He might not even know we exist, but Gary Groth’s getting quite a lot of attention from the comics blogosphere over his recent critical call to arms. Alan David Doane (whose writing is always sharp, even when it’s 180-degrees from my own POV, and who moreover has yet to give me a hard time about having the initials ADD in my blogbreviation) offers a brief take on Groth’s return to the pages of The Comics Journal. At this point, there seems to be something of a consensus forming about the piece: We all wanted to like it, and we all did, sorta. His heart and mind were both in the right place, but something about the essay seems to have left us all a little let down. I’d liken it to an opened bottle of soda you left in the fridge while you were on vacation. You made sure to screw the cap on extra tight, and the fridge was extra cold, and when you get back from the airport you’re all dehydrated from the recycled air on the plane and you pour a glass and take a big gulp and ahhhh! Delightfully chilly refreshment… except that it’s a little… flat. Alan, Bill Sherman, and I all applauded Gary’s sentiment, but each of us seemed to be looking for a little something more. I think we all also agree that the additional essays on criticism by Greg Cwiklik and Rich Kreiner that flanked Groth’s piece (not to mention actual good criticism in action, in the form of by Darcy Sullivan and Daniel Holloway, as well as the hugely rewarding interview with Mad-man Will Elder conducted by Groth himself) provided just such a little something.
Also worthy of note in Doane’s piece is his lament that the Journal is “not entirely holding the moral high ground when it comes to providing critical analysis of worthwhile, groundbreaking works.” It turns out that Journal editor Milo George is well aware of this fact–indeed, it’s part of his plan! This thread on the Journal’s message board indicates that timely reviews of even major works are not a priority at George’s Journal. As someone who believes that (for better, in most cases; for worse, in some) the Journal is the magazine of record for the comics medium, it upsets me to see that a premium is not placed on documenting the works that define the state-of-the-art-form as they come out. Important books can wait months or even more than a year before being discussed in the Journal’s pages, and though I may be simply back-seat editing at this point (it’s just the editor in me; I happen to think the Journal’s as good now as it’s been since I’ve been reading it), I think the comics-reading public’s the poorer for this–to say nothing of the creators of the work in question, who surely feel the dearth of good print criticism as dearly as we do, or of the Journal itself, which I believe would be more of a living, breathing thing if it were an up-to-date chronicle of the medium’s best (and worst).