Bill Sherman offers another thoughtful take on Gary Groth’s call for more rigorous comics criticism, emphasizing the actual need for service-journalism style “reviews” as opposed to criticism proper. He also points out that the comics blogosphere is more willing to dole out negatives, and do so fairly eloquently, than perhaps Gary gives us credit for. Although in fairness to Gary, comics blogs are still a relatively rarer content model than webzines, news sites, fan sites, and message boards, all of which seem to be more of what Gary was talking about in his “they’re sometimes good, but” dismissal of online criticism. (Also, even the non-“fannish” sites Bill lists, this one included, take superhero comics seriously, so in Gary-Land, how good could we be? 😉 )
Mark my words, Bill: Next year’s San Diego Comic Con will have a panel on comics blogging.