at the VR center with my stepson and his father. Should be a blast, though I got a little motion-sick last time.

Hope you have a rewarding week. Dodge the bullshit. Do for self.