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Here's me judging an artist: This thing he or she made was pretty good. This other thing was not so good. I just invented criticism.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:23
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prefect posted:Chinatown is still a fantastic film. So is Rosemary's Baby, Macbeth and bunch of his other works.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:45
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prefect posted:You judge an artist by his best works, not his worst. The thing is that Sim just got better and better as an artist and letterer, but the series became increasingly burdened by his weird agenda. Arguably, the second half of Cerebus is his mature work as an artist.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:53
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:context is everything. for example, what about artists who have a long period of great work and then get lovely? nobody who says the Rolling Stones are one of the greatest bands of all time is talking about anything they've done in the past 35 years. if you factor that stuff in, they go from being an all-time great band to being a just average band. if anything, i would say that is distorting things unnecessarily. Timing is everything. If Chris Claremont started making books at the wrong time, nobody would have recognized him. But he hasn't necessarily become a better or worse writer, but our standards have changed dramatically. Another factor is that comic books are part of a creative team, as well. The friction between Claremont, Byrne, and Shooter produced some fantastic comic books. But once that friction was removed, Uncanny X-Men under Claremont was always diminished. Quite frankly, I think nearly anybody can produce a work of creative "genius" given the right timing, peers, and environment. Whether or not an individual can consistently produce great - or at least good - material is the mark of genuine genius, not being a one or even three-hit wonder. But you don't need to average it all, you can say "Frank Miller had great runs on Daredevil and Batman (and maybe Sin City), and then he started eating out of his own rear end in a top hat", too. Music is a different story because it's created differently, but maybe The Rolling Stones were an average band ahead of their time. But as time went on, they didn't develop their sound, maybe they rested too much on account of their success - whatever - but they became behind the times, and in that regard, they aren't great musicians. Maybe it'd be best to say they're musicians who wrote some great songs, but that they're not great musicians. They may be influential, they may make lots of money, but they weren't massively talented enough for their sound to grow with them. Despite their lyrical assertions, time was not on their side, at least creatively. And the same goes for Claremont or Miller. They were way ahead of their time, then time passed them by, but all they have are the same old ideas. So, it's similarly accurate to say The Dark Phoenix Saga was a great chunk of comics, but Claremont isn't a great writer.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:57
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that seems rather unnecessarily wordy to me, but to each his own. no real right or wrong in this scenario.
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Jan 12, 2015 22:03
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Do we really need to have this conversation. Again.
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Jan 12, 2015 22:12
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Anyway here's Kurt Busiek getting mad that Claremont/Byrne is bad X-Men and the Dark Phoenix ruined things and he won't read the book until they change it. (and Claremont's response). 
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Jan 12, 2015 22:16
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Busiek's a wrong whiner, Dark Phoenix Saga rules
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Jan 12, 2015 22:18
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Yeah. It's a great triple whammy of someone thinking Claremont/Byrne ruined X-Men, it being Busiek and that arguably the entire X-Men's defining run is the breaking point.
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Jan 12, 2015 22:24
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I just remember seeing those old Uncanny letters (not from Busiek) asking why Wolverine is such a jerk and wondering why he's such an rear end in a top hat to Cyclops, etc. One era's timeless classic is another era's fan rage, and may it always be so. But Busiek got to be the guy who came up with the idea used to undo The Dark Phoenix Saga, so I guess he had the last sneer.
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Jan 12, 2015 22:28
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Kurt Busiek is so silver age that probably broke his heart. Has he talked about this letter anywhere?
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Jan 12, 2015 22:32
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I don't remember if he mentioned the letter specifically, but he was a guest on the Rachel & Miles podcast, where he extolled the virtues of the Silver Age team. He sort of comes off as Marvel's equivalent to Mark Waid there.
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Jan 12, 2015 22:35
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Metal Loaf posted:I don't remember if he mentioned the letter specifically, but he was a guest on the Rachel & Miles podcast, where he extolled the virtues of the Silver Age team. I once asked Busiek at a con who was more knowledgeable about comics, him or Mark Waid. I think he said Waid. I then asked Waid the same question and he said neither of them could touch Bevroot.
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Jan 12, 2015 22:37
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I remember reading that Gruenwald was widely considered the trivia/continuity king in his day.
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Jan 12, 2015 22:39
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Metal Loaf posted:I remember reading that Gruenwald was widely considered the trivia/continuity king in his day. Its not like he was so good they would give him a series to write the bios of every character no matter how obscure they were!
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Jan 12, 2015 22:40
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Waterhaul posted:Yeah. It's a great triple whammy of someone thinking Claremont/Byrne ruined X-Men, it being Busiek and that arguably the entire X-Men's defining run is the breaking point. It's also sort of funny that what he saw as the defining era of X-Men is the middle of the Silver Age series, which is far and away the worst pre-Image-era X-Men run.
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Jan 12, 2015 23:46
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Die Laughing posted:Kurt Busiek is so silver age that probably broke his heart. Has he talked about this letter anywhere? Someone posted it on his Facebook last year and he deleted it and said he's discussed it enough but I can't find any discussions anywhere.
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Jan 12, 2015 23:56
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bobkatt013 posted:Its not like he was so good they would give him a series to write the bios of every character no matter how obscure they were! Gruenwald had a fanzine before he got hired at Marvel called Omniverse, where he tried to codify a multiversal continuity that incorporated every comic ever published. Apparently it had articles speculating about stuff like whether Howard the Duck was from Ducksburg or the MU.
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Jan 13, 2015 00:01
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Rhyno posted:Someone posted it on his Facebook last year and he deleted it and said he's discussed it enough but I can't find any discussions anywhere.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:17
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Ghostlight posted:He didn't say there were any discussions to find. He said he'd discussed it enough. I was assuming he'd talked about it in the past somewhere. He's usually pretty chill on FB but that must be a sore point with him. Or he was having a bad day.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:21
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The thing is, he wrote that when Dark Phoenix was fresh, so it probably just rubbed him wrong, but it's since been canonified making his complaint seem silly. It doesn't help that since then there has been a ton of poo poo in the X-Men that even if Dark Phoenix wasn't good, it'd still look good in comparison. I'm sure there were similar reactions to the death of Gwen Stacy or Bendis outing Daredevil.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:29
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There are people to this day, and they're not hard to find, who say that Marvel as an entity completely jumped the shark when Gwen Stacy died and they've been unable to enjoy anything they've put out since then, on any level.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:32
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Lurdiak posted:There are people to this day, and they're not hard to find, who say that Marvel as an entity completely jumped the shark when Gwen Stacy died and they've been unable to enjoy anything they've put out since then, on any level. These people could be no younger than 55 years old.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:36
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zoux posted:These people could be no younger than 55 years old. I certainly hope so, otherwise they are crazy. On the other hand, that means they're 55 year olds posting on the CBR boards about how all modern comics suck, so I hope not.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:37
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Skwirl posted:The thing is, he wrote that when Dark Phoenix was fresh, so it probably just rubbed him wrong, but it's since been canonified making his complaint seem silly. It doesn't help that since then there has been a ton of poo poo in the X-Men that even if Dark Phoenix wasn't good, it'd still look good in comparison. I'm sure there were similar reactions to the death of Gwen Stacy or Bendis outing Daredevil. In addition, to be fair, Busiek only would have been 20-21 years old when that issue was published, and the Silver Age team were his actual (and presumably treasured) childhood memories of these characters. Lurdiak posted:I certainly hope so, otherwise they are crazy. On the other hand, that means they're 55 year olds posting on the CBR boards about how all modern comics suck, so I hope not. The recent AXIS brand synergy retcons put me on mind of a CBR poster I once saw complaining that Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were ruined when it was revealed that their parents were Magneto and Magda rather than the Whizzer and Miss America. But, again being fair, what's logical to us may well have seemed like something Claremont, Byrne, Michelinie and Gruenwald (and whoever else was working on Avengers at the time) conjured out of thin air because Magneto and Pietro had similar-looking hair. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jan 13, 2015 |
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Jan 13, 2015 01:38
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Lurdiak posted:I certainly hope so, otherwise they are crazy. On the other hand, that means they're 55 year olds posting on the CBR boards about how all modern comics suck, so I hope not. Uncle... Uncle Alan?
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Jan 13, 2015 02:07
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Lurdiak posted:I certainly hope so, otherwise they are crazy. On the other hand, that means they're 55 year olds posting on the CBR boards about how all modern comics suck, so I hope not. Nerds grow up man  One day you will be 80 years old talking about how Marvel ruined their line up when they made Captain America a robot.
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Jan 13, 2015 02:19
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zoux posted:Nerds grow up man That seems like the opposite of growing up.
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Jan 13, 2015 02:23
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Lurdiak posted:That seems like the opposite of growing up. I'm about to start reading that Eisner/Miller book. I wonder if there were traces of crazy Miller in the interviews. I also have to admire the balls of whoever (or is it whomever?) thought "Hey, let's make a parallel to that Hitchcock/Truffaut book"
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Jan 13, 2015 04:07
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Lurdiak posted:I certainly hope so, otherwise they are crazy. On the other hand, that means they're 55 year olds posting on the CBR boards about how all modern comics suck, so I hope not. I once knew a man born around... like... the early seventies?... that was convinced that all comics and TV post-60s were crap and that only Elvis and the Beach Boys were any good, only sixties sitcoms were worth watching, and anything after the Silver Age was a living nightmare. Unless it was filled with tits, then it might be alright. Also he was racist, so it's like he was completing a full set of outdated, embarrassing notions. So yes, these people exist, the kind that dream of a Golden Age that they were never actually around for.
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Jan 13, 2015 04:57
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One of my bosses has literally never read Ultimate Spiderman because the title implies the Lee/Kirby/Ditko Spiderman was the Penultimate Spiderman. There's no cut-off date for whackadoo comic opinions.
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Jan 13, 2015 05:16
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Lurdiak posted:I certainly hope so, otherwise they are crazy. On the other hand, that means they're 55 year olds posting on the CBR boards about how all modern comics suck, so I hope not. 55, 25, what's the difference?
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Jan 13, 2015 07:44
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Quick, someone post that series of comic covers about aging that is merely coincidental to this conversation. Fake edit: no matter how old you are, you think it is the age best suited to judge pop culture and your favorite elements in relation to the sum total of what you have experienced (spoiler alert: your favorite things are always The Best Ever). McSpanky fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Jan 13, 2015 |
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Jan 13, 2015 07:59
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Vincent posted:I'm about to start reading that Eisner/Miller book. I wonder if there were traces of crazy Miller in the interviews. Well, it looks like it was published after Eisner's death by a few months, but I'm not finding anywhere that says when the interview took place. Miller has said himself that his world was shaken from its hinges on 9/11, so it's entirely possible that his crazy will be on full display there, though the subject matter might have made it easier for him to focus on what he likely imagines are the good times.
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Jan 13, 2015 11:59
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You know, I re-read The Dark Knight Returns not that long ago, and Miller was plenty crazy before 9/11.
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Jan 13, 2015 12:04
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You see the seeds of it, yeah. The facile dismissal of psychiatry, the obsession with extreme masculinity, the Death Wish-style view of morality, the quasi-militia movement Batman and the Sons of Batman become at the end... it's all pointing in an obvious direction.
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Jan 13, 2015 14:12
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Also Catwoman being a madam all of a sudden for no good reason, because she's too old to be a whore herself (but Miller made drat sure to make her one in Year One, of course).
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Jan 13, 2015 16:09
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Senior Woodchuck posted:You see the seeds of it, yeah. The facile dismissal of psychiatry, the obsession with extreme masculinity, the Death Wish-style view of morality, the quasi-militia movement Batman and the Sons of Batman become at the end... it's all pointing in an obvious direction. Yeah, I wouldn't want to judge a creator on one work because it might be the characters or the themes of the story, but when they keep going back to that same well things start to get suspicious (and that brings us back to Claremont  ).
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Jan 13, 2015 17:26
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What happened to the question thread? Anyways, is it just me or is it way more common for female characters to be referred to by their name rather than their code name. Jean Gray, Emma Frost, Kitty Pryde, and so on. I know there are some male villians that go by just their name, Maxwell Lord for example, but what about male heroes? Charles Xavier I guess? Does anyone still call J'onn J'onzz Martian Manhunter? You guys are probably going to post a bunch of obvious ones that have slipped my mind for a minute and I'm going to feel like an idiot. zoux fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jan 13, 2015 |
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Jan 13, 2015 17:27
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There were a bit too many stickies but both it and the recommendation thread are still open and around.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:31
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