Too Uncritical?
I love comic books. This may come as a surprise to you all, but there it is. I try for the most part, to only buy the ones that I LIKE, and therefore, my enjoyment of them is enhanced. Sometimes, there are disappointments, and sometimes I stick with a book far too long in the hopes that it will improve, but eventually, I do see the light and drop it. I'm happy to pick a book up again if there is a change in the writer and things improve.
I seem to be in a minority however. It is a little disconcerting, after having written and posted my happy happy reviews, that I seem to be the only person on the planet who actually enjoyed a book! There were people who didn't like the new JLI book! Granted, I'm thrilled to pieces because it includes some of my favorite people, and can therefore do without things like a plot. Heck, if it had Booster, Fire and Ice in it, they COULD sit around a table and look at photographs all day, and I'd be perfectly happy.
So...does a person NEED a great book, with fabulous writing and art to be supremely happy...or can one achieve bliss simply by reading a so-so story about one's favorite characters? I say the latter, but that's just me. I do know that I've got a whole crapload of books that are pretty terrible, but I don't care because one of my favorites shows up in it.
But they can still stop killing off perfectly good characters. What is WITH these people? Enough already!
posted by SallyP @ 11:53 AM
12 Comments:
Oh, but look at all of the '90s Green Lantern stories that readers supposedly HATED between Hal going nuts and becaming Parallax AND Green Lantern: Rebirth. Many old Green Lantern readers dropped the title like a hot potato, not liking how Hal was treated. But NOW, with all that's been going on with Green Lantern lately, if you go back and look at those stories from the '90s ...! Why, they're like grand opera! They're MARVELOUS. I guess it all depends on how you look at things.
Time and a little perspective are wonderful things. You are SO right.
I agree--the only series I've really utterly hated lately was Cry For Justice. Everything else, even the stuff people hated, I was all right with, even if I didn't love it.
And the new JLI book is GREAT! It's CLASSIC stuff, and sure the art isn't Maguire, but it's really great, nonetheless. I personally am loving it.
Even Cry for Justice had its moments, although it did go just a tad off the rails at the end.
Just a tad.
So, I read all of your blog entries? And I stopped reading the blogs that hate comic books? Because, frankly, I'm loathe to take seriously someone who invests that much into something they seem to so revile.
I'm mostly like you, Sally. It takes real crap for me to stop reading or storylines that tick me off, which says a lot about the books I've stopped reading.
One more comment supporting your view. While I think that complaining and expressing your opinion can result in a bigger effor for the writers to provide comics with better quality, I think that an excesive critizism is plainly useless.
Altought I must say, lately, this crossover-mania of Marvel is starting to really get me.
I guess for some people, the joy that they find in reading comics is actually in tearing them to pieces...which I find a little odd. I'm not saying that EVERYTHING should be happiness and light, because that is ridiculous...but still, this weird joy in savaging a book is a bit strange to me.
And then they wonder why Marvel and DC don't take their complaints seriously. Why WOULD they, when no matter what they put out, the critics will still buy it?
Well, I kept reading Green Arrow/Black Canary for the entire run, long after my instincts were telling me to stop... just because I like Ollie and Dinah. I don't regret it, either, because there were some good moments that made the stupid parts worthwhile.
And I'd have read Generation Lost even if it was written by a chimpanzee and drawn by that same chimpanzee with an 8-count box of Crayola, just because of the characters in it. So I guess we suffer from the same affliction.
Now the whole Emerald Twilight/Zero Hour business seems like grand opera because we know how it ends. We can see the complete pattern of the story, the warp and weft of it. But at the time...
...well, seriously. "Parallax" and "Extant". Did they just open up a dictionary and pick out their villain names?
It's true that I read for my favorite characters the most, although if it is particularly well done, I'll EVEN pick up Batman. That's probably why I rather liked the Batman RIP story...I didn't have the same invested in it as the serious fans.
But yeah, I read Green Arrow/Black Canary for far too long myself.
Well Arynne, Extant is a stupid name, but I rather get a charge out of Parallax. It just sounds...cool.
The reason that you love comics so much is why I keep coming around, Sally. It just makes me love comics and makes me happy. :) I need a break from the critics.
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