🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1094@mtgzz.UUCP> leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) writes:
>
> >I'm here to put out a smoldering ember before it becomes an
> >inner-newsgroup flaming (literally) inferno:
>
>Such emotion.  Jeez!

Just trying to head off a plethora of flames from laying waste to both our
houses...

>Slight correction.  It seems to go for the comics that people
>recommend, not just comics in general.  The ones I read were the ones
>that comic readers told me were the best of the lot.  Of course there
>may be a multiplicity of opinions.  As I remember, the one that was
>recommended was a "relevant" Green Arrow that presented some pretty pat
>views of race relations.

Depends on who recommends 'em.  If you're talking about those old Denny
O'Neil/Neal Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics, I agree with you --
their race relations stuff is extremely pat, though it was advanced in
1969 when it was first published, just for talking about the subject -- it
had been pretty well ignored up to that point in comics.

> >a quieter and more well-behaved tenant in that basement or
> >attic or guest room than a box of comics.  
>
>If that is how you measure if a comic is mature, I can agree with you.

*Sigh*.  So much for an uneven attempt at lightening the atmosphere...

> >I think comics have *improved* a good deal over the last 10
> >years, due  mostly to an older group of people reading them, 
> >who have gotten tired of cliches and have developed the demand
> >for  more refined (more complex, more realistic
> >characterizations, 
> 
>I was loaned a copy of X-MEN that had a two of the super-characters
>having a deep soul-searching discussion in a whirlwind half a mile
>above the ground.  I can stand outside of my fandom of science fiction
>and laugh at the tacky look of certain Star Trek episodes.  Surely you
>can be big enough to admit there is something pretty weird about this
>sort of juxtaposition if serious discussion and silly image.

Why are two characters have a soul-searching discussion in a whirlwind any
less plausible than discussions in strange locations in SF stories?
(conversations via playing cards in the Amber series seems plausible
enough...).  I don't have to be "big" enough to admit that it was a poorly
scripted scene; I agree that this *is* mediocre writing, but it is not
inherently bad due to characters or setting, it is due to a writer whose
imagination has dried up lately.  Besides, who picked X-Men as the zenith of
comics writing?  What I disliked in your original article is that you are
saying the amount of crap in comics is greater than what Sturgeon's Law
(which I assume is mutually accepted) allows for from a scant reading of
what is out there.  I do not presume to go beyond SL in regards to SF
because other than Cherryh, Poul Anderson and Roger Zelazny, I haven't read
much SF (besides, I believe SF has a lower crap quantity than SL specifies).
If I understand your arguments correctly, the only qualifications you have
for condemning the entire media of comics are reading X-Men and Green
Lantern/Green Arrow and laughing at Star Trek (the latter seems rather
cruel, like kicking an extremely talented handicapped person).

I have no problems with any critique of an individual comic, whether I agree
with it or not; any intelligent person understands the inevitability of
disagreement about creative works.  I also have no problem with casting the
spectre of Sturgeon's Law on comics; I find that it applies everywhere else.
The bone of contention is that you claimed comics are worse (i.e. more %
crap) than SF in ignorance of the subject you were slamming.  Do a little
more background work before slapping a misnomer on, will you?

        "I can give you my word, but I know what it's worth and you don't."
                                -Nero Wolfe, _Over_My_Dead_Body_

                                        Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
ARPA: fluke!moriarty@uw-beaver.ARPA
UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, allegra, sb1, lbl-csam}!fluke!moriarty
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