i'm generally not a big fan of trying to shelter kids, but at the same time i am a fan of lots and lots of consumer information so that people can make informed decisions, and from the outside, it doesn't look like what it is. all else aside, no matter how i feel about parents who shelter their kids too much, many parents wouldn't agree with me, and would not want their kids reading this, and that's just not a good business/PR move on DC's part.
i'm also not against the sort of hard-edged superhero comics in general, nor am i even against doing rude things with established characters. though i think there are too many bad comics of this sort around right now, and not enough of other styles of book, there should always be room for things like The Ultimates or whatever. i am a little weary of our friend Gustav Morrison constantly railing against realist comics, and it sort of strikes me as a bit of a relic of 20th century avant-garde bullshit to insist that "this style is totally dead, and this style over here is ALL THAT THERE IS. everyone doing work outside of these narrow confines is OVER." i think the instinct to make totalizing statements like that is to be avoided, and that what comics need now and sorely lack is diversity.
what we need to avoid are bad, uncreative books of whatever style or genre, and we need to encourage good comics of whatever genre. what frustrates me about this book the most is that it could so easily be a good book in its genre, but it somehow ends up being an actively horrible book. Meltzer's got some good instincts, and it really shows, but Christ almighty, he's got some bad ones, too. he not only fucks up what could be really good with some work, he fucks it up in a way that really screws up a lot of other people's work. there are so many things that could have been done with Ralph and Sue, especially, which now have to be canned. it's so fucking frustrating. |
