[HN Gopher] The writer who made me love comics taught me to hate...
___________________________________________________________________
The writer who made me love comics taught me to hate them (2016)
Author : Tomte
Score : 92 points
Date : 2022-01-16 10:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.polygon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.polygon.com)
| dkarl wrote:
| The flip side of Poe's Law. Fifteen years ago, my father used to
| love rense.com and a couple of other conspiracy sites. He thought
| it was good fun. He thought the people running and contributing
| to them were just blowing off steam by poking dark fun at how
| stupid people could be, basically liberals doing some mean-
| spirited LARPing as conservatives. Knowing that some people would
| take them seriously just made it funnier in his mind.
|
| I never asked him later (like after 2016) if he had revised his
| estimate of how many people on those sites were deadly serious
| versus poking fun.
|
| When I first got my hands on a Frank Miller graphic novel, I had
| been led to believe that it was a critical examination of how
| people are seduced by violence, be careful when you look into the
| abyss, etc., but I was old enough to realize as I read it that
| the reason it was wildly popular was because it worked as wish
| fulfillment violence porn, and I couldn't see any sign that the
| author intended it to be read in any other way. Not that I was
| too good to enjoy it on that level, but after I finished it, I
| felt that it would be wrong to go back for more.
| spapas82 wrote:
| For me, the best Frank Miller Story is his Daredevil Born Again
| story arc. It has a great and very motivational story (I don't
| wont to tell much) and excellent drawings by D. Mazzucchelli.
| This story is on my top 2 comics ever along with Alan Moore's
| Watchmen.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I say this as someone who still occasionally pulls up a YouTube
| video of a supercut of _300_ up against the song "Tangerine
| Speedo" to emphasize the accidental homoeroticism of the movie,
| just for giggles: it's a graphic novel. Art oversimplifies to
| make its points, and graphic novels are no stranger to that.
| Perhaps they are even the best example of doing so.
|
| That it doesn't align with your personal politics at the time is
| not a crime. It's not even _interesting_. I can imagine fewer
| things more boring than someone going over a work with a fine-
| toothed comb looking for violations of their own personal Hays
| Code. None of them will turn that level of _inspection_ on their
| ideological pets, only their "problematic faves."
|
| I dare her: do romance novels next, and do it from a men's rights
| perspective. I've read my fair share of them, they're all a real
| crapfest if you want to think of men as actual people instead of
| living props in the Happily Ever After each heroine is _owed_.
| But that doesn 't sell clicks on Polygon.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's ok to go through 300 to laugh at homoeroticism, but not ok
| to discuss the points that art is trying to make when it
| oversimplifies?
|
| My only problem with this is the cultural critic's insistence
| on assigning everything they enjoy with a complex intellectual
| meaning and significance. It's self-praise, in the guise of
| analysis, used to rationalize the sheer amount of time spent
| consuming popular products of the culture industry.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Isn't this insistence what we teach kids though? We make them
| read and analyze novels even when they have little context to
| put those ideas into. You can read too deeply into
| everything, even when it isn't the author's intent.
|
| On the other hand, some of the things in popular culture are
| what teach us about what the world is like. For example, I
| would wager that more people are taught what guns are like by
| video games and movies, than the actual physical objects
| themselves. This means that there is some purpose to
| analysing popular products from a variety of angles. It might
| teach us new things about the world. We probably do it from
| the same few (political) angles too often though.
| jfengel wrote:
| There is a reason to read for what it says to you, rather
| than what the author says or even what they say it says.
| The art means whatever it means to you.
|
| Teachers often teach that very badly, but the lesson is
| buried in there. Discover what you like, then inquire about
| why you like it and how it does that.
|
| It's not about teaching you about the world. It's about
| teaching you about yourself, and then about other people.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The problem is how expensive these products (especially the
| specific cases of books, AAA games and movies) are to
| produce, and monopolies on distribution. The messages that
| they communicate are the closest thing to actual direct
| mega-corporate speech that exists. The institutions who
| produce these things _are the bad guys._ Their primary
| messages are optimistic happy consumption to defy death, or
| cynical world-weathered resignation to unavoidable
| consumption.
|
| All of this speech comes from like 10 world-spanning
| companies and everyone is on everyone else's board.
|
| Books and indie games usually aren't much different,
| because they are imitative of the dominant content owners.
| A world of fanfic. And of course, in the case of books, the
| world has about 4 publishers that sell 80% of them.
| philipkglass wrote:
| _The problem is how expensive these products (especially
| the specific cases of books, AAA games and movies) are to
| produce, and monopolies on distribution._
|
| Books aren't expensive to publish like theatrically
| released movies and AAA games. According to the 2019
| Publishers Weekly ranking of global publishers, Penguin
| Random House issues 15,000 titles a year with revenues of
| 3434 million Euros (2018). That puts cost-per-title well
| under $0.25 million whereas AAA games start at tens of
| millions per title. I don't know if ROI is similar but
| initial cost to bring a new work to market is much lower
| for a book.
|
| https://www.publishersweekly.com/binary-
| data/Global502019.pd...
| dsr_ wrote:
| Not to mention that, despite the terrible ways they
| manipulate it, Amazon's self-publishing programs are
| genuinely cheap and reasonably easy to use. And if you
| don't need to make money from your art, you can host it
| at any number of sites for free or your own for more time
| than money.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| No one is saying it's a crime, and actually no one is going
| over the work with a fine toothed comb looking for violations
| -- these things stand out plain as day to readers who are
| disappointed to only see people like themselves caricatured or
| reduced to mere plot devices in works that they had come to
| cherish.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Boring and utterly uninteresting people that are deeply
| convinced their cliche ideas and prejudices are important are
| the most tiresome phenomena of this age of decadence of
| Occidental Civilization. I wonder if the Roman Empire had the
| same problem, and if so, I think it died of boredom.
| klyrs wrote:
| > I dare her: do romance novels next, and do it from a men's
| rights perspective.
|
| How often do the men in romance novels wind up in a
| refrigerator?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Extraordinarily rarely; it's even quite rare (outside of
| novels catering to specific fetishes) for a lead male
| character to not be quite successful in whatever their life-
| activity currently is.
| caslon wrote:
| I don't think the article is good, either; in fact, I think
| it's pretty lazy, but telling a woman to go read romance novels
| and complain about _them_ instead feels... reductive.
|
| A person will feel the urge to criticize something if they
| _care_ about it. She 's criticizing comic books because she
| _loves_ these comic books. She probably doesn 't care about
| romance novels. Instead of saying "Go criticize romance novels
| instead!" have you considered, well, having someone who likes
| romance novels criticize romance novels for you? It'd be way
| more effective.
|
| I use computers. I relentlessly criticize software. I wouldn't
| be able to do a good job at it if I was told "Oh, you have
| criticisms of modern software? Go critique architecture from
| your lens!"
|
| This woman knows comic books. She loves comic books. She has
| some criticisms about comic books. This doesn't mean she knows
| or cares about romance novels. I use computers. I love
| computers. I have some criticisms about computers. I don't know
| the first thing about architecture.
| copo233 wrote:
| > I don't think the article is good, either; in fact, I think
| it's pretty lazy,
|
| In what way? The article is what it says on the tin.
| caslon wrote:
| Paying people to complain about things has never made much
| sense to me. Roger Egbert was the laziest form of
| entertainment. Reviews are pointless in an era of
| ubiquitous communication, and public critique never truly
| leads to better art as much as it leads to safer art.
|
| I'm against the article's existence, but I'm also against
| the idea that the author should be told to complain about
| romance novels, too. The criticism of the criticism is bad,
| but the initial criticism is still boring and offers
| nothing new.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Interesting. This is hiding at the top of the page's html:
| =================================================================
| == == lovingly brought to you by...
| ================================== ========================
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| /\ \_\ \ /\ __ \ /\ == \ /\ \/\ \ /\ ___\ \ \
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| \/_____/ \/_/\/_/ \/_____/ \/_/ /_/ \/_____/ \/_____/
| =================================================================
| == ===============================
| https://www.voxmedia.com/careers === ======================
| =============================================
|
| (Found it as I was clicking to get rid of the cookie banner.)
| korse wrote:
| Nice catch!
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I'm 15. I read romance novels constantly. I begin to notice that
| the male love interests are all muscular billionaire vampire
| pirate bad boys with a dark side yearning to be tamed. No romance
| novelist ever writes a love interest who is an awkward teen boy
| who likes to read all day and play Magic the Gathering and video
| games all night. Why can't romance novelists represent me?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So super hero comics are for (pre) adolescent, straight white
| boys?
|
| That's too bad because I have been told that that was a
| stereotype and was no longer true.
| savingsPossible wrote:
| Super hero comics are not. These super hero comics might be?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Fair.
| oweiler wrote:
| Not exactly romance but I guess IT comes close enough
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8697402-scott-pilgrim-th...
| throwawaygh wrote:
| (Because it apparently wasn't obvious, OP is not actually a 15
| year old purveyor of young adult romance fiction. His post is
| mimicking the writing style of the article ("I'm 20 and a
| creative writing major...").)
|
| BTW, there's a GoodReads list entitled "Nerdy Guys Are Hot"
| containing 114 books. And that list is obviously incomplete.
| For example, Harry Potter -- the most popular youth fiction
| series ever -- has a nerdy main character and plenty of romance
| subplots.
| mlindner wrote:
| On a side note, Japanese light pop fiction actually primarily
| does cater to the nerdy people/kids, to the point of excess.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel
|
| Much of it is "sappy guy gets the girl(s)" type stories or
| other power fantasies/wish fulfillment of various kinds. (Or
| bookish girl gets found by prince charming or multiple prince
| charmings.) It's very popular over there. It's been a
| persistent thought in my mind why this type of stuff isn't
| written in the US (or if it is, I can't find it).
| Sohakes wrote:
| I watched two episodes of Komi Can't Communicate on Netflix
| and felt that. I thought it was good though, maybe it would
| have helped my socially anxious younger self.
| slickdork wrote:
| Are you saying Harry Potter himself was nerdy? Because he
| definitely never did homework or studied and lucked into
| every solution he ran into by dumb luck.
|
| Hermione was nerdy, but was usually made fun of for being
| nerdy, and was a love interest despite her nerdy ways.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Are you saying Harry Potter himself was nerdy?_
|
| Yes, in a certain sense, although a slightly more accurate
| characterization might be that Harry Potter is a nerd's
| idea of a hero. Although I have to admit my knowledge of
| the series is rather superficial, so perhaps I'm wrong.
|
| _> he definitely never did homework or studied and lucked
| into every solution he ran into by dumb luck._
|
| Nerdy doesn't necessarily imply industrious or studious. I
| wouldn't say the average MtG or DnD player was a
| particularly good student at my high school.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Harry didn't play DnD or MtG though. He lived in a
| magical world, and while some of those magical things
| occasionally caught his attention, he wasn't really
| deeply interested in any of it. His main concerns were
| social: casting unsubstantiated aspersions on Snape and
| Malfoy and occasionally being correct. He didn't care
| about any of his classes. His only real love was
| Quidditch, which he was naturally talented at, making
| him, if anything, a jock.
|
| Rethinking through the series, which I have re-read
| within the past year, the only truly nerdy moments he has
| all involve girls; and then only really at the beginning
| of his involvement with girls. Very quickly, he begins to
| have quite mature thoughts regarding his relationships,
| even if he doesn't always make the right choices.
| willis936 wrote:
| Harry Potter addressed this when Harry learned that his
| dad was Snape's childhood bully and cuckold.
|
| Tina Fey also did a good exploration of this idea in 30
| Rock S3E5 "Reunion" when Liz Lemon has to face the
| reality that she wasn't the nerdy victim but the bully.
| It's a recurring theme in media because no one ever
| thinks they're the bad guy. It's especially hard to tell
| when you're young and haven't learned how to be a human
| yet.
|
| All that said, I don't think Harry was a bully. Malfoy
| was pretty unambiguously antagonistic. Snape was more
| antihero, but did make a point to antagonize Harry when
| he could. Harry mistook the antagonization as evidence
| that Snape was up to bad dealings because "I'm the good
| guy and my enemies are bad", but even this gets flipped
| on its head throughout the series. Malfoy doesn't become
| humanized until they show his family life in detail and
| even then he only redeems himself in the home stretch.
| watwut wrote:
| DnD does not make you social outcast and hadn't for years
| already. It is just not know or popular.
| JackFr wrote:
| Harry was literally the star athlete of his house.
| Definitely not a nerd.
| quacked wrote:
| "Nerds idea of a hero" is a perfect way to represent it.
| Heroes thought up for nerds are non-threatening and
| approachable, unlike ancient heroes, who are threatening,
| great leaders of men, and often openly flaunt their
| "noble" lineage (Beowulf, Odysseus,etc.) Ancient heroes
| also often book real challenges to their hero status from
| their close allies.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Wayne Brady: "How come there's no one who looks like me on
| Friends??" (audience: "awww")
|
| Colin Mochrie: "How come there's no one who looks like me on
| Friends??" (audience goes wild with laughter)
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I don't get this joke. I get Wayne Brady's - there are no
| black characters on Friends, but I don't get Colin's part. I
| tried watching the clip but I still don't understand it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djX7aDuqi48
| mbg721 wrote:
| Because he's bald and older (and very much eccentric), and
| Friends was fundamentally about young people in New York
| with no realistic means of support. The sequence is poking
| fun at the idea that race is the sole obstacle to paradise.
| function_seven wrote:
| The joke is Colin is a bald guy who wouldn't be considered
| attractive. (I suppose Gunther is an example of that, but
| leeway for main cast vs. occasional supporting role)
| dkarl wrote:
| For me, as a fan of other kinds of escapist entertainment, the
| feeling of "ugh why am I not just doing this" is really easy to
| trigger, and it ruins the immersion and the fun. I need the
| fantasy to be not just attractive, but also unattainable, so
| that I don't start wondering, "If I'm so excited about this,
| why don't I take the relatively straightforward steps to
| experience it for myself?"
|
| For example, imagine watching a Top Gear episode about the
| latest Ford Fiesta. Most of the fun of the show is the
| presenters, how they talk about the cars, and how much fun they
| seem to be having. I'm sure watching them I could get pretty
| excited about the Ford Fiesta. It could be a great episode!
| Except the fact that I could rent one for a day for $35 would
| force me to think about why I don't actually want to do that,
| why I would rather watch a TV show about driving it rather than
| driving it for myself, and the difference between fantasy and
| reality, and then the excitement evaporates pretty fast.
| di4na wrote:
| There are romance novelists that do that ! i am not a romance
| specialist, but i know they exist. I advise to search a bit,
| maybe ask your local library. Romance is a really wide genre,
| the biggest, with a lot of different niche. It exist. I promise
| you.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I'm not actually a romance novel enthusiast, I'm just
| parodying the article. From my point of view the article is a
| complaint about how Frank Miller, an author who specializes
| in writing edgy grimdark superhero comics for teenage boys,
| doesn't write the kind of character that might appeal to a
| 20-30 something feminist.
| majormajor wrote:
| The article's complaint about Miller's stories goes quite a
| bit further than that.
| tptacek wrote:
| What's your point? That's a valid criticism of dime-store
| romance novels.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| My point is that not everything appeals equally to all
| people. The reason dime-store romance novels aren't centered
| on nerdy boys is because they are trying to entertain adult
| women. Frank Miller's comics are about edgy superheroes,
| violence, and sex from a perspective that's trying to appeal
| to teenage boys.
|
| If you're trying to write a book that appeals equally to all
| people without offending anyone, I think you'll end up with
| something anodyne. Some authors have a consistent style or
| niche and I don't think anything is wrong with that.
|
| Finally, it's also not true that there are no romance novels
| focused on nerdy boys. There are plenty. Likewise, there are
| plenty of comic books where women or girls are portrayed well
| or are the focus of the story.
| watwut wrote:
| It sounds to me that you did not read the article you are
| commenting on.
| tptacek wrote:
| Polo's criticism of Miller isn't rooted in its appeal to
| teenaged boys. It's taking dead aim at Miller's reputation
| as a forerunner for "comics for adults", and as a skilled
| deconstructer of superhero archetypes on a level with Alan
| Moore. So this rebuttal doesn't really say much, does it?
|
| Polo is criticizing Miller in a way that you could not, for
| instance, criticize Todd MacFarlane, who had the clearly
| defined audience you're thinking of. It wouldn't make
| sense; of course MacFarlane's work was silly and
| superficial; that's the point.
|
| This is a thing people say a lot about Roger Ebert --- that
| part of his skill as a critic was his ability to put
| himself in the shoes of the _intended audience_ for a
| piece, and evaluate it on those terms, so that for instance
| he could give 4 stars to "Iron Man", the same rating he'd
| give to "Tokyo Story".
|
| Polo's criticism here is compatible with Ebert's approach.
| taeric wrote:
| I think the point is that you can hate Frank Miller's work
| without hating all comics.
| tptacek wrote:
| The author probably didn't even write the headline, which
| is the only place that sentiment appears in the piece. I'm
| pretty confident she's aware of Love and Rockets, Bone, and
| Maus.
|
| Maybe it's helpful just to mentally substitute "superhero
| comics" for "comics".
| taeric wrote:
| Fair. Though, I suspect some super hero comics are fine.
|
| I am also ok with the thought that that earlier exposure
| clouds all later exposure.
|
| I am further ok with someone not liking comics. Or super
| hero stories.
| tptacek wrote:
| That seems like the interesting discussion to have,
| right? Whether there are _superhero comics_ that confound
| Miller-ism.
|
| I can't really think of any, though maybe early-1990s
| X-Men, which had a palpable subtext about bigotry long
| before that was a super trendy idea (making the series
| antagonist himself an opponent of bigotry was a pretty
| slick move).
| taeric wrote:
| Sandman stands in my mind. Though, most folks don't think
| of those as super hero.
|
| I think most of that is definitionally, though. If you
| accept that super hero comics are bad, you probably
| consider any good ones to not be super hero.
|
| Edit: that said, Gaiman's Whatever Happened to the Caped
| Crusader is undeniably a super hero comic. Complete with
| an amazing call out to Goodnight Moon.
|
| Edit2: Perez's Wonder Woman set is highly regarded, I
| think. In many ways more feminist than current works,
| from my memory.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's so not a superhero comic that DC actually came up
| with a new imprint for it and Hellblazer. It was, very
| briefly, a Moore-style sendup of superhero comics
| ("sleep, and if you wish, you may dream of the city of
| focative mirrors"), but shed that almost immediately when
| Gaiman got his footing.
|
| But like, I stopped reading superhero comics pretty
| quickly (I got to comics late, with Punisher [gag] and
| X-Men, and switched within like a year to the
| Vertigo/Cerebus/Comix stuff). So for all I know, there's
| a long "Aquaman" arc where he subtextually confronts
| misogyny or contemplates Rawlsianism.
|
| "Wonder Woman" is a good example! Thanks!
| taeric wrote:
| My only qualm is that I feel that is shifting
| definitions. I'm reminded of folks calling what Gaiman
| writes as graphic novels, not comics. Which... Seems
| silly. Especially since I remember buying them, as
| comics.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If you continue your campaign with vision, intelligence, humor
| and wit, there's a chance that the books you're looking for
| might emerge. Good luck!
| jason-phillips wrote:
| "It's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human
| heart."
|
| --Ulysses Everett McGill
| watwut wrote:
| This sort of point would be much stronger if it was not too
| apparent you don't know what is in romance books nor
| surrounding culture nor types of conflicts going on in there.
| styluss wrote:
| great article. reminds me of one about Alan Moore ending up
| hating The Killing Joke and the Watchmen's message
| https://www.inverse.com/article/14967-alan-moore-now-believe...
| whiddershins wrote:
| After years, this is what I've come to.
|
| Conflating an artist with their art is always a mistake.
|
| Great works of art transcend the artist, and frankly, the artist
| usually doesn't understand the work any better than anyone else.
|
| If you ask a writer or painter or musician ... especially
| musicians/lyricists what their work is about you will always get
| a disappointing answer, if the piece is any good.
|
| They don't know what it is, where it came from, they just
| manifested it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's nothing that appeals more to right-wing nationalists than
| cop-worshiping vigilantes. On the other hand, there's nothing
| that appeals more to middle-class liberals than vigilantes that
| are wracked with guilt.
|
| edit: so the result is that liberals project guilt onto the
| guiltless protagonists of rightist creators, or decide that the
| entire thing is a complex satirical statement.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| No need to divide it along political boundaries: vigilantism is
| a power-fantasy for everyone that has ever been at the
| receiving end of someone or agency with authority over them.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Now it's you who are projecting. My fantasy is a functioning
| civilization, not killing criminals or imagining excitedly
| what will happen to a child molester in prison.
|
| edit: honestly, if politics is about anything, it's law and
| order. The fact that "politics" has become a euphemism for
| discussions of race, sex, and gender and indignantly expected
| to be totally separated from the processes of governing is
| bizarre.
|
| Right-wingers fantasize about the justice they'd mete out if
| they weren't restrained by liberal guilt. Liberals despair
| about the justice that they have to mete out to protect their
| ideal society.
| hsnewman wrote:
| So what your saying is your persuadable.
| ginko wrote:
| I'm sort of in the same boat with Frank Miller. I really liked
| The Dark Knight Returns because I thought it was a great
| deconstruction that showed the dark side of vigilantism and power
| fantasies visual references to Birth of a Nation and all that.
|
| I was pretty of disappointed when I found out that Miller
| actually wasn't ironic. Thankfully there's plenty other comic
| writers I still enjoy.
| inerte wrote:
| Alan Moore for me. Lots of people know Watchmen is about what
| would "really" happens if super heroes existed, and that lived
| rent free in my mind for years.
|
| But 2 things really made it click. Alan saying Rorschach (who I
| thought was a great character) was basically Batman-in-the-
| real-world, which killed Batman for me. The nail on the head
| was this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2yZwh_gCIU
| about Marvelmen and I don't remember if it's in the video or I
| read somewhere else, but it's when a super-hero that can
| manipulate reality, which in fact there's about a hundred of
| them in Marvel / DC, decides money is the root of all evil and
| vanishes money from the planet, and the world descends in
| _complete_ chaos.
|
| And now that actually lives rent free for me, as a young men
| angry at the hyper-capitalism and consumption we live in, who
| used to occasionally think the world would be better without
| money, I now realize that would indeed plunge humanity into a
| freaking mess.
|
| I now enjoy watching Marvel and DC movies for the spectacle and
| action scenes, but I sorta don't enjoy most comics (at least
| the superhero genre) anymore.
|
| What I think it's funny is that it just took me a long time to
| realize this. Actual superhero writers know exactly who they're
| writing for, angsty 13-year boys, see for example the interview
| here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dfI_2dscGE
| dsr_ wrote:
| In the other direction, Warren Ellis used the last volume of
| _StormWatch_ to show how evil the hither-to "morally grey"
| characters were, and fire up _The Authority_ to replace them:
| a super-team that wanted to actually make the world a better
| place.
|
| (They tried and failed, but at least they tried.)
|
| It's possible to tell superhero comics that don't fall into
| the traps, but I don't think it can be done directly in the
| medium of continuing comics: without a planned conclusion, it
| becomes self-negating or self-parodying.
|
| A different critique is offered by Wildbow's _Worm_, a giant
| webnovel that tried to provide consistent reasons for all the
| superhero comic tropes: why do mass-murdering villains get to
| live? Why do they escape from custody so regularly? How do
| they store their money? What's most important, thinking or
| action? The novel is 1.7 million words long, and has
| generated about 250 million words of fanfic...
| tptacek wrote:
| What's the thing you thought Moore was doing ironically that
| it turned out he was (disturbingly) doing non-ironically?
| That's the point being made in the parent comment: that Frank
| Miller is traded in the culture as someone making an ironic
| commentary on violence and jingoism, but is in fact non-
| ironically captive to it.
|
| I feel like people generally trade in the idea that Alan
| Moore is a creative lunatic with crazy ideas; you're getting
| what it says on the tin with him.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Alan saying Rorschach (who I thought was a great character)
| was basically Batman-in-the-real-world, which killed Batman
| for me.
|
| I mean Alan talks a lot of shit doesn't he, yes he's Batman
| in the real world if he wasn't super rich. Why's that
| important? Because Rorschach has to make up for his lack of
| wealth, Batman's superpower, with the superpower of basically
| being crazy (an offensive but rather common trope in
| fiction).
|
| Obviously Batman is crazy as well because being a superhero
| is really a crazy thing, but because he has the buffer of
| wealth his insanity does not manifest in the same ways it
| would have to with someone who does not have his resources,
| for example Rorschach kills his criminals quite frequently
| because he does not have the luxury of sending them through
| the system and then catching them again some years down the
| road, he goes for the kill in any confrontation because he
| doesn't have the resources to knock people out, all those
| stun bombs and body armor and whatever that Batman has costs
| money.
|
| In fact a basic critical reasoning would be that Nite Owl and
| Rorschach together are Moore's Batman critique - when they
| are together Rorschach's mental issues are kept in check, but
| as they separate Rorschach becomes crazier and Nite Owl more
| ineffective to deal with the fantastical world of violence
| and crime comic books imagine.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| when I saw he goes for the kill because... obviously he
| goes for the kill because he is insane but in story logic
| he must go for the kill because otherwise how does he
| remain alive, the argument for his behavior underlying the
| story is that his insanity allows him to deploy greater
| forces against his antagonists in both the police and
| criminal milieu than they can individually muster because
| he is not restrained by any impulse or constrained by any
| rational sense of self-preservation (his ability to keep
| cool in the prison as he defeats his enemies is again a
| symptom of his insanity, because he does not worry about
| his own death he is able to cooly ensure his own survival
| in situations where another person's fear would render them
| less effective. Another common feature of the insanity as
| superpower trope.)
| mewse-hn wrote:
| Moore didn't write Rorschach as crazy, he wrote him as a
| fanatic ("Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never
| compromise."). In the book the prison psychiatrist becomes
| deeply disturbed by Rorschach's world view because he's not
| necessarily wrong. It's definitely an exploration of what
| Batman's modus operandi would look like in the real world.
| tptacek wrote:
| Moore himself said that he wrote Rorschach to be "a
| nutcase". :)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| yeah uh, the character who wrote this journal
| https://watchmen.fandom.com/wiki/Rorschach%27s_Journal
| was definitely just fanatically obsessive, no other
| problems there. Not to mention that the inability to
| compromise is not actually a feature of a well-
| functioning mind.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Miracleman essentially demolishes capitalism at the end of
| Moore's run of Miracleman, and this is, at least initially, a
| complete success.
|
| Gaiman took over Miracleman from there, intending to write
| three arcs. The first arc exists and I believe is still in
| print, having been re-published by Marvel a few years back,
| "Miracleman: The Golden Age".
|
| Gaiman began the next arc, the Silver Age, the first issues
| exist, but legal problems (as often before) interfered. Today
| I believe officially there's some other problem and Marvel
| claims it will eventually publish the whole series, but
| realistically Gaiman has better things to do with his time
| than write comic books. The rest will probably never be
| published, even though I have them on order (and have had for
| many years) at an excellent comic book shop and I would like
| nothing more than to receive those books and pay in full.
|
| Golden Age shows us what Moore describes very briefly at the
| very end of his story, a Utopia.
|
| It digs into some details. Despite living in a Utopia, people
| are still people. A woman's husband is unfaithful, a man
| finds all the women he meets to be wanting and has to be
| shown that's his flaw, not theirs, school children are still
| cruel to each other for no reason. Importantly to me this
| series extensively features my favourite comic book
| character, Winter. I think Winter's Tale might be the very
| best single comic book issue I ever read, partly because (in
| the story within a story which dominates the issue) it
| completely violates all the rules about comic book stories on
| the justification that this is a _children 's book_ and so
| those rules don't apply. You couldn't tell this story about
| Winter in a normal comic book because it has no stakes, she's
| just ludicrously powerful and does whatever she wants, and
| that's it.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Hating comics because you don't like Frank Miller sounds like a
| huge overreaction. If you don't like Frank Miller, just stop
| reading his comics. Or, better yet, roll your eyes at some
| elements of his work, admire others, learn what you can from
| them, and form the nuanced opinions we need in our complicated
| world.
| Mezzie wrote:
| What I find interesting about this article is that the author
| mentions the ways in which she's disadvantaged compared to Frank
| Miller (she's mixed-race and female to his straight white male),
| but if you read between the lines, she's quite _financially_
| privileged. She 's looking at college campuses at 15, her parents
| bought her expensive new books, she goes to college right after
| high school and majors in Creative Writing, she's managing a news
| site at 24 which usually means she's either got unpaid
| internships, startup help, or a writing network already.
|
| It's not the author's fault, but it'd be really nice if these
| types of articles started reckoning with the author's privileges
| and not just their marginalizations. If Frank Miller alienated
| her because his viewpoint over-saturates his work, how is she
| going to make sure her work doesn't do the same to _poor_ mixed-
| race women? Or trans women?
|
| If there's an actual interest in making sure different viewpoints
| are represented and better stories are told (the part I
| personally care about), then why do articles so often get boiled
| down to 'pay attention to my particular identities'?
|
| I don't know, I guess I don't know what the point of the piece
| is.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Isn't the point of mentioning her identify to show how she
| viewed the comics from her particular viewpoint?
| [deleted]
| workaccount21 wrote:
| Sounds like she just isn't the audience Frank was writing for,
| which of course is a cardinal sin if you have a platform to
| complain about it.
| pupppet wrote:
| Sounds like you're not the audience the blogger was writing
| for.
|
| As someone who fancies female characters being written as more
| than a love interest or someone to be raped, and don't believe
| sexual ambiguity makes a villain more frightening, I'm on board
| with what she's writing.
| avereveard wrote:
| I believe that given a pie of content from comic book
| targeted at young male adult the pie dedicated to action is
| way larger than the pie dedicated to romance - and the
| flatness of woman carachter has more to do with audience
| interests / space dedicated to romance than writers' skills.
|
| that said I too hate that non protagonist women are mostly
| treated as props to a story and protagonist women mostly
| embody male tropes in a woman body - I think there can be
| much more than that.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| You may be right but it's too bad then: they have a
| platform and an eager audience and are wasting an
| opportunity to depict a mature and healthy relationship in
| comics.
| avereveard wrote:
| I mean, they are on thin ice - can you imagine the ruckus
| parents would do at anything but cis? or the ruckus
| blogger would do if every "mature and healthy"
| relationship gets portrayed as necessarily cis? I see
| them using tropes also as a quick way out.
|
| albeit there's some interesting takes if you search
| around, like in the amazon "invincible" - but I guess a
| miniseries has more space for it, and it's for a more
| adult audience to begin with.
| tptacek wrote:
| These are Frank Miller comics. The "how would parents
| react" stuff is right out the window. Gaiman did a whole
| bunch of stuff with non-hetero sexuality for DC, and he
| gets TV series to this day.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I agree with the writer's point too, and I've always found
| Batman to be a cynical character who is a questionable "hero"
| at best.
|
| But it's an important character to many people, and I think
| the visceral reaction to this kind of criticism is because
| these critics have a ton of political power in certain
| settings and tend to trigger reactions that go over the top.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right, so the observation you'd next make with respect to
| Miller is that he probably _doesn 't_ see Batman as a
| questionable hero.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I wouldn't only because I'm not a "student" of Batman or
| Miller and honestly don't know much about it.
|
| No political axe to grind about Batman or Miller, it's
| just not a character or style that I personally care for.
| My wife loves Tim Burton stuff, I do not. I love old
| school Star Trek, she would rather watch the weather
| channel lol.
| goto11 wrote:
| > Sounds like she just isn't the audience Frank was writing for
|
| So who do you think is the audience Frank Miller is writing
| for?
| morelisp wrote:
| Maybe Frank Miller should not have asked her opinion via
| presskit then?
| blockwriter wrote:
| These are fair points for someone that works in the industry and
| wishes to engage critically with her anxiety of influence, as
| Harold Bloom would call it. I doubt if her critique, in itself,
| leads to a rhetorical basis that is any more aesthetically sound.
| In good time, another writer will undoubtedly point out how
| flimsy the reactionary storytelling of the 2020s was. At least
| along this one axis, I am unconvinced by this article that
| Miller's lurid pulp is much different from the remedies the
| author suggests. The proof is in the pudding.
| tptacek wrote:
| Say more! This sounds interesting. What are the remedies you
| perceive Polo as pushing here?
| blockwriter wrote:
| I don't perceive her as pushing remedies, but I think they
| are suggested. The suggestion is that the works would be
| better if they adhered closer to "reality" or if the
| psychological tension was overtly comprehended and
| demonstrated by the writer rather than a tacit element. Many
| politically conscious people are just clueing into what
| literary criticism has long understood, although the
| conclusions drawn by the bulk of good literary criticism is,
| in my opinion, the exact opposite of those drawn by today's
| reactionaries.
|
| Essentially, I think the article discounts the merit of a
| regressive fantasy. Today's comic book media complex is very
| involute. Characters often explicitly state these regressive
| elements, the sexual tension, and etc. It is novel for a
| while, especially when it is in vogue for a largely
| illiterate populace to rediscover matters of criticism that
| literature has always encompassed; but it is just as likely
| to become brittle and inbred as the big boob, prostitute,
| truncated demise tropes are.
|
| Like I said, these are fair points that the author makes. It
| is, however, just as easy to point and laugh at someone that
| doesn't seem to comprehend that they have not broken out of
| the aesthetic cycle, that they have failed to transcend, as
| it is to point and laugh at the latent homoeroticism of 300.
| All that being said, these are comic books, and I stopped
| reading them when I stopped getting pimples for good reason.
|
| Now, if you will excuse me, I have to watch grown men dribble
| a leather ball around and act like every foul called against
| them is a grievous insult to blood and legacy.
| elcapitan wrote:
| > I am 20 and I'm majoring in Creative Writing, because I want to
| write comic books for a living.
|
| Can't wait to read those, if they're as insightful and creative
| as this article.
| tptacek wrote:
| The author is doing the Watchmen Jon Osterman narrative thing.
| She was 20 in 2006.
| ss108 wrote:
| 300 is quite racist, and Frank Miller's comments in the aftermath
| of Sept 11 are at the very least the kind of jingoistic,
| historically-ignorant drivel that is rightly frowned upon in
| educated circles.
| [deleted]
| pawelmurias wrote:
| 300 is a comic where the heroes are spartans, the creators of
| the first racist state.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I liked Dark Knight Returns quite a bit and I've read it a few
| times but every time I get to the part with the woman with
| swastikas tattooed on her boobs I can't help but wonder what the
| point of that was.
|
| Strikes Back was bad. Then Holy Terror came out and it was a
| xenophobic caricature. Since then I haven't had much interest in
| anything he's done. I did see a comment from him that seems to
| indicate he's walked back some of his extremist views but I've
| moved on.
| tptacek wrote:
| Did you revise your opinion of the Miller's entire oeuvre after
| Holy Terror? That's what happened to me with Dave Sim and
| Cerebus at some point; like, you see the previous work in a
| previous light, and it doesn't work anymore. It's like that
| episode of The Office where Brian Baumgartner sells James
| Spader on "the oatmeal raisin cookie idea" in a meeting, only
| to realize after later hearing about "the Big Mac idea" that
| "it was always just cookies. ...".
|
| That's I think one of the big critical narratives about Miller
| --- it was always just cookies.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| You nailed it. Scott Adams, too, to a certain degree. It's a
| bit of frame breaking when one finds out a creator has an
| outsized personality. There's a bit of projection involved in
| taking in art, and finding there is a great differenced
| between the imagined creator of a work and the actual creator
| forces a reinterpretation. It's unavoidable. Maybe Jane Fonda
| and people with Barberella posters who disagreed with her
| real life views, for an older example.
|
| I think it's particular painful with Frank Miller because the
| work becomes much less interesting than how a number of us
| had read it initially.
| tptacek wrote:
| I think that's probably the big idea behind this critique,
| right? It's not that Frank Miller has bad ideas (though...)
| --- it's that when you realize he wasn't really kidding,
| he's much less interesting. His work isn't thoughtful; it's
| just id.
| technothrasher wrote:
| Not a comic, but I had this reaction to Heinlein's
| "Starship Troopers". When I read it as a teenager, I was
| blown away by the subtle and brilliant satire. When I
| read it again as an adult and realized he was actually
| just a fascist, it was deflating.
| tptacek wrote:
| The great thing about this is how many people first
| experienced "Starship Troopers" through the Verhoeven
| movie, which was, in retrospect, incredibly subversive;
| like, he actually reclaimed the work from its author. A
| neat trick!
| filoleg wrote:
| That was quite a "one-of-a-kind" experience for me with
| Starship Troopers. The movie was straight up taking the
| entirely predictable "Atlas Shrugged, but with commie
| space insect alien warfare" book source and turned it
| into a satire on the original material. And not just
| that, they executed it masterfully.
|
| I've never encountered anything like that since then, and
| if someone has suggestions of a similar "source material
| => adaptation" experience, those recommendations would be
| heavily appreciated.
| watwut wrote:
| The most disturbing thing about Starship Troopers are
| people who quote characters to make point about real
| world. (I have seen that multiple times on HN)
|
| It is just ... not an argument. It is all made up!
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I don't think Heinlein per se was a fascist, he was a man
| strongly attracted to fascist style thought, which I
| think was a common feature of many reasonably intelligent
| people of his generation (hence the great upflarings of
| fascism they lived through) but I don't think he ever
| succumbed fully to the attraction in the same way I
| believe Miller has - probably because he lived through a
| war against a fascist country.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| A lot of things you consume when you are younger looks bad
| when you are older. Tastes change. Experience gives you
| insight. Unfortunately that's just life.
|
| This article would have been more interesting 10-15 years ago
| or so (DKR was first published in 1986!). I don't remember
| the industry as a whole evolving for the better until after
| the speculation phase. And then we all wisen up. This article
| brings out the old condescending man in me: "you finally got
| it kid, good job".
|
| And there's lots of new, better comics! The author never
| thought to branch out? Just "taught me hate them?"
| tptacek wrote:
| Again: it's likely the author didn't even write the
| headline, especially since the sentiment doesn't occur
| really anywhere in the piece itself. I'm having trouble
| believing someone who is this deeply acquainted with Miller
| is somehow unaware of Maus.
| blockwriter wrote:
| Read Shakespeare if you do not want a women with swastikas
| tattooed on her boobs to muddle the perfection of the work.
| Read Miller if that is exactly what you are in the market for.
| coldtea wrote:
| Giving the facile psyche of the day (or, for that matter, 2016 as
| well) and the need for facile denunciation of anything that
| doesn't share the ideology of the day, I knew who the comic
| writer would be before I opened the page. Opened it anyway to
| verify and wasn't dissapointed.
| tptacek wrote:
| The textbook lowbrow dismissal. Why even bother commenting?
| Disagree if you're going to disagree; that's a contribution.
| [deleted]
| coldtea wrote:
| > _The textbook lowbrow dismissal_
|
| Now that's just parphrasing how I described the article -
| only I tied it to specifics more, and also revealed something
| interesting: that such a denunciation is so cliche, that I
| knew who the artist would be just from reading the title
| (which is true, I did guess it correctly and then opened it
| and saw that I had called it).
| tptacek wrote:
| Your rebuttal here is that you saw a "facile" takedown of a
| comics author and thought "this can only be Frank Miller,
| no other comics author ever engenders facile takedowns"?
| I'm skeptical.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I too guessed it was Frank Miller. It's a pretty common
| opinion and has been for some time.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I actively don't seek out information about the artist I like.
| There's exactly nothing to gain by knowing who they are and what
| their views on the world are. It's better to stay ignorant and
| enjoy their work.
|
| Example: I read the Dragons of Autumn Twilight (etc) books by
| Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman in the early 90s. The book series
| was hugely influential on my youth.
|
| I didn't know Tracy Hickman is male until way into the current
| millennium.
| tedunangst wrote:
| I read the annotated chronicles, which obviously reveals more
| about the authors' backgrounds, but thought it was interesting
| to see how they'd straddle the line between writing things they
| believed and things they didn't.
| [deleted]
| Fricken wrote:
| If Frank Miller was the only person allowed to tell stories, I
| would be concerned as well.
| tptacek wrote:
| You're not being asked for that kind of concern. It's a
| retrospective critique of an artist, and a negative one. That's
| all. Criticism would be super boring if it was never negative.
| [deleted]
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Frank Miller's fun. The way a lot of things are fun but I
| wouldn't go around pretending he's something he's not.
|
| This is one step past taking knock knock jokes seriously.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Nah, people are allowed to critique literature. If you enjoy it
| without wanting to think about it, that's your right; her right
| is to think about it and write about what she's thinking.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| When I was a teenager, I probably would have dug violent
| vigilantism (like I enjoyed "Mad Max" when it came out at
| that time). My own art back then reflected a cynical, dark,
| post-apocalyptic future (likely inspired by films like "A Boy
| and His Dog" as an example).
|
| Story time: in those days the "copy shops" were ma and pa
| (the way the original video rental stores were) and the
| nearest copy shop where I took some of my art to be "Xeroxed"
| was, apparently, run by a born-again Christian.
|
| When I picked up my art he felt I needed a preachin' to. "Why
| spend your talents making the world a darker place?" Why not
| make positive art?" (Or something along those lines. I think
| "glory of God" was in there too and was in fact the tell.)
|
| I thought at the time how boring that would be, how "non-
| cool", "non-art" that was. I laughed it off.
|
| Three decades later I can begin to appreciate his
| disappointment in younger me. The world events since (and
| since I got older and started paying attention) have informed
| me that indeed there is already too many horrific (real)
| things in the world.
|
| Older me now just can't enjoy, for example, a Quentin
| Tarantino film (no doubt teen me would have loved it though).
|
| I have no interest in Frank Miller. I don't want to live in
| his world, don't care even to look at it.
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