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I am hoping to remain on topic. Since I wrote the topic abstract, and seem distinct in having read it, I hope to be able to explain it.
Six, the problem I feel here is that you have complained at length that this thread is full entirely of people who have not read Outsiders #1, a claim that is both incorrect and, in terms of the topic abstract, not massively relevant. Judd Winick and Tom Ramey's Outsiders, a joke review and the institution of criticism in comics. Broad as you like, narrow as you like, but the idea that the thread is invalid without experience of Outsiders #1 is self-serving and in terms of that ol' topic abstract incorrect. Tiring as it may be, reading comic reviews or the discussion around them is not overly difficult.
Jack, I take your point. I am rising to the personal abuse and grade-school argumentation, as I should by now have learned not to do. I blame it on frustration, but fair dos. I will endeavour to stop responding to fight-trolling and see if that helps.
So, doing my best to move on:
So it *is* a plan by Heidi MacDonald to get The Outsiders cancelled?
Was interpreted as sarcasm or extrapolation. It was not. I don't know nearly enough about Heidi MacDonald or Judd Winick to comment on their motivations; personal vendetta certainly seems possible - I have no idea. It seems an odd way to pursue such a vendetta, but if Heidi M has admitted to having created a fictitious persona, then one must ask about her motives - how hard, after all, could it be simply to ask one of her non comic-reading friends to do a review?
So, why would one invent a pseudonymous reviewer in order to criticise failings one sees in a comic? If one is a reasonably well-known person within comics, which I assume Heidi MacDonald is, them perhaps one would be seeking to criticise without one's own person and status getting in the way of the opinions. Or, to look at it another way, maybe one would not want to alienate people within one's own trade, with all the professional and personal awkwardness that might imply. Of course the latter desire could be better fulfilled by simply not saying anything rude about any other creator's work. This is certainly sensible - didn't Cameron S. get into trouble for unguarded comments on this very site?
So, perhaps a sensible comics person should not express dislike of other work (or only express dislike in an "unprofessional" way, which could mean pseudonymously but certainly didn't when it was first raised). But again, the idea that somebody who has invested that much in time and money (I consider the rather poignant comment by one of JL's critics that he could not afford the pay cut to work in comics) into an area they love must keep schtum about how they feel about it also seems a bit skew-whiff. So, if HM had expressed these same ideas under her own name, what would the difference have been, except that it would have been easier to establish her breast size and comparative pulchritude? Would the other criticisms (using the term for the purposes of this sentence to mean judgements made about an entity, that entity in this case being an unfavourable review of Outsiders #1) have been as trenchant? As a comparison, Tibor Fischer recently said that Martin Amis' new novel (which will sell perhaps as many copies as Outsiders #1) was epochally bad; does he owe Amis an apology, and would he owe Amis a further apology if he had done so under another name? Is the fact that that critical opinion might lead people not to buy the book a cause to identify it as unfair? Is there, in fact, a purpose to criticism if it has no effect on how people approach a book? As was observed in the Pulse, this review will increase the number of people who rad through the Outsiders in the shop, and might thus increase uptake...
If x, then who *is* qualified to slag off a comic? Is Skilliant Pig, elsewhere, entitled to express displeasure about Ultimates #11, and does the fact that this criticism is offered under a nom de guerre, albeit one whose actual identity is known to at the very least the Sabbath kids, further invalidate it? Runce is not claiming to be anything other than he is, but were he to submit a script to Marvel they would not know that he had slagged off the Ultimates, and be able to act accordingly. Is this wrong?
I'm beginning to feel that the small and concentrated fanbase and the low margins of comics are both playing a part here, although that leads onto a whole other question about the purpose of comics (and superhero comics in particular) that cannot be made into movies or toy lines, in the wake of the recent escalation in Marvel's profits... |
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