Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 420 Editor's Choice: 45
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What about...
[Read the article: Comics fans, grow up!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, you can't discuss this topic without bringing up Neil Gaiman. One of maybe the 5 best writers of his generation, without qualification, got his start in graphic novels. And that's what they were, not glorified comic books.
Getting published is hard, and getting harder. Independent publishing houses are dying off, rumor has it that Americans are reading less and less (even though the local bookstores around here are always packed), and costs are rising. Niche literary magazines are either gone or prohibitively expensive and mainstream magazines won't print your stuff unless you've been published before. The days of submitting a manuscript over the transom are long gone. Self publishing may get you into the local bookstores, but its more likely to lead to bankruptcy than to career freedom.
Comics are a way to get widespread distribution in an accessible medium with a lot fewer and lower barriers to entry. And there are some who are simply trying to combine literary and visual media to tell stories that can't be told as well by either on their own. Properly done it really is a unique artform.
Most comics are not graphic novels. The realities of the industry prevent that. Superman, Spiderman, Batman - how many different writers, artists, editors, etc... have been involved with the major comics over the years? Whose vision, whose reality are we visiting when we read them from end to end? Nobody's. Calling them graphic pulp serials would be more appropriate, but they have had significant cultural impact so they should still be given their due.
As for collectors - I also worked in the retail side of the comic industry for a while. I wasn't (and I'm not) a comic junkie, but I didn't and don't have any negative opinions about the medium. I was fascinated by the numerous minimum wage workers who spent up to $100 per week on our subscription service, paying extra for us to bag and board their purchases so they would remain pristine forever. I asked someone if I should be doing this, I had easy and inexpensive access to the product and if there was money to be made...? The answer I got was that these people were idiots, basically spending half their income on lottery tickets where there was a 1 in a billion chance of winning. Sealing up the books before they were read was dumb, not because it aggrandized a pedestrian medium but because it prevented them from realizing the only value they would likely ever get for their money - the pleasure of reading the comics themselves.
Comics aren't taken seriously because comic junkies don't really differentiate between the great and the crap, which makes it hard for us to take comic junkies seriously. It's similar to TV. There are still those who insist all TV is crap and will never be the equal of cinema, but TV fans are becoming more discerning about what they defend, finally realizing that you don't have to stand up for the entire medium to validate the parts you think are great, and TV is being taken more seriously because of that. When comic fans reach that point in large numbers, things will start to change.
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Hey Juliebird
[Read the article: White House: Trust the "sole enforcer"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for the almost plausible excuse. If I ever decide I give a shit what the public, the rest of the government, or for that matter the world thinks of me or what I do, I'll keep it in mind. For now, as long as I can go on breaking the law with impunity and threatening to fire entire branches of the government for questioning my authority, watching the cowards go skittering this way and that trying to save their jobs while the media fills your heads with images of whiny bimbos, I'll stick with what's working.
Regards,
Dick Cheney
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We have no news media at all anymore
[Read the article: Everyone we fight in Iraq is now "al-Qaida"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's a place I go for breakfast sometimes, where the booths are decorated with framed copies of the front pages of old newspapers. I find it depressing. There are entire generations of Americans who have no idea that once upon a time, the news reported facts. Sure, there was some spin, but everything was true to the best of the reporter's knowledge. There were seperate sections for opinion, clearly marked, but for the most part we were handed the facts, complicated issues were explained in a fairly unbiased manner, and we were allowed - even expected - to draw our own conclusions.
I can't help but wonder what Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Harry Reasnor would think of all this. And I am starting to understand why Dan Rather cracked up. Calling any of these shills a reporter is preposterous. They have become part of the government, reading what the government wants us to hear, influencing opinion in the way the government wants, and defending the government's every action. Even books by reporting superstars get no coverage when they attack the party line.
Pravda indeed.