| |
|
Comics Criticism is whole hog in the shitter. We've got some fantastic reviewers, Paul O'Brien, the woefully missed A.K., to name a few, but when the best snob-free analyses of comics are coming in book reviews of The Fortress Of Solitude in The Believer, well, you have to wonder what the fuck is wrong.
Well, it's simple. There's no arena for it. Who's going to publish my nigh-book length critical appraisal of Grant's run on New X-Men? We've got plenty of easily digestable Annotated Guides and Companions, but these are not criticism. TCJ wouldn't touch it because, a) it's too long, and b) well, duh. There's no Paris Review for comics. And we're surprised no one takes us seriously? Honestly, I'm in the middle of Riot At Xavier's and I'll put these four issues against anything out there. The death of the Double Q is so gorgeously written and felt. The silent panel with QQ in the shadows: devastating. Why does no one want to treat this like the fucking literature it is? You can't just say it's literature. It's never worked that way. You have to treat as such. And the internet doesn't really count. Message boards are the sea shores of the thinking world. Tides of opinion come in minute by minute and, while it's fantastic for debate and mental calesthenics, no one would ever dare publish a message board log. Or if they did, no one would pay money to read it.
I think Lethem's TFOS may end up playing a key role. It's destined to be huge, inevitably made into a movie starring Chris Rock and Jason Biggs, and there's a thick and literate core of Comics Appreciation built in. And not the stuck up TCJ kind. It's the kind that people like Grant so tirelessly work to promote in their comics. An appreciation of the wonder and potential of the medium and a respect of its ridiculous power. It just might have the power to crush that Nick-Hornby-fed attitude that, "Hey, Yuppies! No, no, no, turn away from that Comic Store, come here. These are the only five comic books you ever need to read." Check out the TFOS site (Google it, you. It's not like I wrote the url on the back of my hand.). It's got two or three of the best essays on comics I've read in decades.
As far as Blankets goes, No-Girl is right. It's art with words. It's more like narrative paintings than the kind of literature that Chris Ware knocks out, but it's something that can only be done in comics. How do you, in prose, have the same effect of the page where she paints over the picture Craig painted on the wall? Impossible.
Anyway. I gotta get back to my NXM thesis. By the time I'm done, I bet I can get it into, like, The Paris Review and shit. Comics, all comics, will be that respected.
Maybe?
Come on, Phoenix, come on. Make that shit happen. |
|
|
