Comic Book Resources

Everyone's A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces

Exit Wounds

• Eddie Campbell has been offering one great critique after another lately, first on
Asterios Polyp and David Mazzuchelli's ability to convey a sense of place, and then on Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds ("The impressive thing about Exit Wounds is that there is a keen organizing intelligence at work at every single level of it, from top to bottom."

• Jeet Heer ruminates on the concept of the "proto-graphic novel," i.e. graphic novels that were published before the term became ubiquitous.

• It's a few days old, but this review of R. Crumb's Genesis adaptation by Bill Kartalopoulos is still well worth your time.

• I don't always link to Tucker Stone's "Comics of the Weak" round-up, but this one's worth noting, as he mimics the prose of "controversial French writer Michel Houllebecq," which leads to bits like this one on Batman:

Gotham City has but two types of people-those who wreak violence, and those who have violence wreaked upon them. The first type are all men, for the most part, although the occasional lesbian is permitted participation, as long as she has previously received approval from whomever currently holds the title of most cruel. (Said participation is usually considered an important story point, further cementing the little respect or interest that these stories have for women--there are few other places in fiction where "the bitch can stay" is considered interesting or dynamic.

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The Meta-List returns: The 100 Best Comics of 2008

Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button

Sandy Bilus of I Love Rob Liefeld, the Comics Internet tips its collective hat to you. Picking up the torch from the sadly discontinued blog of Dick Hyancith, Bilus has compiled a "meta-list" of the 100 best comics of 2008, as tabulated from the personal best-of lists of dozens of critics and commentators. Behold the Top Ten:

1. Bottomless Belly Button, by Dash Shaw
2. Acme Novelty Library #19, by Chris Ware
3. All-Star Superman, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
4. Too Cool To Be Forgotten, by Alex Robinson
5. What It Is, by Lynda Barry
6. Ganges #2, by Kevin Huizenga
7. The Alcoholic, by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel
8. Skyscrapers of the Midwest, by Joshua Cotter
9. Kramers Ergot 7, by various
10. Capacity, by Theo Ellsworth

The point system used to tabulate the list makes it easy for books that made it onto a lot of individual lists but didn't top them to put in a strong showing; perhaps that explains the blowout victory of Bottomless Belly Button, which I recall as being widely liked but few people's #1 pick.

For you front-of-Previews types out there, DC's All-Star Superman is the highest ranking superhero comic, coming in at a strong #3. DC/Vertigo's The Alcoholic is the Big Two's next-highest representative at #7, while its labelmate Scalped comes in at #12. The top Marvel book, and second-highest superhero comic, is Omega the Unknown at #13. Manga's top-ranking title is Travel at #16. Click the link to see what else made the grade.

Me, I've got some quibbles here and there, as is to be expected. But overall, if you're looking to do some shopping this holiday season and don't mind being a year behind, you'd be hard pressed to top this for a wishlist.

'Fahrenheit' review gets folks hot under the collar

Fahrenheit 451

Writing for Slate, Sarah Boxer (who, it should be noted, is a cartoonist in her own right) penned a review of Tim Hamilton's adaptation of the Ray Bradbury classic Fahrenheit 451 that — initially at least — seems flummoxed by the whole "graphic novel boom" thing:

It's hard to know what on earth Bradbury was thinking. Did he just give in to the enemy? And what was the artist, Hamilton, thinking, when he illustrated the fire chief's rant with his own tableau of degraded books: Hamlet for Dimwits, Time magazine, and, yes, two Classic Comics editions, Moby Dick and Treasure Island. (Hamilton himself illustrated a comic-book version of Treasure Island before taking on Fahrenheit 451.) It's as if author and artist were vigorously waving a white flag and shouting, "We couldn't beat 'em, so we joined 'em!"

Later on she adds:

Graphic novels may win some new readers, but the text is almost always shortened to make way for pictures, and what survives of it is radically different: It's mostly dialogue, like a screenplay. In the graphic-novel version of Fahrenheit 451, almost all of the words are spoken. Even the pictures confirm that the novel has become a script.

By the end of the review,  however,  she turns around and suggests that Hamilton's adaptation was more in keeping with Bradbury's own interests in the medium and the book's larger themes. It's all very confusing.

Still, who reads all the way through an article these days? The damage was done and the review was muddled and grumpy enough to incite a firestorm in the comments section:

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Everyone's a Critic: What we talk about when we talk about Batman R.I.P.

Batman R.I.P.

Welcome to the first 2009 edition of Everyone's A Critic, now safely ensconced at its new home at Robot 6.

For those who aren't familiar with the series back when it was over at Blog@Newsarama, the object of this column is to offer germane discussion on comics criticism, macrame and similar lighthearted fare. OK, I was lying about the macrame part. That was just to draw you in.

Every so often I'll be poking out from my hidey-hole and offering my thoughts on a particular review-related issue of the day, pointing you towards an interesting discussion or review or talking with some of the industry's more intelligent and articulate pundits.

I say "every so often," because at this point, for a variety of reasons that I can't go into right now (I'm lazy, my big toe hurts), I don't have the ability to do the column as a biweekly, let alone weekly, thing. As things settle down it will, I promise, but for now it will more or less show up when I feel the discussion is germane enough. I like typing the word "germane."

Today I want to point you towards a lengthy discussion you may have noticed taking place a few days ago over at Sean T. Collins' site. Continue Reading »