Barbelith Underground > Comic Books > "Countdown to Infinite Crisis" spoiler

Did I say only rude words were personal insults?

Nope. That would have been some sort of coherent statement. You made a series of contradictory actions and statements, which I was left trying to make some kind of sense of, because it is not apparently within your abilities to do.

Now, you demanded that I addressed your positions, not noticing that your contradictory and badly-written posts make it very hard to work out what your position is. Here is my attempt to clarify what my position is again, since you don't seem to have read it the first time:

So, here's the thing. You say that the 80s were a pessimistic period, and that's why comics went grim and gritty. However, at the same time as they were grim and gritty, other comics were not grim and gritty. Now, we are in a pessimistic period (presumably) and you're asssuming that Infinte Crisis will respond to that by making the DC Universe grim and gritty. So far so good, although if we're speculating I'm not sure that war between Thanagar and Rann is necessarily going to be a rich source of grimness, they being two of the campest planets going. Except, again, there are comics which are not grim and gritty and will probably continue to be so - most obviously, the continuity-defying ICBINTJL. So, the conclusion? That at times of pessimism, however one gauges that, some comics are grim and gritty, and others are not. It's unassailable, but again not very productive as psephology or criticism.

I didn't say anything about Checkmate or JLI and I never said a comic HAS to reflect the age it was published it to be good or valid

No. You said:

I said that I thought it isn't unreasonable that comics should reflect (conciously or not) the era they're made in.

Is that "should" as in "may" or "should" as in "ought to"? It seems as in "may". In which case again, we're back to "comics may reflect the era they are made in. Or they may not". Unassailable but not very informative.

So, I'm happy to address the points you've made, but I don't really see what can be said. You think that Countdown and Infinite Crisis, inasmuch as one can speculate about something that has not been released yet, reflect a pessimistic tone you see in the world more generally. This may happen in comics, and may be a good thing when it does. People who did not like Countdown - it is harder to comment on Infinite Crisis because it has not yet been released - are either contributing to or being pulled along by a wave of comic book guy fanboy sniping, or might be so conditioned to acclaiming whatever Grant Morrison does that anything not similar to what Grant Morrison does will not be liked by them. The whole 80s thing seems oddly like your confident contention that the Strokes sounded just like the Stooges, despite not having heard the Stooges. If you've never read any comics from the 80s, how exactly can you be so sure about, say:

And that Blue Beetle and Booster weren't intended as "funny" characters, they just happened to be the only characters available to a writer who wanted to write a funny book?

and write any viewpoint not yours, say from people who have read comics from the last period Blue Beetle and Booster Gold were around much as snide fanboy dipshittery?

Keen intuition? With the utmost respect, given that some people here have read not just about comics from the 80s but also comics from the 80s, is it possible you might not have a complete picture?

Given this, what exactly would you like to discuss? As I understand it, you enjoyed Countdown (fair enough) and think Infinite Crisis is interesting (fair enough). You think that what DC are doing with Infinite/Identity Crisis is exactly equivalent to what Grant Morrison did with New X-Men (not true: most obviously, Morrison is a writer, not an editorial committee; the similarity appears to be that some fans of both the X-Men and the DCU are not happy with the direction being taken). You believe further that all instances of rape or sexual assault in comics are precisely equivalent - therefore, if you were not happy with the treatment of Sue Dibney's rape, you must ipso facto also not be happy with its treatment in Doom Patrol and Zatanna (and also by extension any other comic or piece of media ever? Not sure how far this has been thought through). You believe further that people who want to read Identity Crisis should be "left alone" to do it (I wasn't aware of the existence of brute squads tearing copies from their cherubic fingers, but YMMV), although how that tallies with the existence and concept of discussion boards I know not.

That, as I understand it, is your postion, inasmuch as one can pick a position out of your contradictory and confused posts. What exactly would you like to do with it?