Sheesh ...

[quietprofanity]

"Stupid dog! All you ever do is bark! You never meow!"

Shit, at least when I reviewed stuff for Sequential Tart which I was prone to hate I made the effort to read all of it, but since she thinks putting on a pair of 3-D glasses included in the book is a hardship, whatever.

(Almost done, BTW -- Stuck in "Crazy Wide Forever", which, yeah, is a bit of a struggle, but otherwise the book has made me really happy.)

Comments

Exactly

[papajoemambo.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This is exactly how I read it - and if that dog *was* to meow (like, say, by including long text sections that the reviewer is too lazy to be bothered with) then you can still bitchily remind it that, for a dog, it's a pretty bad cat, and that "The Great Alan Moore" should live up to the reputation you SAY he has as a cat impersonator.

I'm glad that you and I agree that the days of a critic making a name for themselves in critic's circles, by walking up to something and pissing on an obvious work of art, can still be called out for what it is.

If the worst that you can say about a comic writer is that they're writing a sourcebook in comic form that isn't ENOUGH like a traditional comic and that it should be more like a traditional comic so you can condemn it for being predictable, then you're complaining about the people being shot at by the firing squad refusing to load the gun for the people who'll be shooting them.

Oh, and there's this guy named O'Neill - he had something to do with this too. I think that the reviewer's own frustrations as a failed artist who did fanfic in her youth and is now condemmed to pick nits in a more notable artist's work. "It can't be art", she maintains angrily "I used to do this too - and I'm *SHIT*!"

Re: Exactly

[quietprofanity.livejournal.com]

if that dog *was* to meow (like, say, by including long text sections that the reviewer is too lazy to be bothered with) then you can still bitchily remind it that, for a dog, it's a pretty bad cat, and that "The Great Alan Moore" should live up to the reputation you SAY he has as a cat impersonator.

Hee. That reference works a little better, but I was referring to this strip, which is pretty much exactly what the reviewer is doing. I mean, the book has been in development for years and Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill made NO SECRET that the book was going to be a multi-media project and made reference in various interviews to the Shakespeare play, 3-D section, Beat novel, etc.

If the worst that you can say about a comic writer is that they're writing a sourcebook in comic form that isn't ENOUGH like a traditional comic and that it should be more like a traditional comic so you can condemn it for being predictable,

Ha-ha! YES! That had me laughing so hard.

I think that the reviewer's own frustrations as a failed artist who did fanfic in her youth and is now condemmed to pick nits in a more notable artist's work. "It can't be art", she maintains angrily "I used to do this too - and I'm *SHIT*!"

Hah!

The thing is, there's a market in the publishing world out there for fanfic. Nobody's buying my comicslash, obviously. But some of the big literary fiction books out there: Wicked, the Thursday Next novels, the quadjillion Pride and Prejudice sequels out there, A book recently came out telling the backstory of Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, etc. Some of them, like Grendel and Wide Sargasso Sea have become classics in their own right, and are sometimes taught alongside Beowulf and Jane Eyre as opposite ways of looking at the story. Sort of like, oh ... seeing James Bond as a self-interested rapist might be seen as another way of looking at a story. Now, do I think all of these are good? No. But I think the genre's established enough to look at a work on its own terms.

Re: Exactly

[papajoemambo.livejournal.com]

You know what?

If John Gardiner can write James Bond fanfic, then Alan Moore can write James Bond fanfic. There is PLENTY of room for Alan Moore fanfic. If this is tiresome fanfic, what were the previous two volumes of LoEG?

She's sour-grapes-ing the fact that he's Alan Moore and that he's deserved his reputation before this, and she's just trying to "barnacle" a bit of that reputation. Transparent and petty, is all that is - as you can see by her responses to Christopher Butcher underneath, who (although he is a friend of mine and I try not to let that color things) managed to completely deconstruct why her review is a pathetic piece of attention-begging crap. Yep, I said *pathetic*.

Re: Exactly

[quietprofanity.livejournal.com]

If this is tiresome fanfic, what were the previous two volumes of LoEG?

Well, distasteful rapefic, according to Carlson's review. (Although, fuck it, I think the embodiment of all evil in a human being should be willing to do evil things ... and the victim WAS a serial rapist.)

And honestly, if anyone had managed to do a very good Shakespeare imitation and a nearly-perfect P.G. Wodehouse imitation, it wouldn't matter who they were, they would get praise. Although I disagree with the "you're not obligated to review if somebody gives you a review copy" bit, I otherwise totally agreed with Butcher.

I think there should be a special case made for this too...

[papajoemambo.livejournal.com]

If "Rational Mad Man" agrees with your review to the point of inciting a religious reference to how apt you are, then you KNOW you're in trouble.

Re: I think there should be a special case made for this too...

[quietprofanity.livejournal.com]

That's a fact.

Also, that guy whining that 1984 is somehow reduced by the Dossier reminds me a lot of the folks who whine that slashers ruin the characters by making them gay.

Re: I think there should be a special case made for this too...

[papajoemambo.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

"Because the slash changes the continuity!" Didn't you know that? How can that guy be a completist if someone writes something that he can completely ignore???

Please.