Miscellany
October 21st, 2008 by david brothers | Tags: charlie huston, clothes, Colored Commentary, DC comics, pcs, superman
Thanks to my PCS cohort Jon Haehnle for the link.
I’m pretty much done talking about race in comics forever for the foreseeable future, and I’m kind of mad at comics. I made the mistake of catching up on a lot of books I don’t usually read (Secret Six, JSA, Action Comics, Superman) and I realized that I’d tricked myself into thinking that quality as a whole was on the rise. Untrue. DC publishes an astonishing amount of mediocre books. Marvel has a slightly better track record, even though Uncanny X-Men is ugly and Astonishing X-Men is annoying.
I don’t like reading mediocre books, and I’m starting to think that Saul Williams was right when he said, “Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given for you to understand. The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant.”
I don’t like the idea of reading the literary equivalent of applesauce and crushed pears just to find something to blog about. I’d rather be quiet and keep listening to this Anthony Hamilton album (Comin’ Where I’m From) and Nas’s latest album over and over again. I’d rather spend another couple hours on Nike iD designing some sneakers. I’d rather read Charlie Huston’s new novel, or download a free PDF of Caught Stealing, the first novel in the Hank Thompson series. Maybe I could buy these for my birthday instead.
If I had to choose between blogging about Nightwing/Dini’s ‘Tec/Batgirl’s latest issue/that new issue of Mighty Avengers where Captain Marvel cries for a million pages/Superman screaming about how his dog is a good dog worship him WORSHIP HIM HU-MANS or making a flow chart/liveblog about yet another 100 Bullets read through, I’d choose the flow chart. It’d be interesting and about something good, rather than something not worth reading.
I’ll take anything but mediocre comics. In a way, they’re worse than bad comics. Mediocre books at least have some kind of potential or pedigree or talent that hints at a better result than what we got. They’re the very definition of wasted potential. No one expected anything great from Ultimates 3. Geoff Johns on Action Comics, though? I thought I was going to get more than the millionth Superman vs Brainiac fight, with the added bonus of the third death of Jon Kent in the past fifteen years.
Anyway, I need new things to talk about. All that other stuff is old and busted. If I have to keep talking about crap, I’m going to burn out.
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I’m not sure what it means that the only thing I wanted to reply with was “Nike? Really? You’re a very aware person, you do know what that company does, right?”
I’m the opposite. I believe that I’ve gone on too long NOT talking about crap. It’s my bread and butter.
This article makes what a friend told me about the Big Two hold true. No matter the quality of the various comics, Marvel and DC NEED to have quality in their top titles. Look at all the comics you mention. Superman, Action Comics, Detective Comics, Mighty Avengers, Uncanny X-Men and Astonishing X-Men. JSA is borderline, since it is a high profile work by one of DC’s top writer guys. Secret Six and Batgirl suffer from their own problem, based on being seriously awesome a couple years back and currently unable to follow up on that, but that’s not part of the point.
So yeah. When the spine of Marvel and DC looks rotten, your opinion on the rest of the line goes with it. Which is unfortunate because even in the spine of the companies, there are still some true quality. Batman, Invincible Iron Man, everything Final Crisis, Captain America, etc. Hell, even I’ll say that New Ways to Die was fun shit.
My personal opinion is that if you can’t write about a comic despite how bad or mediocre it is, you just aren’t looking at it the right way. In fact, I consider mediocre comics to be the safest thing to review, since you don’t come off as overly gushing or overly critical.
I already forgot if I had a point with any of this, but I need to get ready for work. I think I was going to talk about Marvel Apes for some reason. Eh, forget it.
@bgaesop: No, what does Nike do.
Sound like you are burnt out already, to be honest.
@Illvillainy: Yeah, that’s probably true.
You could always start blogging about muppets.
More video game blogging? Like is there a rap version of Guitar Hero/Rock Band? If not, why not? Or a funk version to make Digital Femme thrilled…
Or that muppet thing. All Fraggles, all the time!