Do you need to be a geek to appreciate "great" comics?

X-post: Yeah, Tom, but there's so much stuff in Watchmen that only makes sense if you realize what source material it's referring to, not just stuff like the criticism of Ditko with Rorschach, but also the more genre-general stuff, too. Appreciating Moore's superhero work in general seems highly dependent on knowing what source material he's using for his pastiche, from Marvelman on to Supreme and Tom Strong, etc.

But it's a really common tic of fan-critics to focus on that layer and either treat it as the only important thing in the work (Batman Begins is good because it's just like Year One OMG!!) or roll ones eyes and potentially underestimate the non-geek reader/viewer (Begins makes zero sense unless you've read Year One!). NB I have not seen BB yet so either of these stances might be entirely true! And I've said loads of similar stuff in my time, but I think it's a function of being too close to the source material, not having a better perspective because of it.

The thing about superhero comics (certainly since the early 60s) is that everybody's first one is kind of confusing: there is an awful lot happening to a lot of strangely dressed people and there's a load of stuff you simply can't know from just reading one issue. Younger kids I think redact that confusion and just take what sense they can out of things, and then there's a division between the type of older child or adult who in some way gets a buzz off that confusion and wants to learn more, and the type who says "It's not worth it" and puts the comic down.

(I don't think this division is entirely geek/non-geek either - daily soap operas do much the same thing with each episode.)

I think that non-geeks will still have some idea of what the Silver Age Batman was like (and an exagerated one, at that!) because almost everyone's seen an episode of the 60's show. Mind you, if they're of a certain age, they might still not "get it", because they've also most likely been exposed to an episode or two of "Batman Adventures", so their reaction *might* just be "well, yeah, that's Batman".

I think probably yes.

Tom said what I was too tired to say last night, but the other thing about Watchmen is that it had a beginning, middle, and an end (at least for those of us who read the trade), and while there might have been allusive qualities to the characters they still were (more or less?) contained in that book. So the book introduces everyone and as a reader you feel as though you're starting off on more or less the same footing as everyone else. Then we get into Tom's point about the subtext being treated as the text, etc.

What about Alan Moore's retro comics, like Supreme and Tom Strong?

The one issue of Supreme I read was too obviously a lamer pastiche of Superman to be that interesting to me. Tom Strong, however, works for me completely on its own terms.

What I've found really interesting lately, especially as I've been quarter-binning my way through the late 80s DCU, is how the Charlton Action Heroes reacted to being Watchmenizizinated.
Here's the Question in his first proper DCU appearance from Blue Beetle #5:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y298/hukl/question1.jpg

And here's a panel from later in the same issue:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y298/hukl/question2.jpg

Nobody will argue that Blue Beetle was a "Great Comic", but that's a pretty fucking geeky panel.

As for the Batman Begins/Year One bizz (tune in later to for more), the similarities are mostly superficial. There aren't any direct references to Wayne's training in YO, and though several names are lifted (Detective Flass and Commissioner Loeb, for example), their filmic counterparts bear little resemblence to the four-colour originals.

Comics since the establishment of the Direct Market have all moved toward catering to the Mass Geekery.

Last weekend I found 5 of the 6 issues of the second Super Powers mini that Kirby drew. It's a fucking Kenner Action Figure tie-in, but it's absolutely loaded with references to the early JLA stories of Gardner Fox, as well as the relatively obscure Fourth World stuff of the 70s, as well as the absolutely obscure mid-80s Graphic Novel Hunger Dogs. In a comic aimed at six-year-olds!

Watchmen works for the non-superhero geek. So does Dark Knight. I've given both to friends and been rewarded with said friends getting into comics to varying degrees. The sad part is that inevitably - as far as the superhero genre goes - its mostly downhill from there.

But geeks definitely get/enjoy Watchmen more. How can anyone understand what is pleasurable or important or exciting or clever about a piece of revisionism if they don't understand or have a context for what is being revised?

I get what you mean about sentimentality though, kenchen. Spiderman 2 made me well up a few times and I couldn't quite figure out if it was purely the emotions stirred by the story and characters or if it was more about my complex reactions to a character I've had a relationship with for most of my life and all sorts of complicated issues to do with my childhood etc. I think a big part of me was just sad that my 8 year old self didn't get the chance to see this movie which he would have enjoyed so purely and totally.

What, you don't think that shows in the way it is written? The excitement of reinvention can shine through even if you don't know what the original invention was. Or at least, that is the theory why "groundbreaking" works in any genre can stay fresh for however long -- that quality of breaking ground is enjoyable distinct from any context of what ground was there.

In the case of the Batman movie, I thought this semi-BS point I was arguing for was more apropos because the ultrasonic thingy really isn't explained at all in the movie-- I had to explain that plot point to my non-comic-geek movie-going companion as we left the theater because he asked me about it, mystified and somewhat dismissive of it because he thought it made no sense as a gimmick if it really was the bats from the cave that had been called up (the absurdity of which Miller at least makes an attempt to gloss over in the text of his narrative). I think geek viewers might be the audience best rewarded by genre films nowadays(as in the case of Spider-Man 2, as you guys mentioned). I had a grand old time recognizing where bits of things had come from in watching the Batman film, analyzing the new portrayal of the character as opposed to his past history, and subjecting the movie to a Morrisonian analysis of it as modern mythology-- all stuff that non-geeks wouldn't get to do. I think some of the multimedia superhero stuff out now is in fact aimed too much at the geek audience, like comics came to be in the 60's with the coming of the ex-fan creators. I've heard complaints from non-geeks about the new "Justice League Unlimited" series, which, although I haven't seen it, sounds to me like it has too much stuff packed in for the benefit of the few fan geeks who would actually give a shit if they did, say, a television adaptation of "The Man Who Has Everything", to the detriment of casual viewers who just find this stuff boring and confusing because it's too much for them to get into and they lack the context to understand why it's supposed to be so cool that all these superhero characters are appearing in the series, anyway. To get back to the Batman movie again, I thought to a certain extent it "made sense" more to geeks because I had a grounding in contextual knowledge about the setting and characters of the film that the general audience was never really given-- I knew who Lucius Fox was, I knew about Arkham Asylum, Commissioner Gordon, and why all this stuff was being set up for future films. But, to be fair, since most people don't actually want to do any thinking when they watch movies, I don't expect they actually give a shit that that stuff is just thrown at them-- all part of the silly roller coaster ride of the superhero movie for them, I guess, something they've learned to expect to encounter in genre films: a world with many fantastic and illogical doings, its history rationally unjustifiable and mysteriously unexplained. But I think that that approach can be carried too far, as in the case of the Justice League stuff.

See, it never would occur to me that appreciating a comic would involve getting any of the author's aims.

They did do this!

Yeah, Huk, I saw it, actually, which is why I threw it out there. Isn't there some small controversy about adapting old stories in this way? Moore and the others being mined for "tribute"/material aren't getting paid for providing the scenarios and dialogue, are they?

Leee, I'd be very wary about everything I've said so far! I'm just thinking out loud here, and maybe you're right that I'm over-generalizing to the point of uselessness about this stuff. My binary distinction between geek/non-geek probably doesn't hold up as a descriptor of the situation of however many hundreds of millions of people it's attempting to encompass.

So what's the final analysis? No, you don't have to be a geek to appreciate "great" comics, superhero or otherwise, but it helps you to appreciate them more fully? And superhero movies are more fun when you've read the source material?

I'm not sure. I think Moore was credited (in a "based on a story by" fashion), and he reportedly gives all his licensing cash to the artists. Plus, anything involving Superman & Batman has got to be work-for-hire, so DC/Warner retains all the rights. I think there was some hubbub about Denny O'Neill being miffed about not getting his due from Batman Begins (he created Ra's Al Ghul), and then DC/Warner had him write the novelization.

Yeah but fuck those creators; they're not doing their job. I grow more and more tired of artists (and one of my main areas of geekdom is poetry, where this concept is far too prevalent) who feel their job is to communicate something about themselves or their worldview to me. This is utterly not their job. Their job is to create something which allows the reader to walk away with something -- whether it's just amusement, enlightenment, appreciation of pretty linework, whatever; that's not up to the artist to decide, that's up to each reader.

To make a poor metaphor: The reader is a seed, and the artist creates some fertile soil, but the artist has little control over what kind of plant the seed will become.

Chris F., for the purposes of this discussion, I actually think that your binaries are necessary to an extent, though I disagreed with how you characterized the non-geek is all. I don't really want to get into semantics.

I do think, though, that "great" is a problematic term -- I really don't care what DKR has to say about Cold War politics, Frank Miller wrote an amazingly entertaining story that operated on an emotional level that has rarely been approached by anything in any medium. So to dismiss something on the basis of amusement but lack of "seriousness" or 'greater importance' misses the point. Or, at the very least, is a concern that not every reader, geek and non alike, shares (perhaps the seriousness is something more typically emphasized by the geek?). Or maybe I'm disqualifying myself as a geek, after all.

First, yeah this was covered in the super-reader thread. Sorry, forgot about that one.

Also, even if the only criteria is how entertaining something is, one of your sub-tests for entertainment might be something like "conviction" or "compelling worldview" or "humanist portrayal of social conditions."

I guess my main question is--do you think that this super-referentialism is a "good thing" or not? I just got David B.'s Babel and I think it's one of the best comics I've gotten in a long time. If you compare his formalism to, say, Chris Ware (or Art Spiegelman or even Dan Clowes), he's way more natural, less strained, than our show-offy American appropriation. I'm wondering if once an art form goes into a self-referential phase if that means that it's deferred the real energy of making cool stuff to other forms.

If you want metatextual deconstruction and crying gorillas, a lot of people really, really like Promothea. Me, not so much.

I am looking for the next instalment of Queen & Country (TPB#3) but I can't find it!

I feel I am "coming back" to comics again.

I third Top 10, it's also my favorite Alan Moore book.

1) cautious perusal of the superhero racks, grabbing stuff because I knew & loved the creator or the characters
2) get a whiff of the general spandex hype, and checking all that junk out
3) wanton consumption of anything and everything
4) become disillusioned when a good amount of the spandex hype turns out to be SO SO WRONG
5) cut the chaff, define my tastes, and start to explore other non-spandex avenues

I'm just starting w/ #5, BTW.

I'm not sure what approach to media appreciation I actually advocate-- if I appear to be demanding an "English class" approach to reading comics here, that's not really how I approach this stuff as a reader. I'm certainly not solely or even primarily interested as a consumer in works of media that have "significance" in the heavy-handed sense of the term. I think I may have been playing devil's advocate too much on this thread, in retrospect. I do, however, geek out a bit on gleaning meaning from pop cultural things, but not so much in the heavy "cultural studies" sense, more in the Phil Dickian sense of finding God in the garbage heap, and I also like to know about behind the scenes influences on the creation of works (I probably spend more time these days reading histories about comics and related bits of web dirt than I do actual works that are new to me). Hence, my concern with "authorial intent" is mostly due to the fact that, a)I find the history behind works of media as interesting as the works themselves, and b) I think knowing such things helps me to better appreciate what's going on in the works themselves. Some people have no patience for analyzing works of media at all (I guess Leee disagrees with me on this-- but this just happened to me again tonight with a filmgoing companion, and I've encountered it before in people that I've known. They think you either like something or you don't, and have no interest in reflecting on a work of entertainment after they've consumed it, or inquiring deeply into why they like things they do-- this stuff exists just to pass the time and that's it.), but I'm not like that. I've read enough Derrida not to be completely naïve about acts of communication-- I think I was being faintly ironic in ranting on about "authorial intent" being the end all and be all of a piece (and I think I was trying to cover my ass there with the remark about said intent being conscious or not). Um, and I feel like I have more to say about this, but this paragraph has gotten too long and I've lost my train of thought.

fuck those creators; they're not doing their job. I grow more and more tired of artists, etc.

Yeah, I can definitely see where you're coming from on this, especially in the case of poetry. Too much of that sort of thing has caused me to give up entirely on being a consumer of "poetry" as such-- the idea that all poetry has to be a direct communication of an author's experiences seems to have resulted in a great deal of narcissistic mediocrity that I can't be bothered to pay attention to. Come to think of it, the need to "communicate" sort of spoiled Grant Morrison's work a bit for a while there, didn't it? The Invisibles seems to suffer greatly from a conceit on his part that he's communicating vital "magickal" information to his readers. The Filth I thought was a better work and pulled away from this a bit, and now it seems like he's attempting to be less overt in his work, with Seaguy and now the Seven Soldiers minis, which I'm finding to be slightly inscrutable at the moment.

I do think, though, that "great" is a problematic term, etc.

Yeah, I think what makes A. Moore's work "great", for example, is how it functions as a work of entertainment. A deep thinker he is not, I don't think, Frank Miller neither. (Speaking of how conscious "intent" can screw up a work of fiction, I thought the last issue of Promethea was crap, frankly. Neat idea for the format, interesting read, but it argued for this worldview that had been assembled from an amalgamation of New Agey sources in a way that was sort of embarrassingly lacking in critical reasoning or serious scholarship. "Yeah, maaaan, but that's the point, man, it's using both sides of your brain, man, you see?" Pfft, whatever. I think as a metaphysic, Moore's sort of Neoplatonic take on ideaspace is not something to be dismissed out of hand, but if that comic book was supposed to be his final statement about Life, the Universe, and Everything, I'm disappointed by the sloppiness of his reasoning and the statement's execution.) I guess there's something to that sort of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance-esque concern with "quality", but I really don't know what to make of concepts of "greatness", or "the novel" as a serious endeavor, or the "reponsibility of the artist", or canonicity as it relates to the arts.

Also, even if the only criteria is how entertaining something is, etc.

Yeah, somehow this works into notions of "quality", doesn't it? Some types of "quality" works of fiction possess this stuff, some don't need it to be considered "great" as what they are.

Re: super-referentialism, yeah, it is sort of representative of a terminal phase in an artform's development, isn't it? I actually think there's something wrong with the superhero comics of today in their fanboyish obsession with "legacy" (something that largely seems to be a mythology of their own devising, giving a delusional glamour to things of very humble origin), so I don't know why I was pimping so hard for geekdom upthread. I actually have a love-hate relationship with geekdom (for one thing, why couldn't I have become obsessively interested in a more useful field of knowledge, for god's sake?). Maybe it's actually that some comic book geeks aren't geek enough for me to take seriously-- for instance, I don't dig the sort of Kevin Smith-esque idolizing of Stan Lee's comic book output, or of shitty superhero comics from the seventies as some sort of sacred mythological legacy. Don't these people understand the conditions under which this product was produced, dammit? I'll take purely camp appreciation of superhero stuff over that sort of crap-- it's made modern superhero comics pretty much unreadable to me now (although ironically enough, the trend probably seriously got underway in the early 80's, at the time when I began reading comic books, with Crisis on Infinite Earths and all that other overly-portentious ex-fan-written stuff that seems so laughable in retrospect).