Where is comics pitchfork?**

Actually, there is one more online reviewer that I'd consider trustworthy - Greg McElhatton of iComics.com. Reviews a wide range of stuff, is open-minded re: all comers, manages to inform w/out condescending or going over one's head, and doesn't over-do the adjectives. There is a place I check out almost every week which is probably the comic Pitchfrock, but I don't want to name them here, because I am paranoid - I check it out mostly to see what's coming out this week, & more often than not just skim through the reviews to get to their rating. (Said place also had a semi-regular column written by a now-famous spandex writer, which was a great read if you wanted to find out how great something was.)

Most of the web-writing about comics I've come across seems just a few steps removed from PR pitches, which, in some circles of the blogosphere, is seemingly encouraged - the industry's in dire straits, the stuff that's selling ain't worth a damn, so we need to PUMP IT UP re: titles & creators that are neglected. This is especially true of the folks that continually blindly slam the Big Two (cf. that ridiculously annoying "Identity Crisis rape" meme), or folks that go out of their way to bash certain creators w/out any justification (cf. Alan David Doane's crusade against Geoff Johns). Any sort of objectivity (or pretense therein) seems to go by the wayside in exchange for who can make the most noise.

Huk's post is OTM, though - I think most folks that think about comics in a critical fashion end up MAKING comics (cf. the 70s fanzines, a scene I'm not familiar w/, though I believe folks like Dave Cockrum & John Byrne were first published in 'zines, and I think Kurt Busiek was a zinester, too). See also former ILCster Matt Maxwell, who had a column w/ Broken Frontier & did some con reporting for one of the big news sites (as well as the blog thing), & is currently on the other side of the aisle, trying to pitch his wares.

I wonder if the built-in insularity of the medium has something to do w/ the seeming lack of quality critical writing about the medium (aside from critics approaching comics w/ a ten foot pole, eager to rescue any graphically sequential work of significance from the comic ghetto, which is just as bad as what folks WITHIN the subculture do when pimping, for instance, Fantagraphics Books or Drawn & Quarterly stuff or like-minded things @ the expense of the more popular funny books).

I imagine the degree of separation between fan and artiste in comics is a lot smaller than in other media, though (esp. w/ a large contingent of writers & artists & editors hovering around the interweb, interacting with / flaming fans on their own message boards or other public forusm, taking an active role in providing PR for their projects, using the daily web news cycle to their advantage re: interviews and self-promotion), which lends itself to a higher chance of cross-over. A recent case in point: Brendan Thomas, a one-time columnist for SilverBulletComicBooks.com, notorious for his unwavering & uncritical enthusiasm (g00gle "the hottness"), who managed to get in w/ Rob Liefeld & is now doing work both w/ Liefeld (on various X-Force mishaps & Youngblood shenanigans) and the manga'd Marvel kiddie line. One thing that might separate working the fan-to-maker transition in comics than in other fields - in comics, there's the issue of tenure, wherein wet-ear folks have to earn their stripes & run the Old Boys Network gauntlet in order to get noticed, whether it be someone breaking in on the ground floor @ The Big Two or an indie-supa-dupa-star getting a chance to play in the toychest. (This also assumes, probably wrongly, that doing work for the Big Two is the pinnacle of one's comic career. If anything, the pinnacle of one's comic career is to use one's comic career as a springboard to get the eff out of comics!)

Hey, Tom - why don't you name names? I'll show you mine if you show me yours (wink wink).

To wit: http://dcboards.warnerbros.com/web/thread.jspa?threadID=2000012806&tstart=0

The obvious answer to this q: we do! Let's start a website!

(nb, by "we" I mean "y'all")

Reading mark's post again, he seems to infer (or maybe I'm going to infer this via mark's post) that the divide between comic creator and comic critic is very very thin, to the point that the critics are actually part of the comic establishment (similar to what I imagine the literary establishment is like, esp. w/ regards to poetry). As opposed to music or art or (especially) film, where there's the group making the stuff, and there's the group critiquing the stuff, and there's a gulf between these two groups that most aren't willing to bridge. (I'm just repeating myself, aren't I?)

Anyway, to answer Jordan's question / comment - maybe the Comic's Pitchfork IS ILC. If that's the case, I vote nay on the Eros Comix ads.

http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/comics101/archives.html

it seems he has a sensibility you dudes might feel. there is a lot there on that archive page, but I would recommend starting with the link below, as it has stills from the live action Legends of the Superheroes special from the late '70s, i dimly remember the roast episode, where Batman (adam West) and Green lantern et al sit around and crack wise with Solomon Grundy et al. But I didn't see the preceding episode…the link below contains a still of MORDRU ON A JET SKI…I'm giggling like a schoolgirl thinking about it…

http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/comics101/117.html

And that article's theme is especially irritating, it seems to me he's totally underestimating Spider-man's readership. I have no idea of what's going on in those comics, but I don't really think the fans are naive enough to keep believing that every little thing to come out from a crossover will result in an everlasting change.

Someone could tell me that I'm overestimating the average spider-fan, well, I'd rather be wrong by overestimating people than by underestimating them.

OH GOD! HELP ME! EATING MY OWN BRAIN LIKE I WAS CAPTAIN AMERICA!

Haven't read that yet but it would be a nice twist to x-overs: a x-over where everybody lives, even those who were dead before.

There are hardly any footnotes in the above books to keep track of all the tie-ins; the best I’ve been able to do is read as many DC Universe titles as I can and keep notes and hope I’m correctly connecting all the dots. It’s how I spent most of this past Sunday

Now that's ONE HELL OF A WEEKEND!

There was a JLI Annual (#2, I think, drawn by Bill FABLES Willingham) about a JLI bbq at Mr. & Mrs. Miracle's suburban abode that deserves a mega-expansion!

It could be a special heartwarming x-mas x-over!

Goddam it, Huk, stop making me want to buy Marvel Zombies! I just dropped a C-note on Amazon preordering the Bendis Daredevil and Alias!

You can complain all you like about David Gibbons’ writing on space-opera miniseries Rann-Thanagar War—I know I did; I checked the cover to make sure I wasn’t reading Super Friends the first time I heard Kyle Rayner shout “Great Guardians!”—but you can’t accuse the guy of wasting time, drawing the story out or decompression.

First of all, Kyle Rayner shouting "Great Guardians" was possibly the one redeeming element of the miniseries. Second of all, COME ON!

uhh...

Who wrote that, Alex fuckin' Ross?

You can complain all you like about David Gibbons’ writing on space-opera miniseries Rann-Thanagar War—I know I did; I checked the cover to make sure I wasn’t reading Super Friends the first time I heard Kyle Rayner shout “Great Guardians!”—but you can’t accuse the guy of wasting time, drawing the story out or decompression.

This is like saying "You can complain all you like about the average Pitchfork guy writing awful reviews (of course DaveR and Jess Harvell are not the average pitchfork guy :)) but you can't accuse them of their reviews being too long". I mean, short or long, compressed or decompressed; awful is still awful.

Fantagraphics blog
http://www.fantagraphics.com/blog/archive/2006_02_01_fantagraphics_archive.html#113925474797446993

Douglas Wolk wrote a great review of Jaime Hernandez's GHOST OF HOPPERS for Salon.com this month. If Wolk isn't the best comics critic in America, he's one of the top five, and this considered piece confirms it. Bless him.

Anybody reading Savage Critic reviews? Douglas Wolk and Abhay Khosla are pretty standout there.

Buddy of mine posted this the other night, thoughts?

Overt Invasion of Terrible Criticism

I read that. On one hand, I sympathize with him -- it would be nice to have more substantive, intelligent writing. But I don't think the problem is snark. I think the problem is that comics reviews are consumer guides. So of course you're gonna get sarcastic attempts to make "buy/not buy"'s more interesting.

Abhay's review of Secret Invasion #4 is pretty good. Probably the best I've seem him (and I've only seen a few of his reviews, so maybe he's great elsewhere, and saves his dickishness for SavCrits?).

Speaking of pfork, this guy perpetually hits all my Brent D wizard cap buttons to the point that even the good points he makes get obscured by my allergy to his rhetorical flourishes -- dude zings Powers when his shit reads like a Powers letter column!

Ugh I read that review by Abhay and basically wanted to find him and light him on fire.

I mean, the writing is really really annoying, but I'll admit that if anyone leads with "waaaah Final Crisis isn't good," I immediately just think that they are retarded.

This is totally Conflict of Interest Time, but one of the best pieces on funny books I've read in a while was our Tom's piece on crossovers for the aforementioned Pitchfork!

Please note that I don't read much online (or offline) about comics, because 95.7% of it makes me go FAPPO.

I usually find that when Abhay gets round to making his point, it's a good point - the Wizard's Cap stuff I can take or leave depending on the mood I'm in. But then I always liked Brent D!

Ha -- I think part of the reason I can't stand wizard-cappery is because of my tendency to A) cap it up more than I like when I deign to write and B) my capping being total shit.

I was going to make some grand point that drew parallels between Pitchfork's old-school anti-Top-40 stance (wherein they'd take left-field shots @ popular shit for mostly business-model reasons) and the tendency of some blog folks to give the Big Two the unwarranted stinkeye (unwarranted in a creative sense) for business-model reasons, but then I realized there's a slight difference between one publication doing something, and a purported hivemind doing something.

I like it best where there's a sly half-sentence of insight right in the middle of the most outrageous cappery. Though I should probably get over my admiration for critics who wilfully put their best stuff precisely where nobody's likely to be reading it.

If anything it seems to me reviewers are much friendlier to the Big Two now than they used to be - the big comics/music crit parallel is surely hip-hop and manga. "Wow this thing turned out not to be a fad and took over our industry, what a shame its golden age was years ago and these days it's all money guns and hoes yaoi tentacles and schoolgirls. Damn these white American teen buyers who have ruined the artform and are preventing the really good stuff from finding an audience. I'd better keep on largely ignoring it."

(There is no real music-crit parallel for the "In Japan there are 400 monthly comics about mowing the lawn!!11!! OH THE DIVERSITY" trope though.)

I like Abhay a lot. But then, I've always liked that madcap style and I'm glad that there's one person writing about comics like that. One, not a thousand. I think he usually makes some thoughful and interesting points in an offbeat manner, like the point of the argument is a throw-away amidst the jokes and I like that.

And I find it difficult to get angry when someone doesn't like what I like (eg, Final Crisis) if I appreciate his writing.

I'm amazed no one has mentioned Jog yet, he's one of the best comic critics right now. Thoughtfull, thorough, gentle and level headed, has been writing for years!: http://joglikescomics.blogspot.com/

Pls to explain "Wizard's Cap"

I had never seen a shooting star before...

Huh, are you guys reviewing comic-book reviewers?
META-HEAD-EXPLODE

I must give some props for pitchfork in that for better or worse (mostly worse) they've turned what they do into a FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH.

Can't really say the same about any of the comic-crit crowd, comics journal included.

Or are you talking about Wizard: The Rolling Stone of Comics?

I abstain.

CHRIST MAN REVIEW THE DAMN COMIC ALREADY

He made a couple of good points but not really enough to outweigh the damn blather. It's very 'zany' and 'wacky' stuff.

These kinds of bloggers really need to work on their (real criticism):(bullshit) ratio for this style to work.

The butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bled upward into the cobalt sky, which seemed as strikingly artificial and perfect as a wizard's cap.

Holy shit!

Pls to explain "Wizard's Cap"

Well, sometimes two wizards love each other very much, but they do not fancy having any baby wizards. So...

Surely they can bum each other?

I agree with Chuck re: "Holy shit!" but I'm still not clear what element is being singled out: the astonishing simile, the florid words, the sharp drop in coolness? I don't really see any of those (hard to imagine the latter!) in the review from Abhay, he just seems a bit ADHD.

Also:

lol it's kind of hilarious/awesome to see the names of a bunch of ppl I bullshitted around with on Usenet listed at the beginning of this thread

Yes!

Over the last year or so, the N'ram Blog has gotten really good (in spite of the main site), even as the CBR blog has totally sucked up the joint (the once fun Comic Urban Legends series has now become an inane hair-splitting trivia nuisance). But now the Blog@Nrama crew has jumped ship, and it's being taken over by the Best Shots bozos. yeeesh.

unrelated great blog: Shazhmmm...

tom spurgeon's comics reporter is the only news site i feel the need to visit regularly

thanks for the link, Dr. Superman!

Tucker Stone can be pretty funny in his Factual Opinion reviews, but his wife's the better writer.

I usually just visit Journalista and let the links lead me from there each day. It's a bit smug, but often has good stuff.

www.tcj.com/journalista

Heidi MacDonald, Spurgeon and Deppey are my big 3.

nobody here has mentioned matt rosenthal's zompist site...I mean, he's how I first heard of Love and Rockets...I mean, he's almost exclusively indie (hence the pitchfork analogy) and nowhere near current or even on a regular schedule, and he pretty much reviews entire runs...but still, if you're down with all of that, he's about as good as it gets...

matt rosenthalmark rosenfelder...sorry, i'm a nincompoop...

(unless he falls under "earnest, and a little bland" which I suppose is possible)

Is anyone else tired of Tucker Stone, in as much as you can be tired of someone you have to actually seek out to read/watch? I dunno, maybe it's the videos, maybe it's the sadness of how inarticulate he becomes when he tries to praise something (i realize what i'm doing here, btw), maybe it's aw geez, even I've stopped reading 90% of the shit comics I was reading 2 yrs ago. Maybe it was when he totally mis-got Homicide: Life on the Streets (expecting it to play by The Wire's rules).

And, furthermore, yeah, his wife is still the better writer, but she clearly has read enough comics by now that he supposed outsider view is no longer, y'know, factual

I know what you mean--the Michel Houllebecq thing he did recently was more than I needed.

Is anyone else tired of Tucker Stone

does it count if I was sometime last year?

Was he the guy who dismissed Gerber's MAN-THING out of hand? If so, I was tired of him quite some time ago. But then I've grown pretty tired of all but the most engaging comics commentators as well, so he's in good company.

Have been really enjoying Tom Katers's Tom vs The Flash podcast. http://tomvsjla.libsyn.com/ He doesn't exactly review them, but he sorta recaps issues of the Flash (he's currently doing the Bates/Novick mid70s stuff. He has a great affection for the material but is not reverant of it. I'm especially fond of his recaps of the Green Lantern backups, as that's my favourite Hal Jordan era, the Denny O'Neill/Mike Grell stuff.

http://www.ozoux.com/eclectic/archive/2006/06/13/images/batman.jpg
http://bit.ly/b0lLBw

I skimmed the exchange and was thoroughly baffled by the entire thing. Really, coming to critical blows over the primacy of the interview in comics journalism?

And really, ain't not much of it's journalism so much as most all of it is commentary. But then I've always tended towards wondering why critique is even necessary. Sure, it's fun to talk amongst ourselves about the stuff we read (and I hear you can make a living at it if you're very canny and self-directed, neither of which I am in particular) but to seriously get into namecalling slapfights about it?

And I was faintly amused to be called out as a former ILComixxor upthread. I suppose it was during one of my many extended absences...

Baffled is an excellent choice of words. The HU scene seems like such an intellectual Mobius Strip.
Good criticism or commentary or message-boarding has probably sustained my interest in superhero comics longer than the comics would have by themselves, definitely consider the 52/52-Pickup experience as the most enjoyable period of my comics-reading life. Continue to immensely enjoy a lot of what Douglas writes at Techland, and enjoyed Stone's recent profile of Cliff Chiang.

But by the same token, there's been stuff that's been critically rhapsodized that I find utterly insufferable.

I wish there were more than a handful of superhero comics I was interested in, though. I hate being a cranky old bastard re-reading DOOM PATROL because nothing else seems to get it right.

Berlatsky is a terrible terrible troll and mostly an idiot, but fwiw I agree w/ most of what he's saying there - it IS stupid romantic fannish bullshit to argue that “you can learn more about art history by listening to Gary Panter and Art Spiegelman talk than from reading a shelf-full of academic books” (I mean, talk abt yr strawmen, as if all 'academic books' are one and the same, and of the same value), and it doesn't seem to be an especially controversial statement to suggest that the interview form has largely dominated the (English language) comics critical discourse for the last twenty or so years, mostly due to The Comics Journal. After all, how did the Journal celebrate its 300th issue recently? By publishing eleven new interviews! While some of the long interviews that the Journal published were electrifying and/or 'seminal' - the Kurtzman interview, the Crumb interview, various encounters with Gil Kane, etc - the whole Q+A format, starting at the beginning and dutifully discussing formative influences, family history and so on, has too often been a rather lazy substitute for actual critical engagement. Also, Groth's 'point' that Donald Phelps (a horrible dry-as-dust comics critic) doesn't write like an academic because he was never in academia is the same kind of evasive sophistry that he takes Berlatsky to task for.

Because comics creators have, by and large, been 'accesible' to fans over the years - at conventions and so on - there has too often been a breakdown in the critical distance between creator and critic. On a very minor level, I had friendly social encounters with a number of writers and artists over the years, and afterwards I couldn't contemplate writing anything critical or 'objective' about their work, if only because I might then run into them at some social function or other. Now that's my own cowardice - I'm sure Groth is far more fearless than that - but I bet my example is by no means uncommon.

^i wld like to contest some of this but I am drunk

not the bit about berlatsky being kind if a tedious troll though

(sic), when you sober up wld like to hear yr thoughts

And it continues. Mr. Berlatsky has posted a follow-on that might be as long as the original including comments.

bump to fix bookmarks.

Okay quickly before this gets lost forever:
fwiw I agree w/ most of what he's saying there - it IS stupid romantic fannish bullshit to argue that “you can learn more about art history by listening to Gary Panter and Art Spiegelman talk than from reading a shelf-full of academic books” (I mean, talk abt yr strawmen, as if all 'academic books' are one and the same, and of the same value)
Maybe the quote means shitty books only! But tbrr, as hyperbole the assertion has value. By listening to someone talk, one might engage more intently with their content, recognise better a personal perspective, and be inspired to develop one of their own.
and it doesn't seem to be an especially controversial statement to suggest that the interview form has largely dominated the (English language) comics critical discourse for the last twenty or so years, mostly due to The Comics Journal.
I don’t think this is the case. No-one else is doing Journal-level interviews, and even decent interviews don’t advance much of a critical perspective or take a critical approach. And the last 20 years the critical discourse has seen two-line dismissals on discussion forums far outweigh any other kind of considered review, leading to a situation where the likes of Tucker Stone and Chris Sims become feted for dismissing things with lots of words. Or, if that doesn’t count, serious criticism has an intense academic bubble that seems to trundle along on its own, with the likes of IJOCA.
After all, how did the Journal celebrate its 300th issue recently? By publishing eleven new interviews!
To be fair, they were in a themed and interesting format, and it was specifically to mark the farewell issue, not to be exciting and creative! (I know Ward knows this and is enjoying the hyperbole, but in case anyone else is reading the thread.)
I will say that from the last ten years I can’t remember any particularly exciting or provoking criticism OR interviews from TCJ, except for Seth’s John Stanley appresh in the Fort Thunder issue. But then, I was suffering Journal inertia for a long time before suffering Journal fatigue and FINALLY stopped buying EVERY issue. The spine letters alone probably kept me going an extra couple of years tbh. And also, I adore Comics Comics critical approach and variety of voices, but I can’t remember anything I read there last week, let alone imagine I will in ten years.

While some of the long interviews that the Journal published were electrifying and/or 'seminal' - the Kurtzman interview, the Crumb interview, various encounters with Gil Kane, etc - the whole Q+A format, starting at the beginning and dutifully discussing formative influences, family history and so on, has too often been a rather lazy substitute for actual critical engagement.
Not all the interviews follow that format! And the arg’t isn’t that the interviews are designed to engage critically, but that a secret history of American comics criticism has inadvertently developed through this medium of artist’s discourse.
Now that's my own cowardice - I'm sure Groth is far more fearless than that - but I bet my example is by no means uncommon.
Groth is definitely not bothered by this! This is a problem in ALL fields though, those interested in the field are likely to end up socialising with the creators to some degree. Some it’ll affect, some it won’t. Lots of critics won’t be interested in socialising anyway. And the fan/creator divide in comics is going to be larger with artists doing serious work warranting proper criticism, than it is with superhero writers, who are 99% fans anyway. (And those class of fans are less likely to produce or aspire to anything worthwhile, too – meeting Trevor Von Eeden sometime isn’t going to hold Frank Santoro back from doing an analysis of colour schemes in Thriller issues 4 & 5, for example.)

Seeing Groth speak this Sunday, incidentally. If we end up having lunch after, I’ll be sure not to bring up this thread.

gah formatting

Isn't the comics pitchfork called Questionable Content?

you're thinking of jerkcity.

Anyone else uncomfortable with how eagerly and uncritically the comics press has been doing PR work for the adult film industry lately? There's clearly some sort SEO-based benefit to it, and it's not at all different from how they cover the comics biz. For sure, there's a massive overlap in audience, and both Bleeding Cool and Comics Alliance have refrained from posting X-rated images, but, I don't know, I kind of expected more tact and thoughtfulness, well, from Comics Alliance at least.

Yeah, I have been feeling that a little bit, tbh. You're right though, it's pretty much just for more traffic. Both sites can be fun reads, but neither are trying to be serious or dignified (Bleeding Cool particularly seems to love being as tabloid-like as possible).