-Warren Ellis on the “Be My Baby” drumbeat.
-Awesome.
-Comics criticism does not need a language. It needs more people that understand how comics work. Which means, yes, knowing how to talk about the art.
the ever-changing header image
Public Enemies.
contact
You can email me at SWITZKE@GMAIL.COM
this is the sound of my lizard brain
- RT: @shutupfuckface: why ain't this blowing up? bodies are hitting the floor. http://bit.ly/eBx2W 2 hours ago
- @PAPPADEMAS oh nice 2 hours ago
- Heat is the greatest movie where Pacino kicks Henry Rollins through a glass door. This is a fact. 2 hours ago
- @PAPPADEMAS what am I doing? I'm talking to an empty telephone. 2 hours ago
- @sethhurley I ain't ya cuz you rat mothafucka 3 hours ago
Recent Comments
 | Zebtron A. Rama on scene from For A Few Dollars… |
 | sean witzke on scene from For A Few Dollars… |
| sean witzke on Pantheon no.362 |
 | amypoodle on Pantheon no.362 |
| Zebtron A. Rama on scene from For A Few Dollars… |
Blogroll
- 4th Letter
- A Trout in the Milk
- Andrew Hickey
- Armagideon Time
- Ashley Aguirre
- Bad Librarianship
- Beaucoupkevin
- Benjamin Birdie
- Brill Building
- Cable and Tweed
- Comics Reporter
- Craig J Clark
- Dan McDaid
- Dick Hyacinth
- Doppelganger
- Every Day is Like Wednesday
- FACEBUSTER DELUXE
- freeNIKES!
- I Love Rob Liefeld
- Jog
- Marc Singer
- Mindless Ones
- Motime Like The Present
- Our Hell
- Outpost 31
- PAH!
- RAB
- Sarcastic Fringehead
- Silence is a Rhythm Too
- Snap Judgements
- Strange Ink
- Tarzan vs IBM
- The Factual Opinion
- The Groovy Age of Horror
- The Hooded Utilitarian
- The House Next Door
- The Hurting
- The Invincible Super Blog
- Vibrational Match
- Vinyl is Heavy
- Visible Monsters
- Warren Peace Sings the Blues
webcomics
websites
- Andy Suriano
- Ashley Wood
- Becky Cloonan
- Ben Templesmith
- Brandon Graham
- Brendan Mccarthy
- Cameron Stewart
- Carrie Brownstein
- Cliff Chiang
- Cliptip
- Coilhouse
- Consequential Art
- Doklands
- Douglas Wolk
- Dustin Nguyen
- Ectoplasmosis
- Edgar Wright
- Eric Canete
- Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba
- Farel Dalrymple
- Geekanerd
- Golden Age Comic Book Stories
- Grantbridge Street
- Greg Rucka
- Hood Internet
- If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger
- Iron Will
- Jackson Publick
- Jamie McKelvie
- JH Williams 3
- Jim Mahfood
- Jim Rugg
- Keiron Gillen
- Marian Churchland
- Matt Fraction
- Mondo Ghosto
- NIN tourblog
- Patton Oswalt
- Paul Pope
- Scott C
- Sean Phillips
- Sidebar
- Solace in Cinema
- Some Came Running
- Soul Sides
- Steven Sanders
- Successless
- The Playlist
- The Sartorialist
- This Recording
- Todd Alcott
- Warren Ellis
- Waxin’ and Milkin’
- William Gibson
- Wooster Collective
10 comments
11/12/2007 at 9:50 pm
Mark Kardwell
Saw that Moebius docko a couple of months ago on BBC4. Wrote about it at the time, I seem to remember. Thought the makers decided on a narrative for Giraud’s life, and stuck with it, even if the truth didn’t always fit.
Warren missed out the greatness the JAMC also did with the “Ba-Boom Snap” drum beat.
And yeah, I get a little bit pissed-off with so many self-appointed comics critics on’t internet, who can write at great length about the writing, and about the context of the writing, and practically ignore the bloomin’ visual storytelling. Even a couple of pretty good ones.
11/13/2007 at 12:24 am
sean witzke
-Moebius doc – Yeah, it ain’t great. Everyone they interviewed is, though so it’s worth sitting through.
-Is there a master list of that beat’s usage? There’s something I should have an encyclopedic knowledge of…
-Y’know I’ve never ever claimed be a comics critic and this isn’t a criticism site. BUT, there’s a near across-the-board disregard of the most important part of the medium! We don’t need a new goddamn language to talk about if we’re not talking about it in the first place! Bitching about not using the term “camera angle” (which having read a few scripts is something that every. major. comic. writer. does.). Comics is not music and you are not a better writer by ignoring how the medium works.
I think the biggest problem is the marvel/dc/fantagraphic fixation – the large portion of the artwork is either rushed shit or intentionally secondary to the story. Whereas if you’re reading something that is true quality, the art should be doing more work than the writing ever does.
Tucker and Matthias seems to be the only people in the roundtable with any sense – it’s nice to think about a developing language of comics criticism, but we don’t have the basics yet for crap’s sake.
11/13/2007 at 5:06 am
pillock
I think if a script includes things like “camera angles”, even an instruction like “pan” or “zoom”…well, who the fuck cares, that’s there for the artist to interpret, not the reader, and it didn’t exactly hurt From Hell. Like that guy said a few decades back at the New Yorker, when he was asked to review a book on How To Write: “There’s only one way to write, and that’s well…and it’s your own goddamn business how you do it!”
Likewise, if someone wants to use these terms critically…fuck it, I don’t care. I only care about whether or not the criticism is any good, because if it sucks, it won’t matter what the terms are.
But you’re soooo right, Sean: nobody’s talking about the art, anyway. Look at that Toth Black Canary thing from a while back, how cool was that? How I wish someone who knew their oysters would have analyzed it at the time, but if they did I never found out where they were hiding. And that immediately made even such an ignoramus as me dare to want to write a regular comics-art feature called “What Would Toth Say?”, but I didn’t have a scanner so I didn’t end up embarrassing myself that way.
Even on the writing front, I always wonder why people aren’t saying more about (e.g.) Moore and Morrison. But the same thing goes only worse for talking about (say) Ditko, or Gil Kane, or Moebius, or even Schultz. Or Kurtzman, or Cole, or Kelly! Or Kirby, for heaven’s sake! I’d love to read more genuine comics criticism on the web, but it seems to be in short supply anyway, so why dicker about common terms? Make the fucking blogs, I say. The handful that I’ve found, that do deal with “whole comics” criticism, are fascinating; we should have more of those before worrying about whether their terminology is orthodox enough.
Good one.
11/13/2007 at 8:15 pm
sean witzke
That Toth Canary story was damn cool, wasn’t it? And beyond that Toth’s critique of that Steve Rude Johnny Quest short that brought it all into focus. Toth didn’t cotton to bad storytelling.
I sincerely think there’s a wide ignorance of the mdeium in it’s fans – I remember someone asking Ellis why Cassaday was better for Planetary when compared to someone like JH Williams on Desolation Jones. Ellis then explained why Cassaday’s realism and Williams dark psyhedelia are better suited for their books, and why classic superhero pulp tropes are far more shocking coming from him.
Or how the 9grid works for Watchmen or the cascade-style paneling on Sleeper, Robotman’s ironic dehumanized appearance over the course of Morrison’s Doom Patrol, Gulacy’s fragmenting of moments and control of time, Mignola simplifying his work while his writing get infinitely more complex in The Island, the transition from Phil Jiminez to Chris Weston as the 2nd volume of the Invisibles gets darker, etc., etc.
I’d be real interested to see an art-based comics blog. The problem is anyone that would know their shit is probably too busy making comics to dedicate the time+effort. Or they’re so far up their own ass they don’t know anything, as I’ve learned from looking at the art forums that Jared goes to.
We need to get scanners, I guess.
11/14/2007 at 12:14 am
Mark Kardwell
Funnily enough, the comics bloggers manning their scanners most diligently are the dudes just looking for innuendos or shots of the Batman punching out wildlife.
11/14/2007 at 12:21 am
sean witzke
And Chris Sims is the only funny one, yeah.
11/14/2007 at 1:29 am
pillock
Scanners!
I read something just the other day, on a link from Geoff Klock’s blog to Salon…somebody talking about Watchmen. And like the first thing they say is that Dave Gibbons’ art was pedestrian, second-rate, stiff, unimaginative, etc.
I wished that I was a scanner, at that moment. At least comics bloggers seem to avoid operating at that level of ignorance.
TCJ used to be good for talking about the art, don’t quite know if it’s still as good. Outside of that…it’s like you gotta go to school for it, or something. Although I’m reminded of what a friend told me about her art school experience: eventually she had to corner her drawing teacher and say “can you teach me how to draw, though? Because that’s what I really want to know.” And he said something like “oh, you want to know how to draw! Well, shit, I can teach you that! Come on, let’s go get some brushes and pencils, I’ll show you how to do it.”
Apparently the question had never come up before.
11/14/2007 at 5:08 am
sean witzke
Yeah. all I came away from learning from my old art teachers:
Mr. Feerar – always draw from real life, not from pictures, and quit being so damn anal about your shit.
Peter Pachoumis, who used to draw Star Trek TNG comics – you should always keep your storytelling clear, and don’t be a dick (that’s a life lesson).
Every other art teacher – art teachers don’t know a damn thing about anything, and Pete and Feerar were the exceptions that proved the rule.
Jared’s been after me to start drawing again. I’m really really wary about it.
—
Gibbons art is unimaginative? I feel all stabby.
11/14/2007 at 5:50 am
pillock
Like, let’s see you make every single image in twelve issues of comics into a full-on motif, jaded pop-culture columnist jerkoff…
Someone should really tell the reviewers and columnists of the world: jaded isn’t cool, it’s bad. When you get jaded enough to treat movies/books/comics/plays/records/TV shows/music performances/whatever as just a bunch of entry-level resumes you have to sort through and dump, it’s time to switch career tracks to something you’re still good at.
Pisses me off.
11/14/2007 at 6:07 am
sean witzke
I mean I’ve given people Watchmen that couldn’t read it because of the coloring, but even they could tell that Gibbons was busting science.
I think some people expect comics to be either Jim Lee or Chris Ware and anything inbetween must be of a lesser quality. BECAUSE THEY REALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT GOOD ART LOOKS LIKE. They know what they’re supposed to like. And then suddenly it’s okay to bash Dave fucking Gibbons.
But, to be direct, I don’t think you can blame being a cunt on being jaded.
Some people are just cunts.