It’s a not-so-Secret War in the comics blogosphere! Tim O’Neil’s Comics-Journal review of Grant Morrison’s The Filth and his subsequent anti-superhero blog post have inspired an array of erudite and passionate responses. Yesterday, in the process of writing my own response, I pointed to Dave Fiore, Dave Fiore again, and Jim Henley. Today, we’ve been joined by Dave Intermittent, who refutes the argument that only a character’s creators have interesting things to say about that character and that personal taste should not be confused with objective standards; J.W. Hastings, who looks at the role that superhero-scapegoating plays in the comics-culture heirarchy; and Rose Curtin, who points out that demands for allegory often cannot and perhaps should not be met, and emphasizes the strengths of metaphor instead. Tim himself is too busy doing his stellar replacement-Deppey job to respond at length, but is happy to have started a discussion. I’m happy, too: The blogosphere has emerged as a source of intelligent writing on comics that serves to balance the heretofore prevailing view that “intelligent writing on comics” and “open to taking superheroes seriously” are mutually exclusive propositions. (Sure enough, a thread on this topic started by blogger Dave Fiore in a bastion of that viewpoint has already been suicide-hijacked by the usual suspects suspect.)
Ironic, isn’t it, that as the comics blogosphere rises as one to defend the validity of the much-maligned superhero genre, said blogosphere’s most well-respected proponent of said genre accuses said blogosphere of groupthink!
And the thing is, NeilAlien’s not wrong. Taking the time to carefully self-refute the most potentially incendiary and inaccurate aspects of this line of thought–that we’re not diverse enough in our aesthetic and literary preferences (we are), that it’s bad that we all link to the same things (it