The Ganges material in Tucker Stone’s installment of Tom Spurgeon’s decade-in-review interview series is pretty great. I like all the attention he pays to how the mere size of the page Huizenga’s working with for the Ignatz format gives him latitude he doesn’t have in Or Else or Fight or Run–that’s a pretty terrific point, especially considering how much the Ganges comics depend on reproducing certain effects across the space of the page. Jesus, can you imagine “A Sunset” as appearing in Ganges rather than Or Else? Drooooool
But let’s face it, I came here to kvetch about Tucker’s latest hand-waving about the futility of making value judgments as critics. He responds to Tom Spurgeon’s (accurate) assessment of people who summarily dismiss non-genre comics as “ignorant” by more or less attacking the very idea that anyone should read anything but what they’re already reading, labeling those who’d argue otherwise “boring assholes.” It’s similar to how, during the SPX critcs roundtable, someone mentioned the critical discourse, and he equated it to people on YouTube calling each other cunts.
First of all it dodges Tom’s specific point, which is that it really is ignorant to dismiss comics like Ganges as boring out of hand. Yes, all criticism is subjective, everyone’s coming at everything from different places, but if you can’t say “Ganges isn’t boring,” there’s no point to writing about comics at all. “Comics culture,” as everyone from Wizard to the The Beat to the San Diego Comic Con to me understand it, is “comics plus genre work from other media,” which is an indication of how hard non-genre comics have to fight to gain a foothold. It’s big problem, and Tom’s not wrong for pointing it out.
Secondly, Tucker tries to back up his argument by reversing it, saying it’s just as stupid to harass big Anders Nilsen fans into reading Batman. But that’s a strawman. Can you find anyone (besides maybe Rob Clough and Domingos) who dismisses genre the way so many superhero fans do the reverse, so that you would even have to harass them? Gary Groth loves Jack Kirby, Art Spiegelman wrote a book about Jack Cole, Joe McCulloch has read every Garth Ennis Punisher comic, and Tom Spurgeon has waged years-long campaigns on behalf of the Luna Brothers and Lee/Kirby Thor. On the other hand it’s almost impossible to avoid best-of lists that don’t include anything further afield than Mark Waid’s Irredeemable. It’s a problem in one direction; it’s not a problem in the other direction.
I mean, if you met someone who only watched superhero movies, you’d think that was weird and dumb, and you’d be right, and saying so wouldn’t make you a boring asshole, it’d make you a person who was right. Moreover, saying so does not mean you’ve extrapolated that they’re some horrible CSI Miami-watching mouthbreather or anything else about “who they really are” or whatever. You’re just a critic, addressing what people are saying about specific comics, which is a valid thing for a critic to do.
Finally, Tucker’s coup de grace is the fact that most of the audience doesn’t really care about critics or critical approaches to what they enjoy reading anyway. But so what? Most of the people in the theater with us at Up in the Air yesterday have never read Pauline Kael. But criticism is not therefore an egomaniacal waste of time, any more than making art that most of the audience for that art form doesn’t really care about would be. Kevin Huizenga shouldn’t hang it up just because he’s not Jim Davis; similarly, we shouldn’t crumple up the idea of analyzing art and arguing for standards and throw it in the trash because many people would just rather read/watch/listen and then do something else.
Baby Dayliner!
Bingo!
You are on fuckin’ fire lately. That’s 2 real ass-kickers in a row.
That movie analogy is exactly where I was going in my head right after I read that article. Swap “comics” with any other form of media in Tucker’s response and it all starts unraveling pretty quick.
This is a complete tangent, but ever since David Weddle & Bradley Thompson (of BSG) started producing (and occasionally writing) for CSI (the original, Las Vegas version) it’s been pretty damn good. (The addition of Laurence Fishburne to the cast was a good idea, too). The crimes are well-thought out in terms of their “puzzle” nature, but the show is spending a lot more time dealing with the nuances of how the crime/violence goes on to effect everyone involved.
I love Tucker to pieces, but I’m in disagreement with him here too, which is always fun. My own thoughts while reading that rant was that I’ve been reading a lot of superhero/mainstream comics readers complain lately at how bad everything is, which makes me want to jump up and down and point at all the great stuff I’m seeing (Urasawa, Act-I-Vate, Umbrella Academy, Grandville, Kate Beaton, Kevin Cannon, Nate Powell, I could go on all day). These are comics fans who feel that the medium is dying, when they’re so limited in what they’re seeing. That’s who Spurge is talking about, and that’s who I want to talk to and point in the direction of everything else out there that they would enjoy if they just dared to take a step outside the realm of spandex.
“we shouldn’t crumple up the idea of analyzing art and arguing for standards and throw it in the trash because many people would just rather read/watch/listen and then do something else.”
I don’t see where Tucker says that. Analyzing art and arguing for standards is not the same as scolding the great-unwashed for their reading habits.
By the same token, I don’t see where I or anyone else says we should “scold the great-unwashed.”
Right! But that’s what Tucker’s talking about, isn’t it? Cross-purposes, everywhere.