|
|
Post by Nowhere Man on May 11, 2014 9:27:16 GMT -5
As much as I like the idea of the shared universe, it does but a heavy strain on certain aspects of reality, doesn't it? For instance, how can there be real horror in a world where Superman exists? A world were Superman exists simply doesn't allow for a Lovecraftian philosophy beyond the very superficial trappings of extra-dimensional monsters and the like. This is why even psychological realism (much less physical realism) simply doesn't work in superhero universes.
|
|
|
|
Post by fanboystranger on May 11, 2014 9:56:39 GMT -5
As much as I like the idea of the shared universe, it does but a heavy strain on certain aspects of reality, doesn't it? For instance, how can there be real horror in a world where Superman exists? A world were Superman exists simply doesn't allow for a Lovecraftian philosophy beyond the very superficial trappings of extra-dimensional monsters and the like. This is why even psychological realism (much less physical realism) simply doesn't work in superhero universes. It does strain credulity, doesn't it? That's why we get things like Superman's weakness to magic and the like. I'd rather see books stand on their own rather than see every piece of the puzzle have to fit into place within the universe, even if I sometimes admire the effort it takes to make those pieces fit. Superman should be able to do anything.
I don't think psychological 'realism' necessarily doesn't work in a superhero universe. (I put 'realism' in quotes because there's very little that's realistic about superhero universes in general. A truly realistic superhero book would be one issue of a guy donning tights to fight crime, then 25 issues of him in traction being fed through a tube.) You can make compelling stories from a psychological mindset even for the most powerful characters, but I think solely basing your stories upon that is a mistake. For example, there's been any number of great stories about Clark Kent's mindset over the years, but I find a continued emphasis on the "Man" over the "Super" to be a superficial, unimaginative take on the character. On the other hand, something like Daredevil has been consistantly entertaining over the past 30+ years because it has followed Matt Murdock's inner life as much as his outer life.
|
|
|
|
Post by gothos on May 11, 2014 11:51:26 GMT -5
Classifying someone's intelligence and morality by definitions of high / low is intolerance. At a political level this can get very sinister very quickly. Dupont isnt classifying people's intelligence and morals according to their tastes though. Very big difference. I can't remember if I used the term "lowbrow" or its brethren to describe the way full-fledged elitists felt about things, but I don't subscribe to the term except as descriptive of that attitude. For me a better contrast is between works that gratify the audience quickly, and those that take time to deliver gratification. It's close to what Leslie Fiedler calls "earned" and "unearned" gratification, though even those terms are a little dicey. |
|
|
|
Post by gothos on May 11, 2014 11:54:58 GMT -5
DEFENSE #4-- Superheroes Can Be as Elitist as Anything Else Geoff Klock's 2002 HOW TO READ SUPERHERO COMICS AND WHY departs from any and all critiques that start with analyzing superheroes in their Golden and Silver Age manifestations. In contrast to the other books mentioned, Klock really does focus only on the genre of superheroes, because he's interested in the "third movement" of superhero comic books, exemplified by DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN. To many fans these works represent the period in which almost nothing but the superhero genre sold well in the Direct Market, but to Klock they symbolize "the birth of self-consciousness in the superhero narrative." Klock is only interested in reading superhero comics if they demonstrate a level of complex thought approximate to that of canonical literature; that's why he fairly salivates when he sees a character like the Joker-- whom Klock calls a "reservoir of reflexivity"-- say something that makes him sound aware of his own status as a comics character. While Klock definitely speaks to a segement of comics-readership that likes self-aware superheroes, he really doesn't end up saying anything pertinent about the genre as a whole. But at least he clearly sets himself apart from other methodologies in his introduction, even if his summation of those methodologies can be criticized-- as I'll show in my next post. Look at the lowest selling Marvel super hero comic with a #1 on the cover. Now look at sales for Walking Dead #1, Raw Magazine #1, Bone #1, Cerebus #1, pick a celebrated comic, pick a universally praised comic, and compare the sales of the first issue to Dazzler #1. In fact, for the overwhelming majority of them, pick the highest selling issue in the run and compare it to Youngblood #1. In some instances I bet you can add up the total print run of every issue and not quite catch up to Jim Lee X-Men #1 or Todd McFarlane Spider-Man #1. I think Marvel and DC's cancellation threshold is significantly higher than the average print run of Love And Rockets, or Strangers In Paradise. Now look what happens when you have a variant cover, sales multiply. That's an indisputable fact. Look at the names that boost sales. Rob Liefeld is one. Look at any Marvel/DC board and count how many complaints are posted for every single issue by loyal (habitual) fans. They buy every month, and complain every month. Look at the people who were denied interior work at Marvel and DC, like Sam Keith, and compare that to the dude that traces pornography, who actually did land steady interior work. What does any of this have to do with what I wrote? |
|
|
|
Post by gothos on May 11, 2014 12:01:32 GMT -5
That's simply the way the cookie crumbles, we have zero control of that and it has little to do with whether or not superhero comics as a genre are good or bad. I know, but it does allow bad super hero comics to continue to be profitable. That was my point. In other genres, well, most other genres, bad comics don't sell. In Marvel and DC all comics sell, good or bad. And often times the sales figures have less to do with the quality of the contents and more to do with some sort of speculator hype, or the characters featured, which encourages the publishers to demand deaths and rebirths and first appearances and reboots and renumberings and Wolverine in everything instead of demanding a quality product. And then if they sell enough, they want it every couple weeks. At that point in my opinion it's impossible to assemble a good comic. But I have no doubt that all the talent at Marvel and DC are doing their best, and want to create great comics. A combination of the companies hiring people with a style that fits the company style rather than actual talent, and impossible deadlines, and overbearing editorial interference stack the odds against the product actually being good though. They all directly correlate to the quality of the product. Which is why I do not believe super hero comics can't be good. But I am of the opinion that long running ongoing monthly shared universe comics of any genre can't be good. There have been many periods in which both bad and good comics sold well. For the life of me, I can't understand why the Golden Age BLUE BEETLE sold well. During the 50s horror craze few comics were as good as the ECs, but they sold anyway. Silver Age qimmick-comics like "the Haunted Tank" usually had nothing but decent-to-good art to recommend them. |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 11, 2014 12:02:35 GMT -5
Look at the lowest selling Marvel super hero comic with a #1 on the cover. Now look at sales for Walking Dead #1, Raw Magazine #1, Bone #1, Cerebus #1, pick a celebrated comic, pick a universally praised comic, and compare the sales of the first issue to Dazzler #1. In fact, for the overwhelming majority of them, pick the highest selling issue in the run and compare it to Youngblood #1. In some instances I bet you can add up the total print run of every issue and not quite catch up to Jim Lee X-Men #1 or Todd McFarlane Spider-Man #1. I think Marvel and DC's cancellation threshold is significantly higher than the average print run of Love And Rockets, or Strangers In Paradise. Now look what happens when you have a variant cover, sales multiply. That's an indisputable fact. Look at the names that boost sales. Rob Liefeld is one. Look at any Marvel/DC board and count how many complaints are posted for every single issue by loyal (habitual) fans. They buy every month, and complain every month. Look at the people who were denied interior work at Marvel and DC, like Sam Keith, and compare that to the dude that traces pornography, who actually did land steady interior work. What does any of this have to do with what I wrote? I think I quoted the wrong person |
|
|
|
Post by gothos on May 11, 2014 12:04:31 GMT -5
As much as I like the idea of the shared universe, it does but a heavy strain on certain aspects of reality, doesn't it? For instance, how can there be real horror in a world where Superman exists? A world were Superman exists simply doesn't allow for a Lovecraftian philosophy beyond the very superficial trappings of extra-dimensional monsters and the like. This is why even psychological realism (much less physical realism) simply doesn't work in superhero universes. Morrison's DOOM PATROL handled the situation pretty well. In one issue the mainstream superheroes show up the handle the threat of the Brotherhood of Dada. The DP shows, gently nudges them out of the way, and explains that this is their kind of gig. That's the author's way of telling the reader not to let himself be hemmed in by mainstream conventions. |
|
ironchimp
Full Member
Simian Overlord
Posts: 456 
|
Post by ironchimp on May 11, 2014 14:22:19 GMT -5
Classifying someone's intelligence and morality by definitions of high / low is intolerance. At a political level this can get very sinister very quickly. Dupont isnt classifying people's intelligence and morals according to their tastes though. Very big difference. I can't remember if I used the term "lowbrow" or its brethren to describe the way full-fledged elitists felt about things, but I don't subscribe to the term except as descriptive of that attitude. For me a better contrast is between works that gratify the audience quickly, and those that take time to deliver gratification. It's close to what Leslie Fiedler calls "earned" and "unearned" gratification, though even those terms are a little dicey. oh course - "low" / "high" are just how you summarised argument #2 - and exactly how that argument has expressed itself. The steps along that argument are very different to a critique of a genre because they attach "objective" moral and intellectual value to a genre. Once you start seeing things as intellectually and/or morally inferior to others then you then next step is to start blaming that art for problems in society as we saw with Wertham's notion of comics as "degenerate" and responsible for youth delinquency - which ultimately led to a senate enquiry and comics being self censored. |
|
|
|
Post by gothos on May 11, 2014 19:20:21 GMT -5
I can't remember if I used the term "lowbrow" or its brethren to describe the way full-fledged elitists felt about things, but I don't subscribe to the term except as descriptive of that attitude. For me a better contrast is between works that gratify the audience quickly, and those that take time to deliver gratification. It's close to what Leslie Fiedler calls "earned" and "unearned" gratification, though even those terms are a little dicey. oh course - "low" / "high" are just how you summarised argument #2 - and exactly how that argument has expressed itself. The steps along that argument are very different to a critique of a genre because they attach "objective" moral and intellectual value to a genre. Once you start seeing things as intellectually and/or morally inferior to others then you then next step is to start blaming that art for problems in society as we saw with Wertham's notion of comics as "degenerate" and responsible for youth delinquency - which ultimately led to a senate enquiry and comics being self censored. Specifically, Feiffer's argument-- or the part of it I referenced-- made the distinction between "lower-class" and "middle-class," in the sense that Feiffer seemed to be suspicious of the self-congratulations of the middle class-- something I think can be extended to the so-called "high class" as well. But Feiffer would probably have more or less validated the lowbrow/middlebrow/highbrow distinctions that were current in his time. But he's almost alone in valuing "instant gratification" in itself. I think it's important to think about the reasons that people make the "high/middle/low" distinctions, but w/o taking them as representative of reality. By most standard evaluations, the Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR would be aimed at "lowbrows," but I find it more imaginative than many works validated as "high" art. The "archetypal approach" I'm talking about is aimed at understanding how "low art," even IF it's quickly made and aimed at instant gratification, can still embody the cultural viewpoints of the creators in complex ways, and deserves to be fairly evaluated in those terms. |
|
|
|
Post by Ozymandias on May 12, 2014 17:07:25 GMT -5
[…] there's obviously a large section of [pop culture] that critics of all media consider lowbrow and unchallenging-- be it romance-fiction, westerns, cozy mysteries or superheroes. Would all of those genres be in need of defense? Some more than other? Would other genres like science-fiction be above attacks from critics? Some people like to be challenged, in their professional activity, in their relationships, in the way they spend their free time. Others don't. When it comes to art, as a way to fill part of our free time, some will turn to "Anna Karenina", "Unforgiven" or "Watchmen". Others will read romance novels, watch western movies or enjoy superhero comics. But if someone tells you that they always seek the former and avoid the later, much as they would like you to believe they never indulge in that "guilty pleasure", don't. That's what genres are for, it's a comfortable place to go to, when you want to disconnect. |
|
|
|
Post by gothos on May 12, 2014 17:38:45 GMT -5
[…] there's obviously a large section of [pop culture] that critics of all media consider lowbrow and unchallenging-- be it romance-fiction, westerns, cozy mysteries or superheroes. Would all of those genres be in need of defense? Some more than other? Would other genres like science-fiction be above attacks from critics? Some people like to be challenged, in their professional activity, in their relationships, in the way they spend their free time. Others don't. When it comes to art, as a way to fill part of our free time, some will turn to "Anna Karenina", "Unforgiven" or "Watchmen". Others will read romance novels, watch western movies or enjoy superhero comics. But if someone tells you that they always seek the former and avoid the later, much as they would like you to believe they never indulge in that "guilty pleasure", don't. That's what genres are for, it's a comfortable place to go to, when you want to disconnect. There's no question that some genres have come to be more accepted by critics than others, usually because it becomes common knowledge that there are works in that genre that have some of the same complexity as "high art." This level of common knowledge usually depends upon broad generalizations. The average non-SF reader won't have any idea as to which Philip K. Dick novels are the best, as novels; he will only remember that BLADE RUNNER was based on a Dick novel, and the respect BR gets from society means that "Dick is one of the good ones." SF also benefits from having a handful of works that are considered important, ranging from 1984 and BRAVE NEW WORLD to DUNE and STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND.
Still, the limitation of the "great work" defense is seen in Geoff Klock's viewpoint: it says nothing about the appeal of the genre itself, or what it means to people when it's not organized in this sort of "hyper-literary" approach.
WATCHMEN has this hyper-literary approach. The Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR plainly does not. Without taking anything away from what WATCHMEN does-- delivering what I called "earned gratification" earlier-- can one defend the position that there is meaning in FANTASTIC FOUR, even admitting that it delivered a lot of "unearned gratification?"
Obviously I think so, and here's a specific example from the Lee-Kirby "canon": FF #54.
Now, if a kid in 1966 wanted to read FF #54 just on the level of fun, he certainly could. Lee and Kirby give the reader a lot of cool stuff. There's humor, starting with the FF-members playing baseball in Africa. There's a sense of wonder, when Wyatt and the Torch discover the tomb of Prester John, who comes to life and tells them the history of the doomed land of Avalon. And there's action when the Torch almost blows himself up, trying to use Prester John's weapon to free the Inhumans.
But those elements aren't all that's there. Those are the selling-points for the comic, sure. But the story of doomed Avalon, destroying itself with its own technology, reflects the creators' own concerns about nuclear devastation in the real world. Certainly it's no coincidence that when the Evil Eye explodes, it generates the familiar mushroom cloud.
The elements of wonder and action aren't just doled out as sops to make a "message" go down easier; FF #54 does not have a "message," even an ambivalent one like WATCHMEN.
But it does mean something more than just the sum of its parts. And when one can find that "something more," even something you may have read "for fun" shows that it has deeper currents. |
|
|
|
Post by Ozymandias on May 12, 2014 18:09:07 GMT -5
Would all of those genres be in need of defense? Some more than other? Would other genres like science-fiction be above attacks from critics? Some people like to be challenged, in their professional activity, in their relationships, in the way they spend their free time. Others don't. When it comes to art, as a way to fill part of our free time, some will turn to "Anna Karenina", "Unforgiven" or "Watchmen". Others will read romance novels, watch western movies or enjoy superhero comics. But if someone tells you that they always seek the former and avoid the later, much as they would like you to believe they never indulge in that "guilty pleasure", don't. That's what genres are for, it's a comfortable place to go to, when you want to disconnect.
WATCHMEN has this hyper-literary approach. The Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR plainly does not. Without taking anything away from what WATCHMEN does-- delivering what I called "earned gratification" earlier-- can one defend the position that there is meaning in FANTASTIC FOUR, even admitting that it delivered a lot of "unearned gratification?"Obviously, "great work" can't speak in favor of its genre, exactly because it has transcended it. But finding a subjacent layer of meaning, in common "genre work", doesn't seem to express anything positive about it. That meaning is also independent, from the working set of principles which rule over the genre. As I said, all genres are bad, in the sense that their goal is becoming a comfortable couch, for a leisure in need of rest. |
|
|
|
Post by gothos on May 12, 2014 18:15:01 GMT -5
Still, the limitation of the "great work" defense is seen in Geoff Klock's viewpoint: it says nothing about the appeal of the genre itself, or what it means to people when it's not organized in this sort of "hyper-literary" approach.
WATCHMEN has this hyper-literary approach. The Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR plainly does not. Without taking anything away from what WATCHMEN does-- delivering what I called "earned gratification" earlier-- can one defend the position that there is meaning in FANTASTIC FOUR, even admitting that it delivered a lot of "unearned gratification?" Obviously, "great work" can't speak in favor of its genre, exactly because it has transcended it. But finding a subjacent layer of meaning, in common "genre work", doesn't seem to express anything positive about it. That meaning is also independent, from the working set of principles which rule over the genre. As I said, all genres are bad, in the sense that their goal is becoming a comfortable couch, for a leisure in need of rest. Why would the existence of a "subjacent layer of meaning" fail to be a positive aspect? It demonstrates that even when creators aren't seeking to make intellectual statements as such, they can still make insightful, expressive observations about life, the universe and everything. Some readers want their genre-readings to be no more than comfort food, and some want them to be engaged with the world on some level. It takes all kinds to make a genre, and all that. |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 12, 2014 18:18:22 GMT -5
I disagree with that. Genres are a trope, but not bad. There are fantastic works within every genre, which tends to be what made it a genre in the first place more often than not. And people tend to gravitate toward one over the other. Sci-fi, horror, action, romance, Western, whatever. I don't think there needs to be multi-genre appeal for something to be good, and plenty of work that transcends genre isn't all that great either. Of course once a genre is established it allows the less talented to find a market among those who would gladly consume everything within the genre, but that's the fault of the consumer, not the genre. And it doesn't take away from good works within the genre.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ozymandias on May 12, 2014 18:23:46 GMT -5
It fails to be a positive remark about the genre, when compared to another one. You can add layers of meaning to any "genre work", up to the point where it stops belonging to any genre and transcends it. The genre itself should be judged by its working set of principles, if at all.
|
|
