O.K. Heather, now I know you're just trying to piss Tomreed toon off.

Alas, there was no Giants game on that night so I caught a glimpses of SYTYCD, THE LAST COMIC STANDING, and THE NEXT BIG THING. They were all just as bad as AMERICAN IDOL. There was one that I thought was good, AMERICAN INVENTOR, but even that one is doomed once they move on to the later rounds. As for HELL'S KITCHEN, it's a horrible show about a horrible profession. The one thing all these shows have in common is a nasty, egotistical authority figure with a British accent in the lead role.

The preoccupation with linguistic narrative structure and relevance in the literary world is significant, but pales in comparison to the visual value of these works. Comics are not on a par with film and television -- far better, they fuel and inspire them.

-- wonder woman

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Exactly! It's primarily a visual medium where looks are important.

You are right about television being too demanding on it's writers. Nevertheless, the best writers are working in that medium. I'll match the 'Davids", Chase, Milch, and Simon against any current novelist you care to name. The fact that television writers have to be prolific and produce under pressure, doesn't detract from their ability.

It seems that you think if a writer is popular, he must be lousy, because Americans are too stupid to appreciate them. Which current writers do you think are worthy? I tend to agree that the classics are better than today's novels, because before movies and television, that was the only game in town. BTW I have an old review you wrote, and at the time you hated Shakespeare, because he was popular. But low and behold, today you think the King James version of the Bible is so much than the modern translations.

RealName, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY won a Pulitzer Prize. So I guess Oprah and I aren't the only ones who enjoyed it. Please provide a link to something you have written besides your pompous and banal blathering here at Salon. Your superiority complex can't conceal your general douchiness.

I've got bad news for RealName and Rob Anderson. The best writers today aren't writing novels of any kind, they are working in, GASP!, television. There is something about a steady paycheck and the necessity for creating work that people actually enjoy, that attracts them.

If they had online comics you could also have actors do voice overs and use sound effects.

Before the internet, this was a problem that not much could be done about. But if Marvel and DC were smart, they'd begin seriously investigating the idea of eschewing paper issues and offering downloadable comics a la iTunes at 50 cents an issue. With a wide-reaching ad campaign, an innovation like that would help spark interest in comics across the board. You might not get every new reader to stick around, but surely it's a step in the right direction.

-- Mike Zimbousk

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Definitely. I no longer collect comics, or anything for that matter, because I dread having possesions that I'll ever have to move. Also the graphics look even better when they are backlit on a computer screen, and you can even spice them up a bit with flashes and the like.

Rob Anderson should have selected THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY as an alternative to reading graphic novels. WAR AND PEACE is an example of how novels can be inferior to the writing in any number of "illuminated works",( Thanks to the commenter who came up with that idea). The format of graphic novels requires that the author be able to write dialogue and tighten up his work, until all unnecessary words are edited out.

Also, don't discard the value of the artwork. A lot of it is poor, but some of it is drop-dead gorgeous. R.Crumb, Bill Griffith, Glenn Fabry, Dave McKean, Steve Dillon, Dave Gibbons, David Lloyd, Drew Friedman, and Frank Miller, to name just a few, are world class artists and draftsmen.

I ask myself every day, every single day, "What has happened to us? Where are our poets? Our artists? Our writers? Where has our soul gone to? Why has reason abandoned us?"

But at least we have Glenn and Digby and a few others.

And Bebop-o!

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Michael, I'm glad you corrected yourself. Don't despair, our poets, artists, and writers are still around. As long as Bebop-O is here we likely won't see any mushroom clouds overhead, unless of course, the shitake really hits the fan.

http://www.welcometonorway.co.uk/img/culture1.jpg

...If that doesn't work, we may have to go to the pea shooters and spud guns. After all, you don't use a mallet to swat at gadflys, but I know how you feel.

--Anonymous

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If only wars were fought with fruits and vegetables, and Bebop-O was our Commander-in Chief. If you throw a blueberry really hard at someone, the worst that can happen is you give them a strawberry.

As I read blog comments here and there, once in a while I run across a comment that advocates putting a bullet in some SOB...

-- Steve W.

Healthy Skeptic is absolutely the biggest douchebag I've ever had the misfortune to read on the internet. That includes every right wing troll you can think of. He is the most effective kind of right winger though. He was such a bore today that I won't vote for a moderate ever again, even if it means Fred Thompson wins the presidency. Thanks to Healthy Skeptic, I realize I loathe so called moderates even more than I do Bush loving right wingers. What an appalling display of arrogance, ignorance, and punch in the mouth obnoxiousness that was.