[QVall]

Вещи, которые должны быть у фанов.
Ломаете голову, чтобы подарить своему другу-фанату Вселенной Марвел? Есть ответ!

Кружка оригинального дизайна!

всего за 15 долларов

... и за эти деньги заставьте его выпить что-нибудь из этого 0_0

@темы: Marvel

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Hey, Girls! You're Not Welcome Here! vol. 58985675354

[Jaya]

С вами снова внезапная рубрика "кому-то есть дело?"!

И сегодня мы поговорим о том, о чём есть повод поговорить... всегда. Да, именно так. Настолько именно так, что в принципе лично я говорить об этом на данном этапе слегка подустала, что немного печально. Хотя нет, не немного. Очень печально.
Всё это очень печально.

Давайте по порядку.

Итак, номер раз: Тони Харрис.
Художник. Знаменит работой над, помимо прочего, сериями Starman и Ex Machina. Был номинирован на премию Айснера.

Рисует вот это:

Много Картинок

За подборку отдельное спасибо  QVall - я, конечно, могла бы попытаться сделать это сама, но мне было, ну... лень.


Номер два: косплееры.
Люди, при помощи костюмов, макияжа и иже с ним изображающие, в том числе публично, интересных им персонажей, вымышленных и не очень

Вот примерно так:

Картинки

Вот вам бонусная развлекуха: найдете тут меня. Эй, я не всегда не любила супергероику!

Вы, возможно, обратили внимание на половую однородность приведённых примеров. Это неспроста!

Тони Харрис. Косплееры.
Косплееры. Тони Харрис.

Казалось бы, что могло пойти не так?

Продолжение

А вот что

Предоставим слово самому Тони:

Нет, ну его вполне можно понять.
Кому понравится, когда люди обращают больше внимания не на него, человека, прославившемуся во многом рисованием гиперсексуализированных идеализированных женщин, одетых большей частью в фантастически облегающие и/или открытые костюмы, в индустрии, одной из характерных черт которой является активная эксплуатация образов гиперсексуализированных идеализированных женщин, одетых большей частью в фантастически облегающие и/или открытые костюмы, для целей привлечения аудитории, состоящей большей частью из гетеросексуальных мужчин, а на женщин, примеривших на себя гиперсексуализированные идеализированные образы и надевшие фантастически облегающие и/или открытые костюмы?
Почему, чёрт возьми, гиперболизированный сексуальный заряд привлекает внимание всегда, а не тогда, когда этого хочется Тони Харрису?! Почему культивируемый авторами в комикс-фанатах фетишизм выплёскивается в реальную жизнь?! Где, я вас спрашиваю, справедливость?!?!?!?
И знаете, что ещё хуже? Эти женщины смеют примерять на себя образы из комиксов, не обладая при этом идеальными телами! И ведь ладно бы от них требовали физиологически невозможной идеализированности комикс-героинь, так нет, тут всего-то и нужно что тело профессиональной модели нижнего белья с лицом победительницы конкурса красоты и идеальной грудью порнозвезды! Но нет, даже на это большинство косплееров не хватает, и как жить Тони Харрису?
Но хуже всего другое. Хуже всего то, что эти отвлекающие внимание от истинных героев комик-кона - голливудских актеров, играющих в готовящихся к выходу блокбастерах, ой, простите, сценаристов и художников комиксов, недостаточно привлекательные для своих нарядов женщины при всём том ещё и не хотят общаться с истинными, качественными. прошедшими все немыслимые экзамены на задротство гиками и нёрдами. Внимание - вот всё, что им нужно! Внимание, а не настоящий, тесный, близкий контакт с социально малоадаптированными кидалтами! Где они, по их мнению, находятся? Это тебе, детка, не стрип-клуб, где разницу между "смотреть" и "трогать" на пальцах готовы объяснить в том числе вышибалы, это комик-кон!
Косплеерши хищнически заставляют задротов бесплотно пялится на свои неидеальные тела, и Тони Харрис устал это терпеть!
Ура Тони!

Да.
Знаете, кому этот выплеск Харриса не понравился?

Интернету.

И да, тут будут ссылки.

Реакции

Реакции:

Comic Artist Tony Harris Blasts Cosplay Girls: 'Yer Not Comics' - There is no reason for me to say that I would get "all up in somebody's face" and perhaps open a can of some sort of not-nice upon any individual who would call any of these females "whore," "Quasi-Pretty-NOT-Hot-Girl," "fake," etc. -- and that is because I firmly believe that none of these men who are so bold on the Internet about these topics could look these females in the eye, in person, and say such things.

And now for something completely the same old shit - Dude. Why don't you just call them "whores," get it out of your system, and MOVE THE FUCK ON. Because honestly, this is getting vaguely absurd at this point.

In Before Scalzi! - I am not going to sit down and administer a standardized test to people to make sure that they are the Right Sort to cosplay as something I created. Love is love. Appreciation is appreciation. I do not require you to read my entire back catalog and know my blood type in order to think one of my characters looks damn cool/sexy/fun to be.

Gambling at (P)rick’s Casino - In truth, the “fake geek girl” is utter bullshit, a manufactured proxy upon which to project a host of perceived grievances about the changing demographics of conspicuous fandom. Similar to the dog whistle rhetoric used to mask revanchist outrage over the evolving body politic, it provides a means of expressing underlying intent while (barely) concealing its most overtly offensive aspects.

A note to Tony Harris - If you were less of an asshole, had a better opinion of women and didn’t draw them like tits with heads, maybe more women would be interested in your art. Maybe they’d spend more time at your booth than in front of it. And maybe they’re “powers of evil” would be used as a force for good.

Comic Book Illustrator Tony Harris Hates Women (Cosplayers) - Women, you are not welcome here. If you don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the character you are playing, it doesn't matter if you spent four months putting it together, it doesn't matter if you're just having fun and learning more about the culture, it doesn't matter if you've been a fan for two minutes or two decades, YOU ARE NOT A REAL NERD. If you wouldn't engage in conversation with a man who is giving off thinly veiled hostility outside of a con, it is because you are a tease. You owe us your time. If you are going to dress like a whore, you OWE US.

Analyzing Cosplay Rage OR Tony Harris Is An Idiot - These comments show that Harris is assuming the very worst, that these women are at the cons solely to “prey” on nerds. These negative assumptions are indicative of a negative view of women generally. Note how he constantly puts down the cosplayers in his rant, writing that they only think they’re skinny, that they don’t have “GREAT boobies”, and that they are only “CON-HOT”. He then points out that this con-hotness is “not by my estimation”… this is just what all the nerds think. Harris is too smart to be fooled into thinking they’re hot.

Editorial: Words About Cosplay, Tony Harris, and Newbies - Now, I don’t know what Harris thinks a real female comic book fan dresses like, and I really don’t care. His notions are either fiction or a fraction of the truth, because in my experience as a chubdorable male that frequents conventions, female comic fans don’t dress in one specific way or the other.

Tony Harris - Fuck the dudes who think that they are the gatekeepers for comics based on their opinion of what is genuine or not.


House to Astonish Episode 95 - In the week the Church of England voted to not allow women preists we ask: who knew there were so many comic book fans in the church?

A Show Of Hands: Female Cosplay Edition - Here's a question for both male and female geeks everywhere: Which would you prefer to remain as part of comic geek culture?

How Comics Fandom Works - Dudes who spent their lives fantasizing about being other dudes who dress in stretchy, spangly, and often revealing costumes get pissed off at girls who occassionally dress up in stretchy, spangly, and often revealing costumes.

Реакции с дискуссиями

Вот тут может быть интересно (хоть местами и печально) зарыться в комментарии:

Nerds: Stop hating women, please - Too many nerds have basically internalised the stereotype of themselves as ugly, friendless losers and decided that anyone who doesn't fit that stereotype – particularly women – is a "fake geek", taking advantage of the fact that being a geek is now "cool".

When Gut-Boys Attack - I can’t actually conceive of a forty three year old man, particularly one who has presumably functioned reasonably well in the real world, with other actual human beings, writing a paragraph like that one up there.

The Data, It Does Not Love You - The woman who’s dressed as Death, but doesn’t respond when you say to her, “Chim-Chim-Cheree!” It’s not that she’s a fake geek girl who didn’t even read the character’s first appearance; it’s that she’s at the convention to have fun, not to participate in a fucking trivia contest…especially not one where the prize is you looking down her shirt for the next six hours. When she nods politely at your comments about ‘American Gods’ and walks away, it’s because she has someplace to be, not because she’s secretly one of the cheerleaders who turned you down for a date in high school and she doesn’t really love Neil and she’s laughing at you when you’re not looking.

And then they came for the cosplayers… - Now, there is a germ of truth to this based on the fact that hot women have been used to sell every product known to mankind since mankind ever existed. And there have been many complaints over the years from female professionals over “booth babes” who were obviously paid models who came to the shows to attract lonely nerds. Call it the G4 effect. …and I personally don’t like the Slave Leia legion because anyone who would rather dress as a slave than a rebel commander definitely is doing it for attention…. …but to brand all the women who like dressing as comic characters in this way really shows more issues with women than anything to do with cons or costuming.

Реакции в картинках

Картинки на тему:

(отсюда)



(отсюда)


(отсюда)

Кратко про продолжение и условное окончание скандала

История продолжилась предсказуемой руганью в Твиттере ("Вот, вот для чего небо послало нам Твиттер: чтобы мы могли в реальном времени наблюдать детсадоские потасовки между людьми, которые стремятся быть уважаемыми и любимыми нами профессионалами!" (с)) ответом Харриса на реакции, реакцией косплееров, предсказуемой Гейл Симон (да, Гейл, и ты берёшь у этих людей деньги), ещё реакциями в Твиттере же.


Вот вам итоги от Абхея Хослы:

Fresh Flesh For The Fleshrender - Of course, other comics employees helpfully ignored this last point and quickly rallied to Mr. Harris’s defense, including DC’s Ron Marz and Gene Ha, as well as Marvel’s Jason Aaron and Mark Brooks. Because of course they did: comics have a systemic, pervasive culture stupid/oblivious/hostile/miserable to women, but any attempts to ever discuss this are consistently greeted by angry bellowing that so-and-so likes ladies fine (hey more than that cause they’re heterosexual so they’re all AOOHGAH AOOGAH)(that’s also my impression of how the song “Cannonball” starts), so-and-so is a great guy, wonderful guy, it’s always all about one guy and not a culture that he’s just one small cell of (“We are LEGION”), desperately reducing every conversation, every time, every single time, to one guy. “White Lion’s roadie is not a misogynist because he has a daughter.”... The official position of every comics employee is to loudly bellow that they refuse to admit that they’re a misogynist, racist, flawed, human, needing to learn or grow or improve, sometimes wrong, sometimes needing to be forgiven, culpable, responsible, for anything, at any time, because they are each rugged individuals, superheros of their own lives, invincible, that card-table with a “I’ll Draw the Batman for you for $20″ sign on it is their office– they’re living their childhood dreams– fuck you, fuck humble, he’s Tony Effing Harris.

А вот - закономерное замечание о том, что нигде ничто не ново:

Geek Girl On The Street Reports: Gail Simone’s Tea Is Only Con-Hot* - And, whereas I’m exhausted by idiot geek gate keepers (male or female) I am also exhausted by those who insist on taking ignorant remarks (such as those that Harris made) and turning them into week-upon-week of Internet drama.
You know the formula – Geeky Dude Says Something Stupid and Sexist + Geeky Chick Gets Outraged and Fires Back = White Knights Take Up Both Sides and Internet War Ensues + Inevitable Career Threatening Boycott Threat Happens = Gail Simone Has to Write Another Geek Treaty = We End Up With Another Stupid Geek Holiday And, really – Another Stupid Geek Holiday is just another reason for people to cosplay and it’s likely that at least one of them will be deemed “not geeky enough” and that will just start this whole argument all over again.

Я... говорю слова

С одной стороны: ну да, без вопросов.
Да, эта тема забита до смерти.
Да, ожидаемо, предсказуемо, whatever.

Да, я тоже устала от всего этого. Собственно эта усталость - одна из соломинок, сломавших мою любовь к супергероике (нет другие комиксы не лучше, но дерьмо этого конкретного привкуса там встречается пореже). И нет, конструктивного диалога тут не будет, просто в очередной раз было сказано Много Умных Хороших Правильных Слов. Много Всё Тех Же Умных Хороших Правильных Слов. В каком-то смысле всё это напоминает интернет-борьбу за "социальную справедливость", в какой-то момент, кажется, окончательно превратившуюся в непрекращающийся конкурс на лучшую переформулировку одних и тех же Правильных Тезисов, где каждый новый инфоповод именно поводом и является. Кто-то может сказать, что такова большая часть дискурса вообще... и этот кто-то не будет неправ. Что уж там, я и сама причастна - и как любительница особо удачных формулировок, и как производитель формулировок удачных не особо.

Так зачем?

Ну... вы помните, о чём кипело комикс-сообщество месяц, два, три назад? Вот к примеру: история с Робом Лайфелдом и спаривание Супермена и Чудо-Женщины.
Ну давайте, скажите мне, что это - лучшие поводы почесать виртуальными языками, чем тот, с которым мы имеем дело сейчас. Что это - вопросы более достойные общественного внимания и общественных же истерик.

Вот именно.

Глобальная пустота пустот, беготня на месте с одинаковой скоростью. Кому-то есть дело?
Оказывается, да.

Ещё слова, но на этот раз хотя бы по теме

Ну и в конце всё-таки немного по теме (а не о бессмысленности Вселенной. как обычно) от меня лично:
Во-первых, песню про "тру и не тру" я могу спеть и сама, причём, поверьте, очень здорово. Но не хочу. Не потому, что я согласна, что "все хоть чуть-чуть гиканутые равны между собой и степень погружения и увлечённости не имеет значения". Нет, я с этим не согласна, что, думаю, не будет сюрпризом как минимум для людей общавшихся со мною лично. Но по моему опыту песня эта поётся обычно не просто так, а с дополнительной подковыркой, будь то, как у Харриса, недостаточно легкодоступные косплеерши, или, как в кто-знает-тот-поймёт-где "девочки с дайри" или "слэшеры". Так вот, пока под личиной радения за чистоту гиковских рядов на самом деле обсуждается это, ноги моей в этих обсуждениях не будет. Точнее, будет, но... вот не в том смысле.
Во-вторых, тут вот какая штука: на этой стадии у меня к косплею тоже есть некоторые претензии. Я нахожу большую часть женских образов как в комиксах, так и в другом любимом жанре косплееров - аниме, глубоко проблемными по крайней мере визуально. Я считаю, что косплееры, радостно играющие с этими образами, в определённой степени способствуют поддержке нормализации проблемного отношения к женщинам в соответствующих жанрах/медиумах.
Но. Но это - к общему разговору об участии женщин в собственной объективизации, теме мягко говоря непростой и уж точно на данном этапе не приводящей к однозначным ответам. Этот разговор вести можно и нужно, но не в этом случае.
Не в случае с Тони Харрисом.
Для этого случая у нас есть подобающе ситуации сексуально заряженная табуированная лексика.

@темы: Tony Harris, the "f" word, Ссылки

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[QVall]

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[QVall]

@темы: Wonder Woman is love

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[QVall]

(x)

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[QVall]

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[picspam] - 2012-10-24

[QVall]

Предупреждение: содержит спойлеры, сцены насилия, оскорбления и полураздетых людей, а также родную речь

~ Аааав, Крипто! Хороший пёс!



Ох, Хоукай







Ок, мне нравится "Sword of Sorcery", вот где арт решает все, а еще там вот такой бэк-ап про Беовульфа













Тайна раскрыта! Вот куда ушел старый голубой костюм Найтвинга! К Джефферсону Пирсу!




Вандал Сэвидж варианта Demon Knights - это такой плохой Геркулес на стероидах










Антология «Happy» от Фантаграфикс. Возможно, в те времена Морриссон тоже потреблял много наркотиков, но сейчас он перешел на более легкие препараты









Взгляните в эти глаза и скажите, почему вы еще не читаете «Korgi»?! Там даже слов нет!









М-да, у Атроцитуса странные вкусы, очень странные...








Вау, Тригон!



0__0 Даже боюсь представить, как "старный объкт" звучит на французском



























X-treme X-Men - единственная серия про Иксменов, которую можно было читать последние месяцы


Вы ждали этого, ждали? Комикс про новых Поняшек от IDW


И награду в номинации "Dat face" прошлой недели получает этот кадр с Олли

@темы: QVall-picspam

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[QVall]

HTBH: Marvel & DC by Shannon Wheeler

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[QVall]

~ Megan Brennan

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[QVall]

@темы: Marvel

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Little Nemo in Slumberland

[Jaya]

Все заметили, что сегодня с Гуглом?
Гугл отмечает день рождения легендарного комикса.
Будь я чуь менее ленивой уставшей, я бы написала об этом хотя бы пару предложений.
Но придётся ограничиться четыремя имеющими отношение к событию файлами из моей папки "Разобрать".
Два из них на немецком.
Нет, не могу объяснить.

Это... красиво.

1 (129 мб. - тридцать шесть больших страниц)
2 (88 мб)
3 (39 мб.) - на немецком
4 (57 мб.) - и этот тоже

@темы: Скачать

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Боб Кейн рисует Бэтмена и К°

[Jaya]

Слегка отoрвусь от Марвела: Боб Кейн, один из оригинальных создателей Бэтмена со своими картинами здесь. Via Comics Reporter.

@темы: 0

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Линкспам: Marvel - AvX

[Jaya]

Два раза подряд - это уже практически тенденция, и, значит, можно сделать предварительный вывод: Большая Двойка усвоила урок печатных родственников из мира моды и осень стала временем. когда Происходят Вещи.
И если в прошлый раз основной шум подняло DC, то в этот раз прогремело Marvel.

Итак, первым номером у нас Avengers vs. X-Men:

Ивент (для целей разговора давайте договоримся, что это слово в русском языке существует) подошёл к концу, а значит пришло время перевести дыхание, собрать камни и высказать мнения, чем народ с огромной радостью и занимается.

Рецензии с вкраплениями мыслей

Рецензии с вкраплениями мыслей:

SUNDAY SLUGFEST: Avengers vs. X-Men #12 - Cap realizes that he needs to do away with that plain old style of canny Avengers teams featuring mutants like Scarlet Witch, Wolverine and Beast and start focusing on a more open minded, revolutionary approach featuring mutants like Scarlet Witch, Wolverine and Rogue. And don't get me started on Iron Man's discovery of faith, by which I mean the bastardized Hollywood version that encourages a person to take foolish chances with no good explanation whatsoever. I'm miffed as a lifelong churchgoer, but even more so as a comics reader, who thought all that build-up of Tony Stark studying the Phoenix Force was actually going somewhere... Hey, and did I blink and miss it, or did the final act of this story pass the Bechdel test? Wanda and Hope, talking to each other about the fate of everyone and each other and making a mutual decision without turning to Scott, Logan, Steve or Tony... AvX failed to deliver grander themes and only threw a few successful plot twists at us. It's a comic with an agenda: to close off a magnitude of character storylines and set the reader up for the next wave of relaunches. The plot is an afterthought. The editors' presence coats the pages of the book, with an overarching goal to bring the far-wandering X-Men line closer to home and mix it in with the success of the Avengers, a current pop culture buzzword.

Review: Avengers vs. X-Men #12 - At some point, issue #12 feels like the architects needing to run through their checklist of stuff they set up at the beginning of the event, rather than an actual story, to the extent that you wonder whether this “architects event” thing was a bad idea. After all, most of their individual books are far better than this event was. Another shortcoming of “Avengers Vs. X-Men” has been its inability to decide whether it wants to be a big, flashy popcorn event or another meditation on absolute power corrupting absolutely. That’s not to say that it can’t be both, but these last few issues have lost any sort of balance that the series once had. There is no “fun” to be had in this issue.

Josh Wilding Reviews: AVENGERS VS. X-MEN #12 - In hindsight, it should have been obvious that The Avengers would win. After all, they did just star in a $1.5 billion movie. Perish the thought that Marvel would want anyone reading the series to view THEM as the villains. However, whichever side you ultimately fall down on, there's no getting around the fact that the X-Men franchise has been left in a mess thanks to Avengers Vs. X-Men.

The X-Axis – 7 October 2012 - Credit where it’s due, this series really does resolve a whole load of long-running storylines. Wanda’s back in circulation as a hero. Hope’s messiah role is resolved. The Phoenix is out of circulation (though granted, it wasn’t doing much anyway). Cyclops’ radicalisation flows through to its logical conclusion. And the “no more mutants” storyline, which has been running for seven years, is finally and mercifully ended.

Chain Reactions | Avengers vs. X-Men #12

Размышления о значении ивента в целом

Размышления о значении ивента в целом:

When Words Collide: Discussing "Avengers Vs X-Men," Splash Page Style - I didn't have to suffer through months and months of "AvX." I just basically ignored it and read it all at the end and thought, "Hey, this was actually not so bad after all." I guess what I liked about it was that it took the swerve with the Phoenix force and didn't become about a massive attack force vs. an extra-terrestrial threat. It became about the Marvel Universe dealing with its own internal issues, amplified, as the Phoenixed-up X-Men attempted to bring about the utopia they've been striving for all this time, while the "heroes" really showed themselves to be forces in service to the status quo who were compelled, by their nature, to prevent any real changes to the way things are. It was smarter than "Civil War," by a factor of ten, in other words. But maybe that's still not even close to enough. Then again, I can't imagine a way "AvX" could have resolved -- and yeah, you nailed it with your predictions -- that would have made sense for the Marvel Universe, unless the company really wanted to change everything. And they clearly have no interest in smashing up their properties..."AvX" is very much of its time, rooted in two oddly conflicting ideas that have taken hold during the past decade. On one hand, you have the idea of a growing intermingling of the superhero community. Most of these guys have been around for a long time, worked together quite a bit and known each other, at least in passing. There's a growing familiarity amongst the heroes, brought on in a big way by Brian Michael Bendis's tenure on the Avengers titles. And all of that makes sense. But, there's also a tendency to have the same heroes go from simple disagreement to brutal violence. "Civil War" showed this quite clearly where no one stopped and said, "Hey, I agree with this new law, but I'm not going to fight people who were my teammates yesterday," which is what I assume most reasonable people would do. Instead, it was all-out war, because, apparently, no one can solve any sort of disagreement without violence (given the lives superheroes lead, that's not entirely surprising, but it's also fairly pathetic and unheroic)... The kinds of massive, world-shaking stories that comics are known for are almost exclusively reserved for event comics these days. The average superhero comic isn't anything like the "Avengers" movie.

Six Developments from AVENGERS VS. X-MEN #12 - Steve mentions that the Phoenix Force is also to blame and that he was at fault for not doing more for mutants but those on the run are supposed to turn themselves in. It might seem unjustified but there were countless lives that were lost as a result of the havoc caused by the Phoenix Force. Whether or not they should be held accountable is up to someone else to decide.

The Consequences of AvX - At the end of AvX, Captain America still hasn’t chosen to arrest his former love interest for casting a spell which led to the direct deaths of hundreds of people, and indirectly to the deaths of characters like Nightcrawler. In fact, her role in reversing Decimation means that now she has very little dirt still on her – so much so that she is now free to join the Uncanny Avengers, a team Cap has built to show off all the “PR-Friendly” characters like, uh, Rogue Thor and Wolverine. Have the public really forgotten how Asgardians blew up a football stadium a few months ago? Or that time they were responsible for FEAR ITSELF?... Unless the Uncanny Avengers decide that they want to go back to the status quo and go about reinstating world poverty and hunger, liberally spraying deodorants at trees and throwing garbage into the ocean at an advanced rate, the world is now a lovely place to live in.

Avengers Vs. X-Men Break Down (Spoilers) - There wasn’t any mystery, and sense of wonder at what the conflict was about. It was like watching the writers play with a box of toys in new ways, rather than bringing in anything new. Even the big emotional punch, killing Professor X, loses emotional weight because we’ve seen it happen before.


What If The X-Men Were Right? - What if the Avengers had just sucked it up and let the Phoenix Five get on with it. To have remade the world into a paradise, dealt with violent conflict through negotiation, helped everyone achieve their natural desires to a level of contentment, fascination and delight with life, and made the world a better place. But no, Captain America had to fight for freedom, to go hunt his white whale. And in doing so, destroying Utopia and turning the Phoenix Five into monsters. Which they certainly were, their acts against the Avengers and those who opposed them were monstrous – but always as a result of super hero opposition. The Phoenix Force didn’t so much corrupt the Five as the Avengers did. It’s always been this way, with Jean Grey it was Mastermind and the Hellfire Club. With Rachel it was… the Hellfire Club. With the Phoenix Five it was The Illuminati. Of course this has often been the way with many a dictator – blame can often be shared around.

Ещё о конкретно Циклопе и его и Людей Икс (не)правоте в конфликте, помимо уже процитированного

Ещё о конкретно Циклопе и его и Людей Икс (не)правоте в конфликте, помимо уже процитированного:


Riding the Gravy Train 25 (NOT A GODDAMN THING) - Something that hit me recently is how irrelevant the Avengers are in this story. It's not really an Avengers story, is it? Oh, they may dominate some scenes and be one half of the story on the surface, but they don't really 'matter,' do they? They're simply the reactive force, a bunch of generic good guys trying to save the world without much about them that specifically drives the story. This could have been a story with any other group standing in for the Avengers. That the Avengers titles rarely did anything substantive with those characters in this story is one indication of how much this was an X-Men story that happened to use the Avengers as a way to make people actually care. The Avengers is Marvel's top franchise right now (pretty much because of Brian Michael Bendis), but the X-Men is a much stronger concept to drive stories... The biggest flaw in Avengers vs. X-Men is also my favourite thing about the series: Cyclops is the hero. This was obviously not the intention of anyone involved, but he is clearly the hero of this story, even after the events of issue 11. The spot where it changed was when the Phoenix actually arrived. Before that moment, he was a cult leader... That's the moment where the entire premise of the series was thrown out of the window and you couldn't dismiss Cyclops as a crazy cult leader. He was right... As I said when discussing issue 11, it's only when Cyclops is pushed to such extremes that he can't not respond that he really 'crosses the line' that separated him from the other Phoenix hosts. But, holding that against him is kind of like thinking Superman is the bad guy when every superhuman in the DCU teams up to try and kill him and all attempts to reason with them fails and they just keep coming.

Avengers vs. X-Men Mercifully Draws to a Close With #12 (Review) - The way Cyclops is being treated by the other characters is not, in itself, particularly surprising or unfair. Many writers and fans have rightly pointed out that characters in comics get mind-controlled all the time, including some who played key roles in Avengers vs. X-Men, and that they don’t get nearly the bad rap Scott Summers is getting. Wanda plunged the world into chaos and arguably precipitated these events and many more with her “No more mutants” proclamation. Jean Grey wiped out universes while under the influence of the Phoenix... And Scott killed Charles Xavier, so he’s being treated like public enemy number one, and that rubs some people the wrong way. But it’s all a matter of context. In the increasingly “realistic” Marvel Universe, superheroes are something of an extension of traditional law enforcement (so much so that Iron Man fought to force all of his comrades-in-arms to register to be conscripted by the government, if you’ll recall). And what happens when somebody kills a cop? Anyone who’s ever seen a police show or a film noir knows the answer to that–it’s met with overwhelming force. It’s also not particularly fair to say that Cyclops was made into a pariah and Jean was not. After all, her own teammates killed her–or did their best to–and when she returned later quite a bit of time had passed. “The Devil made me do it” may not be a great excuse on the day, but once life has returned to its normal rhythm it’s harder to justify abuse toward your former friend. Just ask Hal Jordan.

Avengers Vs. X-Men #12 - I had been wondering for years why nobody seemed to “get” Cyclops, such a potentially interesting character. Had anyone got right what a self-righteous prig marrying a former villain might be like? Did Cyclops ever try to be a better brother? A better son to Xavier? No, for the past few years, he’s just been the dictator of his own island, arguably a worse leader than Magneto was for Genosha. A guy who never considered that he might be wrong, that other methods might work better. And now he’s just a big bunch of power in human shape.

Avengers vs. X-Men presents the ‘antivillain’ - No matter how well-intentioned, Cyclops was against freedom. With his species on the brink of extinction, he was ready to try to save them by any means necessary. Looking back at what he did before turning dark, it was wide-sweepingly authoritarian, but it was world peace. Scott Summers fought the Avengers with clean energy, water and food for everyone, humans and mutants alike. He declared that giant racist robots were as illegal as nuclear weapons and went in front of the UN to make it so. No Avengers were killed in this battle, they were detained. Phoenix-empowered, he could have destroyed them as several opportunities and while he declared “No More Avengers”, he never really decimated them as Wanda did to mutants with her famous words. When Namor veered into a more traditional villainous act of drowning Wakanda, not only did Namor go behind Cyclops’ back to do it but the result was Namor being stripped of his powers. There’s a leadership structure here among a nigh-omnipotent cosmic force, and for as long as he could, Cyclops tried to enforce order... Scott Summers started out with no intentions of watching anyone burn in the fires of the Phoenix. He wanted, if I can borrow a phrase, a finer world. Once given the power to make one, his actions twisted his original intentions into villainy.

Riding the Gravy Train 26 (Avengers vs. X-Men #12, AVX: VS #6, and Uncanny X-Men #19) - Cyclops was right and Captain America was wrong. Cyclops was the true hero of Avengers vs. X-Men and Captain America was the true villain. Cyclops lost (and won) and Captain America won (and won). Life ain't fair, kiddies. And superhero comics are still the most basic and thoughtless of morality tales, so wrapped up in ideas like "Cyclops killed Professor X" than "Cyclops defended himself against the entirety of the Avengers and X-Men, including Professor X, who was actively trying to shut down Cyclops's brain throughout the fight and, in self-defence, killed Professor X," which is kind of what actually happened. It's like the entire event was one long exercise in pushing the "Captain America is always right" rule that governs the Marvel Universe more than anything else as far as it could go... Looking back over the series, all I can see when looking Captain America is an aggressor who continually looks for a chance to fight and 'put down' his former allies instead of working with them -- and, then, when those allies are proven to have been right from the beginning, still blames them for everything that went wrong. Oh, he pays a little lip service to the idea that he's partially responsible, but it's Cyclops who's in prison despite the fight that resulted in Xavier's death was the result of Captain America leading about three dozen people in an all-out assault on two people... What's a little sad is that, if Captain America and the Avengers had killed Cyclops, he would have made some speech about it being 'necessary,' and everyone would have nodded along.

The Weekend Week In Revew (10/3/2012) - That in mind, it’s very easy to call this Cyclops’ Greatest Misses as well, as he brutally attacks his friends, levels cities, and — oh yeah – murders Charles Xavier. And we thought Emma would be the villain! As know, however, Cyclops is defeated by the combined efforts of Hope and Wanda, and in the immediate wake of the battle he is detained by Beast, who reveals to him that the Phoenix’s defeat did result in the birth of the new mutant population, as we discussed in “AvX” #12. Now, even though Scott is morally and ethically lost and viewed as a monster by the general population of the world, let alone his friends and co-workers, he reveals that he’s just a wee bit crazy given that he’s proud of everything he’s done due to the results. That and a goofy smile.

Об ивенте словами его разнообразных создателей

Об ивенте словами его разнообразных создателей:

Avengers Vs. X-Men: War Journals - Behind The Scenes Of 'AvX #12' - создатели говорят в камеру.

Avengers vs. X-Men: Jason Aaron talks the tragic fate of Professor X - I think the X-universe passed him by a bit. The dynamic has changed so much in that world that he didn’t really have a place in it anymore. And instead of just having him continue to bounce around as a secondary character with no real place to go, I think his death opens up a lot of story possibilities, as we see characters forced to step up in his wake, characters struggling to honor his memory, and of course we’ll see Cyclops continue to deal with the burden of being Xavier’s murderer.

Tom Brevoort: Bridging AvX Finale & Marvel NOW! [Spoilers] - Number two is kind of a cross between, "You awful people, how could you characterize the Phoenix Five as such bad guys when it's really all the Avengers' fault. If the Avengers had just not done anything, they would have made the world a paradise, and the deserts would bloom, and the ice caps would freeze." I think that's a reasonable point. Every reader comes out and supports their team, and the characters that they like the most. That's part of the game. It's right there in the title: "Avengers vs. X-Men." But also right there in the title — and I have some experience with this because I worked on JLA vs. Avengers years ago —is the promise that somebody is going to end up on the winning side, and somebody is going to end up not so much on the winning side, and the fans of the characters that are the latter are going to tend to be vocal about it. So none of this is a huge shock or a surprise. It's all par for the course whenever you do a story like this. There's no way we could have done one of these and made everybody happy... Your viewpoint on Cyclops really depends on where you stand on the choices he made. I think at the very least, if he's not a heroic figure, he's a sympathetic figure, and I wouldn't necessarily even rule out that he's a heroic figure. I think that's completely up to the individual readers to decide for themselves.

AVENGERS VS. X-MEN Post-Game: Finale Edition - I wouldn't be surprised if one series or another went back and revisited these areas where the Phoenix Five attempted to bring about global and societal change, and without them there to maintain it, we see what the fallout of that is, and what the end result of that is. It's certainly not a case where fingers were snapped and everything just kind of went back to the way it was.

Axel-In-Charge: Ending "Avengers Vs. X-Men" - The big question, of course, is, what would’ve happened if the Phoenix Force had taken Hope as its host at the beginning of the story? Would Hope have been ready? I don’t think so. I think she became ready in the crucible of everything that happened in “AvX,” especially during her spiritual journey and training in Kun Lun. Everything that happened prepared her for the moment when she took in the power and was actually able to give it back to the cosmos. She was finally ready. In that sense, whatever you say about Cyclops' methods, whether you think it was him or the Phoenix Force that killed Professor X and did all those other shenanigans, the results speak for themselves. The second time around, Hope was able harness that power and use it for good – to focus that Phoenix power as a force for rebirth as opposed to destruction. And the mutant race was saved... Hey, we promised that "AvX" would end-cap a number of stories that went all the way back to "House of M" and “Messiah CompleX.” The Scarlet Witch was redeemed, Scott Summer’s faith in Hope paid off when she lived up to the hype, and the Avengers played a huge role in bringing the mutant race back from the brink of extinction. As we head into Marvel NOW!, the Marvel Universe is different: the Avengers will think bigger than they ever have before, the X-Men will chart a bold new course for its future, and the line between super-powered human and mutant will never been thinner.

Развлечения и картинки

Ну и, наконец, развлечения:

Вообще-то тут стоит читать всю (абсолютно прекрасную) серию, но сосредоточимся на финале: ComicsAlliance Vs. AvX Round Twelve: Final Fight - I'm not sure how all of these fights are meant to tie together, or even why any of it is happening given that we must surely have exhausted the tie-in opportunities to expand on these stories by now, but maybe readers are so used to montages that they've forgotten how to read ordinary comics. Sequentials are over. It's all flash cards from here on out. Two sidenotes from the montage: First, Giant Man appears to be stealing a yacht, proving that you can take the man out of the Yellowjacket costume but you can't take the Yellowjacket out of the man. Second, Gambit and Hawkeye have gone to Paris together. I previously posited that the forthcoming A+X spin-off book should explore unlikely romantic couplings between Avengers and X-Men. I assume that's where this is going. Marvel's new power couple is Hawkbit. You know you want it, Tumblr.... Nova is dispatched to bring Dark Cyclops down to earth. Nova tells Cap he's a hemisphere away, which surely means he's literally as far away as he could possibly be while still being nominally adjacent to the right planet. But that's close enough for a member of the Bucket Lantern Corps! And can I say that, Nova, I miss the golden bucket, but I assume the blue bucket represents a different emotion. The gold buckets represented "whimsy" or "exuberance," and the blue buckets represent "thirsty" or "bergamot." Those are all emotions, right?... If you're the editor and you think there are too many stories about mutants, just tell your writers to write fewer stories about mutants! Genocide is never the answer... Cyclops would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling Avengers.


И картинки:

Маленькая картинка:

Avengers Vs X-Men: In A Nutshell

Большая картинка

Большая картинка:

Совсем большая картинка

Совсем большая картинка:

@темы: Marvel, Ссылки

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Marvel Now!

[Leyto]

Глобальное событие Avengers vs X-Men подошло к концу. В связи с этим, Geekster начинает публикацию серии статей о стартующей со следующей недели инициативе Marvel NOW!.

Читать первую часть на geekster.ru

Читать вторую часть на geekster.ru

запись создана: 11.10.2012 в 12:04

@темы: Marvel, Marvel Now

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Kyle Baker - It's Genetic

[QVall]

В конце 80-ых Кайл Бейкер рисовал юмористические стрипы про мутантов для Марвел, некоторые все еще актуальны )

+12

@темы: Marvel

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People hating things

[Jaya]

Я не считаю, что я так уж склонна к негативу.
Ну да, я испытываю прилив энергии, когда нахожу в очередном читаемом комиксе повод преисполниться ненависти к его автору. И да, мало что радует меня так, как отличная разгромная рецензия. И возможность поиздеваться над чем-то несимпатичным доставляет мне невероятное количество положительных эмоций.

Но склонна к негативу? Нет, ну что вы.
Я всего лишь люблю вещи, приносящие в мою жизнь немного счастья. И ненависть – одна из них.

К чему это всё?

К тому, что один из самых лично мне интересных околокомиксных сайтов решил отметить своё пятилетие Круглым Столом Ненависти, посвященным ненависти к самым разным комиксам.

Надо ли говорить, что я в восторге от этой идеи?

Круглый стол благополучно завершился несколько дней назад, общий список того, что (с разной степенью удачности) ненавидели его участники, можно посмотреть тут или тут, но давайте-ка я выделю то из этого, что я прочитала несколько особенно запомнившихся и/или понравившихся мне постов:

Начнём с Мило Манары и сексизма в эротике - Il Dolce Libro:

Цитаты

This, fundamentally, is the feminine disposition under Manara’s pen and brush. He is a great lover of the female form, it is said, but his devotions are such that even the most Roman of Catholics comes to understand some nauseous puritan appetite for denunciation of idolatry. His women can be chipped into particular shapes for the purposes of dramaturgy, yes, but you cannot imagine them as itchy beings any more than you might expect the Pietà to fart.
They are, in a word, perfect, and therefore a most fitting vehicle for the perfection of rape, as you have urged me to detail.
...
There! There it is, brother! The face! The Manara face, in the final panel! Ooh, the lady doth protest too much! Another one:
...
In all of these beautiful images, there is not a hint of the ugly male anatomy: the leering prick; the dangling, imbecilic pouch. I am not the sort of man who is so insecure that he cannot stand the sight of a woman being goodly fucked, brother, but need I be perpetually confronted with the wan issue of coughing rods at the conclusion of every episode on the erotic midlist? Goddamn it, this is better. There is no emanation from Valeria. She does not drool or sweat. Her eyes do not water. We are spared the potential of her scent. She is the quintessence of the Manara woman. She is perfect, perfect, flaxen glow perfect, tawny sunbake perfect, ceramic milk white perfect, every color of perfect, perfect, perfect.
...
Yet non-consensual scenarios are not a purely male space, alas. You need only look to kink.com, or yaoi manga, or any number of places to know that the certainty presumed of these ideas are increasingly, viscerally feminized, beyond the old romance novel and soap opera tropes. God, it is confusing. Can’t anything be exclusive? What, pray tell, is the gossamer boundary between a fantasy of male domination and a fantasy of female submission?
It is, I argue, the subtle presence of the feminine perspective. The suggestion of exchange – of secret, implied consent. Of knowing.
And a Milo Manara woman can never know you. And you can never know her. It is the metaphysics of his line. The locked sameness of his luscious designs. The alien poise of his beauty, god. Always, there is potential with him, and here, with Ursus standing on the beach, castrated, summarizing the plot to a disbelieving Valeria, we finally, totally know praxis, so that the rape of a woman can inevitably be no less than the furied trauma of an ultimate man.


Алекс Росс вообще и Kingdom Come в частности - A Piercing Glimpse of Pants:

Много цитат

Certainly Alex Ross displays strong craft, of a certain type.
That type is realist copying to the point of dogmatism. Copying, you ask? Copying, I say. For those who do not paint or draw a great deal, the ability to put an image on paper (or canvas, etc) and have it look exactly like a photograph or still life can seem a skill that is difficult to the point of miraculous. It’s not, actually. As an old teacher explained grumpily to us, the surly art class, if you have the hand-eye coordination to sign your name, you too could produce realistic drawings (or paintings).
...
If the purpose of craft is to portray an artistic vision (in this case a comic story about the importance of superheroes), then we can say art is good when it adds to the story and bad if it takes away from the story.
And by that metric Alex Ross is very, very bad.
...
Looking at any given page in Kingdom Come, I can tell that considerable energy was expended to create the images. I could tell, even before reading the end pages of my graphic novel release, that Ross had used props, models, and costumes. To my friends, this was supposed to be impressive.
...
The problem, dear Reader, is that Ross chooses to remove every bit of whimsy from the mythos of superhero and replaces it with earnestness in the service of a kind of ugly realism that shatters the edges of the created world until heroism crumbles like a balsa wood model in an earthquake.
...
What Alex Ross does in Kingdom Come is take the mythic story of superheroes and paint them hyper-realistically.
The effect is obviously intended to be Serious. Superheros are Needed, because Humanity needs to Battle Evil and the Forces of Good Must Triumph.
Except that by using this hyper-realistic style, by shoving a mythic story, with only slapdash revision and poor grasp of art, into a realistic world, Ross shatters the border of that story, again and again, until the frame cracks and every ugly border of the page is shown, every fourth wall is broken, and the superheros don’t project gravitas, but a kind of secondhand embarrassment so strong that I have to keep the damn comic face down on the table.
...
Now I actually wouldn’t mind having a middle-aged superhero, caped or not, portrayed as realistically aging, but what Ross has done here is not portray Superman as a middle-aged farmer, but as, well. Look.
There’s one group of people who over-develop their chest muscles and neglect their legs. They have long hair in ponytails and frankly, more tattoos, but otherwise, Clark is kind of a dead ringer for a guy who’s lived in prison for years.
Farmers and outdoorsmen have built calves and smaller chests, different body types.
The spandex outfits are also a mistake. What self-respecting Kansas farmer would be caught dead in bright red and blue lycra? None, that’s who.
Instead of creating imagery that conjures strength and the tenacity of age or using the crayon-colors to create instant pizazz and focus, or hell, even silliness, Ross’s tromp l’oel conjures unpleasant petty realities.
Anyone who wears polyester underpants that tight during a workout is just asking for a yeast infection. Not to mention the chafing once he starts to sweat. I hope there’s a good portion of CoolMax in that fabric. Did he at least put on some runner’s nipple guards for men? Maybe he’s getting free samples of Body Glide? I hope so, because otherwise, ow.
...
And if everybody else packed on a paunch so that their underoos are tight, why the hell does Diana have a teeny waist as if she’s got on an invisible corset?
Oh, because she’s a reward for the guy with the big red S on his chest, how silly of me to forget. *rolls eyes*
You know what? A woman who’s a warrior would not have a teensy waist. (Nor do most middle aged ladies, but I digress.) Nope. If you look at practicing swordsmen of either gender, such as those who practice kendo, they have a broad belly, not one that is super-sucked in. That’s because they have a low center of gravity.
...
If you want cheesecake, that’s fine. Nothing wrong with the occasional cheesecake. But don’t pretend it’s real. Don’t expect the cheesecake to add to the feel of reality if you’re mixing sixteen year old photoshopped bellies willy nilly with older-woman bad hair day. Let Diana have a deep belly and and middle aged face and still be cheesecake.
...
It looks strange. Sad.
In more abstract or symbolically painted comics, we’re not obsessively shown the seams of the spandex costumes. We’re not shown the exact way a piece of green armor fits unpleasantly against a human body and then be expected as readers to believe it’s functional as a warrior’s uniform.
...
The craft, the talent, the skill, does Ross have that? He can make images that have distinct features, sure, but according to Vom’s Theory of Art, he has failed. Failed because each of these effortful, carefully crafted images betrays instead of supports. The tone, the story, the essence, the theme, all of them are subverted instead of supported by the art. I have no worry for the characters on their quest or joy in the characters’ triumph.
I just want them to put on some normal pants.


Увернуться не удалось даже Алану Муру, но тут дискуссия в комментариях, пожалуй, интереснее основного текста - V For Vile:

Цитаты

Everything moves forward with the inexorability of a Greek Tragedy, but one that takes the gods’ point of view instead of the mortals. This sabotages any potential thrill the story might have as a story. Narrative tension generally relies on some mix between questions the audience needs answered and answers the audience has that the characters don’t. Neither is present in this book. The mystery as to V’s origin—really, the only even mildly compelling question in the text—is resolved before the first third is over.
The political content, such as it is, is no great shakes either. Yes, radical anarchy is preferable to jackbooted fascism. And in a world in which sanity means conformity to a genocidal, hyper-consumerist, corrupt authoritarian society, maybe we all need to go a little mad. V, however, ends just before fascist England actually falls. Moore gets to have it both ways, making a case that a radical anarchist state would be a really great thing without ever having to imagine for the reader what that world would look like. He even has V go to great lengths to explain that the riots, looting and murder taking place in England’s streets as the government collapses aren’t anarchy at all, but rather chaos. I suppose anarchy, like Communism, can never fail; it can only be failed.
The problem with shoddy political allegories like V For Vendetta (or The Dark Knight) is that the alternative realities they rely on to make their experiments work are so preposterous and rigged that they end up disproving themselves. True, were England to be taken over by Nazis, terrorism would likely be justified. But making a book arguing this case is a waste of time and energy. You might as well write a book making the in depth argument that if your Aunt had bollocks, she’d be your Uncle.
...
V for Vendetta is the kind of book that proceeds from the assumption that the reader is a moron, and if only we were properly enlightened, we would agree with its creator. We are the gutless conformists, who just need a good stern talking to (and a little bit of torturing) to convince us of our errors.
...
All of Moore’s bad habits as a writer are on display in V, from its misogyny to the stentorian, hectoring tone of the text whenever its eponymous hero shows up to its frantic, desperate need to impress us with its creator’s brilliance.
...
That V For Vendetta—with its nihilistic embrace of violence, it’s distrust of the institutions that will be required to enact any lefty agenda, its hatred of women and its love of coercion— has caught on amongst lefties, that in particular Guy Fawkes has been taken as a symbol of anything other than far-right religious terrorism is something I find particularly galling. I worry that at heart some of my fellow travelers on the Left feel reified by this work’s subtextual assertion that anyone who disagrees with them must be blinkered, an uninformed idiot who simply needs to be enlightened or blown up.


Дискуссия, вывернувшая (э... я почти случайно) на значение убеждений автора при оценке художественной ценности произведения - Open Thread: Is Cerebus the Worst Comic Ever?

Свержение идолов - EC Comics and the Chimera of Memory (Part 1 of 2) и EC Comics and the Chimera of Memory (Part 2 of 2)


И, наконец, вишенкой на торте статья о том, что же такое плохие комиксы - Could there be a worst comic of all time?. Примеры там собранны ссылками и по принципу "никто не уйдёт обиженным", состоящий из них начинающийся со слов "It can have clumsy figurework.." абзац - одна из самых прекрасных вещей, прочитанных мною о комиксах. Но и кроме этого там много хорошего:

Большие цитаты

Already several questions arise:

1) What counts as a comic?

2) Does everyone agree on what badness is when it comes to comics?

3) How do we make comparisons of badness between different works?

I will now address these questions in turn.

1) What counts as a comic?

Who cares?

2) Does everyone agree on what badness is?

No, really, who cares?

3) How do we make comparisons of badness between different works?

No, really, I’m not kidding, who cares?

In short, I can’t think of anything more boring than arguing about (1)-(3). Well, maybe re-reading The Black Dossier, but that’s a fate you shouldn’t wish on anyone, not even Jess Nevins.
...
What I claim is that the ways a comic can be bad are irreducibly plural and literally incommensurable — there is no way to put all these different ways together so that you end up with a single dimension of badness (which, if you recall, is what we need in order to declare something the X-est Y, in this case the worst comic of all time).
Before I discuss this in more detail just what this means, however, it’s first worth considering whether badness is indeed irreducibly plural. The list I rattled off above is some evidence, but perhaps not conclusive; the fact that there are a whole bunch of different phrases in the vicinity doesn’t mean that they don’t all point to, in one way or another, the same property. In much the same way, I could use a whole bunch of different descriptions to refer to the same person, for instance, “former He-Man scripter”, “loathsome“, “hack”, or sociopath” — all of which describe the one man, J. Michael Straczynski.
...
To which I say: J. Michael Straczynski deserves every cheap shot you can throw at him. J. Michael Straczynski is so ugly that, when he was born, the doctor slapped his mother. J. Michael Straczynski is so fat that, when he sits around the house, he sits around the house. J. Michael Straczynski is writing some of the prequels to Watchmen.
Actually, that last one is a low blow. I apologise.
...
Anyway, to chide someone for mentioning J. Michael Straczynski’s early career as He-Man scripter is like chiding someone for mentioning Hitler’s early career as Mein Kampf writer: it’s not that they’re being unkind, it’s that they’re not being unkind enough.

YES INTERNET I JUST COMPARED J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI TO HITLER.

YES I AM SAYING THAT WRITING MANY SHITTY COMICS AND BEING A PLAGIARIST AND A SCAB IS EXACTLY AS BAD AS BEING CHIEF ARCHITECT OF GENOCIDE

YES EXACTLY

PLUS I HAVE IT ON GOOD AUTHORITY THAT HE DOESN’T LIKE KITTENS

I know that, by the Official Rules of the Internet, invoking a comparison with Hitler means that I’ve “lost the argument“.

But, on the other hand, I want you to consider this:

Go fuck yourself
...
Part 5: In Which I Run Out Of Jokes And Resort To Straight-Out Philosophy Instead, Or, If You Prefer, “Philosophy”, And, Let’s Be Honest, “Jokes”, Too
...
A first thought might be that what makes an artwork bad is that it fails to do whatever the artist wanted it to do. For instance, Alan Moore wanted the metaphysical discussions in Promethea to be gobbledegood, not gobbledegook, but, well, you know how that turned out (personally, whenever I hear the word “quantum” from anyone but a physicist, I reach for my revolver).
...
One last point in passing: to rest our assessment of an artwork on the creator’s intentions is to commit the Intentional Fallacy, which is totally a fallacy for very good reasons and not just because I read on the internet that a couple of literary critics said so in the 40s, but I’m not going to go into the very good reasons here because hey look behind you is that a three-headed monkey?
...
For a start, for all of the terrible, horrible, no good comics we have individually read, there are another hundred comics that are even worse, and another hundred that are even worse than that, and then there’s Paradise X. But, except for lunatics and sex perverts, most people don’t go out of their way to read comics that they think are going to be terrible, so there’s an inbuilt problem with trying to find the most disliked comic of all time: it may well not be the most dislikeable comic of all time.
...
Now imagine aesthetic space as a massively multi-dimensional space, with as many axes as there are different types of aesthetic badness. For instance, we might have one axis representing lack of spatial clarity, another representing implausible characterisation, another representing being written by Brian Michael Bendis, and so on.
...
Asking what is the worst comic of all time is like asking what is the worst sentence of all time, or the worst sandwich of all time. Is it a sandwich made from moldy bread and expired meat product? Is a rock the worst sandwich of all time? Is it a sandwich that gives you AIDS? Is it a poop sandwich? Is it a sandwich made by Hitler? Is it a poop sandwich made by Hitler? There is no worst sandwich of all time, because there are too many ways for a sandwich to be bad, and there is no worst comic of all time.
But if there was, J. Michael Straczynski would have written it.


Вот это, выше?
Это приносит в мою жизнь радость.
А я люблю радость. Потому что я очень позитивный человек

@темы: Alan Moore, Milo Manara, DC, EC Comics, Ссылки

---

Про Супермена

[Jaya]

Это птица! Это самолёт! Это...

Несколько потенциально интересных любителям персонажа ссылок:

1. История Супермена и Лоис как принадлежащая к сказочному типу 425, мысль "на поиграться" тем, кому такие вещи чешут мозг:

Beast and Superbeast: Superman and Folktales part 1, Cupid and Psyche

Цитата

First, the god who hides his identity (in this story, by arriving in the darkness) and second, the woman who tries to discover that identity. For lots of images of this story, and a lengthier summary, try here. His reasons for not revealing his face are farily clear in Apuleius. He seems to want her to trust him. Cupid says things like, "I would rather you would love me as an equal than adore me as a god." And "Love cannot dwell with suspicion." Here's an online version of the whole story, by the way.
So, has there ever been a clearer precedent for Clark Kent's relationship with Lois Lane than the line "I would rather you love me as an equal than adore me as a god"?
Sure, it doesn't quite line up with the bumbling Kent that so many versions of the story give us, but it's pretty good as a statement of Superman's motivations in maintaining the Kent identity.
The mythological context here also reminds me that the mixture of humanity and divinity usually doesn't go so well for the human in the story.


Beast and SuperBeast: Superman and Folktales part 2, East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon

Beast and SuperBeast: Superman and Folktales part 3, Beauty and the Beast

Старое туда же: The 10 Most Baffling Moments In Lois Lane And Superman’s Love Life

2. Супермен и Доктор Вертэм, гхм, подаривший миру "Соблазнение невинных, а за ним в общем-то и Комикс-Код:

The Amazing Adventure of The Man of Steel and the Psychiatric Censor — Superman vs. Doctor Wertham

Цитаты

Wertham argued that Superman was actually the epitome of Nazism. Superman’s speed, strength, and near invulnerability, Wertham argued, drew close the concept of the perfect man and race that was located at the core of the Nazi Party’s ideology and thus provided subliminal support for the Nazi Party. This theme was adopted by CatholicWorld, who stated that Superman personified an ideal “very much in the style of a Nazi pamphleteer.” Gershom Legman, an American cultural critic and essayist, wrote that Superman “is really peddling a philosophy of ‘hooded justice’ in no way distinguishable from that of Hitler….” Wertham and friends’ condemnation of Superman for being an un-American Nazi mere years after the Nazi party condemns him for being a pro-American Jew is dramatic irony on par with the works of Shakespeare. Of course, it should not have really been a surprise since Wertham is also quoted as saying, “I think Hiter was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry.”
...
This apparently did not faze Wertham, who wrote:
"Some movie writers look in crime comic books for new tricks. For instance the producer of the movie serial Atom Man vs Superman, which was shown in about half the movie theaters of the country, is said to be “an avid reader of the comics, from which he gets many of his ideas.”
Television has taken the worst out of comic books, from sadism to Superman. The comic-book Superman has long been recognized as a symbol of violent race superiority. The television Superman, looking like a mixture of an operatic tenor without his armor and an amateur athlete out of a health-magazine advertisement, does not only have “superhuman powers,” but explicitly belongs to a “super-race.”"
...
Wertham struck back one last time on April 9, 1955 (which was after the imposition of the Comic Book Code and not very publicized), in an article the Saturday Review of Literature called “It’s Still Murder: What Parents Still Don’t Know About Comics Books.” Reading more like a rant, Wertham accuses the Comics Book Code of not being sufficient and the Association (and comic book industry) of being disingenuous.
...
Wertham’s attacks actually had the reverse effect and made the Superman comics more appealing to rebellious children since it was portrayed as forbidden fruit. Parents and educators took advantage of this by having the character appear in workbooks to teach grammar, vocabulary and spelling.

Туда же: транскрипты и аудио Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency: Wertham Versus Gaines On Decency Standards - слушаний Сената, навсегда изменивших комикс-индустрию.

@темы: DC, Ссылки

---

О Грааааант...

[Jaya]

Недели полторы назад у меня случился довольно любопытный разговор, в ходе которого мой собеседник, читавший тогда Supergods - эпический труд Гранта Моррисона об истории, значении и смысле супергероев - сказал, помимо прочего, что скорее всего именно вокруг изложенного в этой книге будет в ближайшие несколько лет закручена большая часть околокомиксного дискурса. В ответ я, не читавшая книгу, усмехнулась.

Потому что нет.


Возможно Грант Моррисон написал по-настоящему умные, глубокие и интересные вещи (я сказала возможно), но если я чего-то и знаю о мире комиксов, так это коньюктуру. Нет, комиксы Моррисона отлично продаются, и тут перемен не предвидится. И да, его всё ещё обожают и будут обожать простые фанаты.
Но заслуживающее внимания дискуссионное пространство создают не они. Те же, кто делает это, испытывают всё меньше и меньше желания всерьёз слушать Гранта Моррисона.

В чём же дело?

Как мы все знаем, в этом году как-то особенно сильно заполыхал не затухающий как минимум с конца восьмидесятых годов прошлого века конфликт между авторами комиксов и издателями, так называемая проблема "прав создателей". DC всё-таки решило издать Before Watchmen, Marvel заработало огромные деньги "Мстителями", не переставая при этом судиться с семьёй Джека Кирби, одного из оригинальных создателей команды, от Большой Двойки один за другим начали сваливать создатели с Именами (особо отличилось тут DC, к недовольным которым недавно добавился ещё и Грег Рака, но и Marvel потеряло, навскидку, хотя бы Эда Брубейкера), что дало повод для комментариев о том, что, возможно, время Имён, работающих над франчайзами, прошло, при этом профессионалы индустрии наконец-то научились активно использовать ресурсы Интернета, и стали ещё менее зависимыми от Большой Двойки. Всё это привело к оживлению разговора о том, как издательства обращаются с фрилансерами и о правах оригинальных авторов больших франчайзов. И люди, говорящие и пишущие об этом медиуме то, что стоит слушать и читать, единодушно, хоть и в разной степени, встали явно не на сторону корпораций.
А что же Грант Моррисон? Грант Моррисон, один из успешнейших и популярнейших комикс-сценаристов последней четверти века? Грант Моррисон, любимец фанатов, о чьём творчестве притом не стыдно говорить всерьёз? Грант Моррисон, чудак и эксцентрик, любитель магии и левого анархизма?

Гранту Моррисону плевать.

Или даже хуже.

Огромные цитаты и множество ссылок

В этом месте начинаются огромные цитаты и множество ссылок, так что будьте готовы.
Итак.


Сперва немного о сути и проблемности позиции Моррисона:

Большая цитата

Of the book’s four sections, The Golden Age is the shortest at 56 pages, and the least personal, mainly because these foundations date from before his time as a reader or writer. While he brings some fresh readings to the birth of Superman in Action Comics No. 1 in 1938 and the rest of the Forties pantheon, his version of how 23-year-old Clevelanders Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster sold all rights to their creation Superman to National Comics (now DC) for a mere $130, or $10 per page, seeks to downplay any injustice. He asserts they “were creating a product to sell” and “imagined they’d create other, better characters.” In his original unedited draft which I read some months ago, Morrison asserted “...they wanted to be bought” (the italics were his), but this got pruned.

Morrison goes on to suggest that “by 1946, they realized how much money their creation was raking in”. In fact, as revealed in the fascinating study of Creators of the Superheroes by Dr. Thomas Andrae (Hermes Press, 2011), as early as September 1938, Siegel was already requesting a raise in their rates to take on an extra syndicated Superman newspaper strip and being fobbed off. DC publisher Jack Liebowitz replied intimidatingly to Siegel on September 23, 1938, insisting, “Our company has very little to gain in a monetary sense from the syndication of this material… Also bear in mind that we own the feature ‘Superman’ and that we can at any time replace you in the drawing on that feature.”

Which is exactly what DC did, when Siegel and Shuster filed a lawsuit against them in 1946 and their contracts were not renewed. Creators’ rights were little better when it came to Batman. Andrae again points out that young Bob Kane‘s father was a union man who worked in the printing department of the New York Daily News. He and his son fought hard to secure rights to the hit character. The snag was that writer and co-creator Bill Finger was left out of the deal, kept invisible by Kane, who made sure he secured sole credit. He could have done so much more for others, but never did. Kane finally landed a one million dollar buyout from DC in 1967 and an ongoing percentage from Batman subsidiary income. You can imagine how much moolah that meant. In contrast, Siegel and Shuster were reduced to poverty, and only after a campaign publicising this injustice were granted in 1975 their credits on the character and a pension of $20,000 a year. Morrison does mention this but curiously, comparing the proof to the finished book, has put the whole sorry affair inside parentheses, like a footnote. He also mentions, “Today a prolific and popular comics writer could make the same amount in a week.” No doubt DC makes that same amount in a day, an hour, maybe less?

How easy is it for fans and pros today, so hypnotised since childhood by these ubiquitous, constantly repromoted properties, to ignore their tarnished histories? I’ve talked recently to some fan readers who are troubled when I mention this horrific, disfigured portrait lurking beneath the polished profiles, masks and capes, hidden in the attic, but who can’t seem to help themselves from still wanting to follow these perfect-looking, super-powered Dorian Grays, no matter what. Morrison prefers to elevate the superhero as an indestructible concept, almost an independent, self-actualising entity, acknowledging only slightly its murkier commercial side, but glossing over the exploitation rife in this business, then and now. Unlike earlier ‘public domain’ gods and goddesses from antiquity and religious faiths, Superheroes are as much Superbrands, properties that must make profits for DC, part of Time-Warner-AOL, and Marvel, bought by Disney. While Morrison and his ilk earn tidy sums from endless, spiralling makeovers of these franchises, both publishers are aggressively fighting lawsuits over ownership against the estates of Siegel and of Jack Kirby, joint architect of the Marvel Universe.



Там же есть ссылка на последнее письмо Джоан Сигел Time Warner. Это... да.


Вот ещё одно высказывание Моррисона, на этот раз из приуроченного к выходу книги интервью:

Well, to me it's never been honestly what's interesting about this stuff. I think the stories outlast all of those complications. You look at the people who created those characters, and they're all dead. But the characters will still be around in 50 years probably – at least the best of them will. So I try not to concern myself with that.


Да, позиция Гранта, как можно догадаться, сразу же вызвала много вопросов. Вот, например:

Unfortunately, Morrison’s treatment of Siegel and Shuster’s treatment is even more depressing in context; far from not wanting to comment on something that happened before he was born or not being interested in the subject, he devotes several paragraphs providing a counter-narrative to the conventional wisdom that the young creators got screwed over by the savvy and experienced suits at National Comics.
...
Holy shit. Twenty-thousand dollars…in a week?
Is that what Morrison pulls down? Because he’s one of the four most popular superhero comic book writers (along with Geoff Johns, Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar), and perhaps the third most prolific of the four.
Wait. That can’t possibly be right. Because 52 times $20,000 is $1,040,000 dollars. That’s a million bucks a year. Is Grant Morrison a fucking millionaire? Because, if so, that makes his dismissal of Shuster and Siegel’s screwing over seem not just impolitic—given his current gig writing Action Comics and the success he’s had with the character in JLA and All-Star Superman—but almost monstrous.


Особой яркостью отличалась реакция Мэтта Сенеки. Сперва Мэтт написал слова. Потом он снова написал слова. Потом он написал ещё слова. Потом он поджарил свою копию Supergods на барбекюшнице и съел.

Ооокееееей.

Тема для отдельного разговора: чего в Мэтте Сенеке больше - показушничества или истерики?

Тема для отдельного разговора-2: Мэтт Сенека и Роджер Иберт как примеры того, почему хорошим критикам лучше держаться подальше от творчества в "своём" медиуме.


Бодрое барбекю Сенеки привлекло внимание всего Интернета. Почему-то.
Внимания было так много, что история докатилась до самого Моррисона, и он, усмехаясь, вспомнил о ней в своём недавнем интервью. Интервью это, впрочем, оказалось примечательным не только упоминанием сожжённой книги - в нём Моррисон говорил в том числе и о своих творческих планах (Чудо Женщина!), но сосредоточимся на основной теме этого поста:

Большие цитаты

Morrison perhaps felt this most keenly when in Supergods, his history of superhero comics infused with his own autobiographical adventures, he discussed the always controversial case of Siegel and Schuster, the two men who created Superman and sold the character to DC Comics for a small sum. Superman went on to become a national sensation, with the creators left out of pocket and seeking legal recompense. Their names are now frequently invoked when fingers are pointed at the publishing giant. Morrison's take was more pragmatic: that the men had been pitching a product to sell, that this was business as usual, and that as creators they no doubt thought they would have better and brighter characters to come.

The backlash was swift and merciless: clearly Morrison was no more than a DC stooge, an industry apologist. He couldn't possibly just be a writer with his own opinion, frustrated that his words were stripped of intent and context, twisted and gnarled into the readers cynical interpretation. One disgruntled reader took it a step further.

“[The] guy that ate Supergods!” Morrison laughs. “Cooked it and ate it on the basis that it was my fault that people couldn't find alternative comics in their local comics stores. And I was standing in the way, pretending to be the face of alternative comics, and how I actually stood for corporate this or corporate ... you know, I’m the man – again as I say, I’m a freelance writer, I'm not on staff at any company. But this guy ate the book!”
...
Morrison is keen to point out that he is leaving on good terms with DC, and still has work in the pipeline with them for the next year.

“We have disagreements,” he acknowledges, “but to me disagreements are things that you deal with, problems are things you solve, and everyone stays friends, and negotiations are done. So I kinda felt that.. it just began to feel too unpleasant to work within a comic book fan culture where everyone was mad at you all the time and giving you responsibility for legal cases and things that Ihaveve got honestly nothing to do with in my life and will shortly have zero connection with.

“But I felt that. There was a sense of, a definite sense of the temple was being burned down and it was time to run away.”
...
“That's what you did. If you want to own something you go and own it. So I don't understand how you could get yourself into the position where you don't own it and you're angry about it. And again, it's not a position I would endorse, other than saying, 'I really feel sorry for you, for genuinely getting this wrong and being regretful,' but honestly am I gonna leave my job and protest on your behalf? Of course not.”

Is it a slightly classist thing, I wonder, the idea that you can just drop your job at work as a protest?

“Yeah, it's the idea that you don't have to work and that everything will be okay,” he agrees, “and what you just phone your dad and he'll come down and dump a bunch of money on you? So no, it's like, yes, I blame the middle classes for everything.”

I can almost hear the finger-wagging storm that is approaching, but Morrison grew up working class in Glasgow, an origin that instils a high work ethic that extends long past your own financial security. He may now have a home in Los Angeles too, and he probably didn't have to scramble for loose change down the back of his sofa for a bus ride to the interview, but he's still a world apart from those born into financial comfort.
...
And that's the Glasgow boy again, swirling his drink and smiling at the enthusiastic leaflet ninjas who keep hovering on the sidelines of our table. He's written the greatest comic characters in the world, created his own highly acclaimed works, and won a clutch of Eisners, Eagles and Harvey awards. Factor in his other work as an award-winning playwright, and his various screenplays (including the upcoming Dinosaurs vs Aliens), it's perhaps no surprise that he was nominated for an honour from the Queen.

“I just felt it's really nice to be acknowledged at all!” he laughs. “I was so shocked... I don't even know who put me up for it. Is it some weird Lib Dem guy who's been reading The Invisibles all these years?”

It seemed to me like many of the detractors were coming from a distinctly middle class perspective.

“I couldn’t help notice that myself,” Morrison says. “There’s a particular miasma of totems and taboos surrounding contact with the trappings of high privilege that appears to arise from specifically middle class prejudices. In Glasgow, there’s also an element of working class sectarian bias in the condemnation, so it’s not all about the middle. I noticed also that previous histrionic public refusals of medals and honours had achieved exactly nothing.”
...
“It's okay because it's no biggie, honestly you're not buying into anything - because you can't. By your intrinsic nature, who you are and where you were born, you can't buy into that system. They don't get it, you know, we'll never buy into it. We're the common people, as Jarvis Cocker said, and they'll never understand that.”



Давайте-ка сразу определимся с одной вещью: то ли из-за недоинформированности, то ли по какой-то другой причине Грант изрядно исказил позицию Сенеки. Да, Мэтт действительно недоволен доминированием мейнстримной супергероики на рынке, и да, лично я считаю, что значительная часть борцов за "права создателей" использует их как повод для отработки своей фрустрации популярностью супергероев, но в конкретном тексте в отношении Supergods эта мысль проговаривается им почти походя и очевидно не представлена как основной повод для недовольства:

Не особо большие цитаты

The book positions superhero stories as the only kind of comics that really count (or exist, for that matter), the evolutionary triggers for the coming real-life transformation of humanity into superhumanity. Supergods begins, naturally enough, with the story of Siegel and Shuster creating comics’ first costumed crimefighter, Superman. What follows is nothing less than a virtuosic rhetorical performance, as Morrison manages to remove the guilt of working with a property so heinously wrested from its true owners by putting the blame on Siegel and Shuster themselves, who according to the Man of Steel’s eventual inheritor totally knew what they were doing!

“Like so many artists, musicians, and entertainers,” Morrison tells us, “they were creating a product to sell,” and once the ink hit the back of that check any immorality on the part of the buyer was no longer of consequence. To Morrison, Siegel and Shuster seem to be romantic bits of history, not actual ruined lives. Superman clearly matters more to him, and the idea that he might be in the wrong for participating in the continued unethical use of the character is never brought up. Over the course of the book, however, it becomes clear that someone as smart and self-promoting as Morrison is incapable of playing ignorant for too long. As any good writer would be, Morrison sees the tragedy of Siegel and Shuster -- and simply refuses to care. “Leaving his fathers far behind on the doomed planet Poverty,” a memorable passage runs, “Superman… flew into the hands of anyone who could afford to hire him.” This might sound like a call to arms if it was coming from anyone but a beneficiary of the events being detailed, but for Morrison it’s just another dramatically potent tidbit to drop into the latest bestseller. When the fact that the total amount Siegel and Shuster were ever paid for their creation is about as much as today’s big-name comics writers make in a week, it’s cited not as something the industry deserves to be ashamed of, but “an example of how far the business has come”.
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Supergods is an immensely distressing book in its own right, but more distressing still is the way it puts the lie to all the revolutionary rhetoric of Morrison’s previous works, All Star Superman very much among them. Before 2011, it was possible to view Morrison the way he presented himself, as an agent of a better future doing the dirty-but-necessary job of infiltrating the rotten hive of superhero comics in order to change it from the inside out. There may even have been a time when that was really how things were. But as Alan Moore reminded us in Watchmen -- shortly before leaving DC in disgust rather than continue on there as Morrison has -- when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also. And then, at least in Morrison’s case, it swallows you whole and spits you back out to spit out its poisonous creeds and hypocritical justifications.



Интервью Моррисона... вызвало отклик. Возможно не особо активный, но досточный для того. чтобы увидеть, как на наших глазах образ Моррисона в глазах людей, учавствующих в Большом Разговоре О Комиксах, окончательно изменился далеко не в лучшую сторону.


Джей Кейлеб Мозокко, критик, время от времени пишущий в том числе для Comics Alliance:

Большие цитаты

I disagree with Laura Sneddon's characterization of reaction to Morrison's retelling of comics' "original sin" in Supergods.

(I also disagree with the her story about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster; it wasn't "DC Comics," it was "a publisher that would eventually become known as DC Comics," and it wasn't "a small sum," but "$130" dollars. I can see why she condensed the first bit down to "DC Comics," for brevity's sake, but why on earth use the vaguer, less-specific and loger "a small sum" for "130" dollars. Oh, and they didn't sell Superman for that amount, that's one of the things still being argued about. The company that would eventually become known as DC Comics bought a 13-page story from them for $10 a page. That wasn't the price they paid to own Superman; it was the price they paid to run that story. Who owns what wasn't decided upon until the various parties started going to court. But whatever, back to Morrison and "fans and critics alike" pouncing upon, dissecting and recycling that poor professional writer's words...)
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Well, maybe not the doe-eyed ingénues bit, but "capitalist" and "blooksuckers" sound about right...as I mentioned above though, I don't remember them selling the copyright and/or ownership of Superman; they sold a story featuring Superman for a page rate, and that's why there's still a Superman-related legal fight.
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Instead of the characterization of Morrisons fans and critics as the bad guys and the writer as the good guy, why couldn't Sneddon just ask, "Hey man, why did you write that? Do you believe that? Why do you believe that?" You know—questions!

As to the economic issues Morrison discusses, I sure hope to God "class" means something totally different in the UK than it does in the USA, and that they're talking about lords and ladies and dukes and some medieval British shit, because do remember that, like Siegel and Shuster and Superman, Morrison himself brought up economics in an interview promoting his book, while attacking cartoonist Chris Ware/"Those Comics Journal Guys"/Everything That Isn't a DC or Marvel Superhero Comic as the work of Privileged College Kids and just don't get a working-class Scottish guy like himself (And, in his book, Morrison both trumpets his own incredible wealth while also dismissing the "fairy tale" of the actually poor young guys living in The Great Depression losing Superman due to their own negligence).

If you read Morrison's comics, he's a hard writer not to like. If you read interviews with Morrison, he's a hard person to like.
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You wouldn't know it from the article itself, but the "guy that ate Supergods!" is Matt Seneca, a cartoonist and comics critic who has written for Robot 6, ComicsAlliance and The Comics Journal, probably the best (or "only", in some circles) respected media source wholly devoted to comics. Seneca even interviews comics creators, just like Laura Sneddon does! (Only differently).

Dismissing Seneca like that is just...weird. It would be akin to calling Roger Ebert a "disgruntled viewer." Not exactly equivalent, because Seneca is not to comics as Ebert is to movies, but, like Ebert, he's a guy who writes professionally about them. He's not just a guy who read a fucking book and didn't like it.

It's a confounding omission on Sneddon's part; would it be that much more difficult to say "one critic" instead of "one disgruntled reader"...? To note that he at the book to take pictures to illustrate a review of the book, rather than just to, I don't know, eat a book...?



Дэвид Бразерс, пишущий для того же Comics Alliance и не только:

Цитаты

Sneddon, when asking about contentious points, minimizes and turns complaints against Morrison into easily-dismissed strawmen. She mentions that it seemed “like many of the detractors were coming from a distinctly middle class perspective” and Morrison agrees with her and goes on about middle class prejudices against the “trappings of high privilege.” (what?) Earlier in the interview, she writes: “Is it a slightly classist thing, I wonder, the idea that you can just drop your job at work as a protest?” (what?) She asks Morrison about comics critic Matt Seneca grilling and eating (part of) a copy of Morrison’s Supergods. Instead of Seneca’s weird performance being an act with some type of point, it’s used as evidence that “Fans are crazy and cynical and stupid.” Dissent is never treated as reasonable, only as aberration, and a de-fanged aberration at that.
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The most aggravating part of the interview is the quote at the top of the post. That is a grown man asking why people believe the things that come out of his mouth. He wants to know why, after he says things, people care about them and hold him to his word. “Why can’t I just say things willy-nilly without having people look at my position?” he’s essentially asking here.

That is laughable, because he has built a career, in part, on people paying attention to, falling in love with, and believing his words. He set himself up as a counter-culture type of guy by producing works that embraced the counter-culture and drew on classic counter-culture subject matter and authors. He’s given at least one rock starred out speech at DisInfocon, and his letters pages let interact with a specific subset of comics readers.

He built this personality, this image of Grant Morrison-as-King Mob. That didn’t come from the fans or critics cruelly picking apart his words. No, we took him at his word and at his work, just like we’ve done with everyone from Stan Lee to Frank Miller to Dave Sim to Alan Moore. When confronted with the fact that King Mob prefers to defend a corporation over creators, describes a certain subset of fans as “voluminous Goth girls, victims of some unspeakable abuse,” and generally isn’t who he sold himself to be, I (and others, sure, but this is all about me-me-me-me-me) reacted with surprise, and then frustration.

It’s my fault, of course. I believed the hype. I believed in what Grant Morrison said and wrote, so I just set myself up for disappointment. Judging by this interview, what I should have done, were I not a weary cynic ready to burn down the temple (“the temple!”), was to assume that Morrison was just a cog in the machine and not take him so seriously, I guess.



В комментариях там были сказаны интересные вещи о классовой принадлежности:

Много цитат

I have to say, I kinda get where they’re coming from with the whole middle-class thing. A lot of comics politics seems to be based on the idea that we can or should expect these corporations to behave ethically, that the fact that they’ve ripped off the people who built their universes out of sheer meanness is something we should be upset about. Stereotypically, that kind of thing is a more middle-class perspective, especially when contrasted with the idea that the game is always rigged and you should look out for yourself, without expecting any consideration from these companies.
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Like Ali, guys like Moore, Miller, Sim and Neal Adams used their cultural cache as a bully pulpit to further creator rights. Morrison however seems to be interested in furthering himself.

The key difference between Morrison and Jordan is Jordan’s public persona was always one of a bland cipher. Any expactations of him were simply wishful thinking. Morrison may not have deliberately cultivated his counter culture status, but he has certainly fed into it and only recently started disabuse himself from it with this rash of statements.
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I think some of the differences between how the debate on ‘class’ is framed on this side of the Atlantic and over there in the States might contribute toward your confusion in the second paragraph there. That the trappings of success are embraced by the working classes whilst resented by the middle classes is a truism. Privilege and a comfortable upbringing where hard graft may not be required to get on can often result in a backlash against that very culture. Think public-school (meaning private, fee-paying schools like Eton and the like) educated plastic revolutionaries like Joe Strummer from The Clash or Damon Albarn as opposed to someone like Noel Gallagher, who grew up poor and worked menial jobs before getting to the top. Gallagher was heavily criticized in the 90′s for attending a tea party at the prime minister’s house, something it’s unlikely you would ever have seen Strummer do. When asked why he went he said, “Because they asked me to.”. He, like Morrison, didn’t see declining such an invitation as a deadly blow to The Establishment, and that doing so would be a largely futile gesture.

Similarly, the idea that you would quit your job in protest over the treatment of fellow employees 70 years ago implies that you don’t really ‘need’ that job to make ends meet, a mindset totally alien to someone who considers themselves working class. Morrison clearly regards Seigel and Shuster as fellow professionals and their business decisions, however badly they skewed in the end, as a bed they made for themselves so to speak. Some critics, the aforementioned Matt Senaca for example, describe Seigel and Shuster like borderline simpletons, unable to grasp the gravity or consequences of their decisions. Which position would you describe as more respectful to Seigel and Shuster?
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The class element is weird and misplaced because on what planet is Morrison a working class hero? He’s probably the most secure dude working at DC. He doesn’t NEED DC. In fact, he’s leaving DC now because he’s “tired of doing superheroes” or whatever. That’s so working class. I know I can totally just leave my job because I’m “tired of it”. Meanwhile, he’s turning around and blasting on someone like Chris Roberson(if we are going to name names here, that’s who we are basically talking about) who left because he was considered with how DC treat creators NOW(Before Watchmen isn’t 30 years ago, it’s NOW. And if Alan freaking Moore can’t get treated with class–what chance do you have?). Roberson would seem to me to be making a judgement about his own career and the kind of ownership he wants over them. Morrison is just making a judgement on his random ass whims.

And somehow Roberson is basically Mitt Romney, and Morrison is this working class hero?

It’s really bizarre how 1) that’s an element of the discussion and then 2) that it has been framed in such a weird way.

It’s funny because most comic creators outside DC’s walls are poor, not particularly well taken care of, but still doing the damn thing. Because they believe that much in what they are doing. You want working class heroes, those are the people to go interview. Not Grant freaking Morrison.

I don’t have huge huge problems with Morrison–but don’t try to sell him to me as some sort of working class Jesus. It is offensive as hell. Like at this point he could relate in any way to struggling or maintaining a belief against impossible odds.



Как вы, наверное, заметили, тут не то чтобы сильно спрятан отдельный и крайне интересный разговор о классизме, деньгах и привилегиях. Моррисон, человек, с почти презрением глядящий на создающих "высокохудожественные" комиксы интеллектуалов из среднего класса, возможно действительно происходит из социального слоя, лишённого иллюзий о возможности всеобщей справедливости, и, возможно, именно эти определяется его взгляд на мир, но, если так, как уже сегодняшний миллионер он представляет собой своеобразный аргумент против высокой социальной мобильности: хотим ли мы, чтобы сильные мира сего были ещё жёстче, чем они есть? Правильно ли считать, что то, в какой семье ты родился, определяет и оправдывает тебя даже когда тебе уже пошёл шестой десяток и ты как никогда далёк от своих корней? Но с другой стороны, правильно ли ожидать или даже требовать, чтобы с переходом в новый социальный слой люди полностью перекраивали себя под своё новое положение?


Джамаал Томас о Моррисоне в частности и об отношениях авторов с фандомом:

Большие цитаты

Morrison managed to appeal to those who hungered for meaning from the culture they consumed while spinning an entertaining yarn.

That appeal was complemented by the public persona that Morrison constructed over the years: a new-age counter culture icon. He talked about Buddhism and aliens and psychedelic drugs. He espoused anti-corporate philosophies. He evinced radicalism. We were tempted to think of him as some kind of post-modern pop culture Gnostic visionary. A philosopher. A chaos magician. In the last year and change, Grant made a series of comments in interviews and his Supergods book that seemed to come from a different place. A guy who used to embrace the paradoxes of the human condition in books like the Invisibles and Seaguy sounded like he was more interested in the mythology around pop culture icons than the struggles of the men who created them. It felt like he was turning a blind eye to what Tom Spurgeon’s described as the original sin of the American comics industry to embrace the stories.
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Morrison has become the master of the disingenuous bad faith argument. All of his critics are clownish strawmen. Matt Seneca’s transformed from an impassioned critic into some kind of performance artist who ate Supergods out of incoherent mania. I may not agree with all of Matt’s points, but he deserves engagement, not condescension. Morrison’s critics werent holding him personally responsible for the Siefel/Shuster suit, they were just holding him to account for the things he actually said or wrote. But I guess it’s easier to pretend otherwise.

But that’s not my favorite part. The best bit is when he doubles down on his position on the relationship between creators and the ‘Big Two’ publishers and drops a subliminal Alan Moore dis that would make Jay-Z proud. We’re supposed to ignore the fact that Moore wasn’t some yokel who signed his ideas away for magic beans, but a guy who thought that DC violated the terms of its contract with him and acted in bad faith after benefiting from a windfall (long story short: the rights to Watchmen were supposed to revert to the creators after the book went out of print. Neither party anticipated the explosive growth of the trade market). I find it hard to believe that Morrison doesn’t know that contracts are always subject to interpretation and frequently fail to address unforeseeable advances in technology or changes to the marketplace.
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Creators are in the business of selling the cultural products they create to an audience who will appreciate them.

So it stands to reason that a rational creator would present the public with a version of themselves that’s most conducive to selling those products. It makes sense for Grant Morrison or Alan Moore to emphasize the more radical, countercultural side of their personalities when selling products to an audience that would be most receptive to those ideas. Neither man would gain from reminding the audience that they are also hard-nosed businessmen. But we forget. We confuse an advertising campaign with reality. We never should have assumed that Grant Morrison was anything more than “a freelance commercial writer who sells stories to pay the bills“.

I’m not sure if the version of Morrison that inspired a thriving online community of freethinkers and radicals represents all or any of the real Grant Morrison, and I don’t think it matters.

These interviews should inspire us to rethink the notion of fandom. We shouldn’t stop loving the books or respecting the people who create them. We can still value online and in-person interactions with creators, and pore over their interviews and profiles. We just shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed when they change their public persona. We should resist that sense of false sense of familiarity or intimacy with people who are essentially strangers.



Джамаал говорит, что фанатам пора приучаться не верить авторам, и он прав. Это мир, в котором мы теперь живём, и нет, это не только про комиксы. У вашего любимого писателя или актёра есть Твиттер? Вам нравится смотреть на фотографии со съемок грядущего блокбастера, на которых актёры веселятся и радостно общаются между собой? На коллективные интервью, где они шутят, перебрасываются добродушными колкостями и рассказывают о себе истории? На видео, которыми они поздравляют друг друга с днём рождения?
Мир так работает и, возможно, Грант Моррисон просто понял это раньше своих коллег по индустрии. Остаётся поднятый Дэвидом Бразерсом вопрос: можем ли мы верить, если при этом мы не должны верить? И устроит ли автора публика, которая сознательно и прицельно не верит?


Ну и на десерт прекрасное от Абхэя Хослы (кажется, я каждый раз пишу имя этого человека по-новому) в колонке Такера Стоуна в, внимание, онлайн-версии The Comics Journal:

Цитаты

The interview was gross, and by the word gross, I specifically mean “horrible, grotesque, nauseating, stomach-churning, flesh-crawling”—basically, all the worst parts of the Bible. But the GOOD part is that Morrison talks about why he is going to quit writing America’s Second-Favorite Batman stories: because of comics fans. COMICS FANS. Oh, those comic fans are some mean old nasties, cold-hearted son-bitches, the very dregs of humanity (the actual dregs, not the band). Oh, somebody get him a pillow for his head, having to deal with the Grinches. Just because he tried to propagate a teeny-tiny, measly, miniscule bit of ahistoric propaganda that flattered the repeated misconduct of his long-time corporate masters and dismissed the intense suffering of the comic creators who paved the way for his current success. Damn you, comic fans. Damn the dark places you live!
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If you have to run away from a temple you worked at because it is now on fire, on fire because even the Lord God who you falsely professed to worship himself is ashamed of your corruption, your thorough, total corruption—well, I don’t know if that’s something you really want to go bragging about to the New Statesman? “News flash! I’m too stubborn to notice God is repulsed by my corrupt mentality. Stop the presses!” Though to be fair, Grant Morrison, Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, only gave the interview, and was then given the opportunity to “review” the interview, in its entirety, and made sure to include in the interview that nothing he said in that interview or any other interview necessarily reflected his actual views, or the actual views of anyone else located in the United States or Guam, in that his views exist outside of time, space, the understood rules of causality, and thus any human capacity for critical judgment, but that if his views cause side effects, up to and including an erection lasting over four hours, with a mix of blood and semen erupting periodically such that… Look: I just don’t have the space to explain all the fine print, in full– the internet is simply too finite.
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Rucka’s words are hard to reconcile with the divinity of Morrison’s repeated chant that “My own experience proves [DC Comics] can be reasonable and honorable, if you deal with them in an adult fashion.” Morrison’s words would thus seem to suggest that Rucka was right to be excommunicated from the Temple, for he is a most unholy child. But must Morrison go further? Must Morrison smite or indeed even smote Rucka for having defiled the Temple? Shall Morrison seek blessings to launch a Crusade upon Rucka and the other heathens? Will Rucka and Morrison together attend the next Barcelona Comic-Con? If so, does Greg Rucka expect for there to be a Spanish Inquisition? No. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

In conclusion, you have just read jokes about Dungeons & Dragons, Monty Python, and Comic Books. Welcome to my temple of life-long celibacy!



Итак, вот что произошло, хотя некоторым и кажется иначе.


Смотреть на эту ситуацию можно по-разному. Кто-то скажет, что мы наблюдаем типичные последствия проявления недостаточной почтительности к остромодной священной корове. Кто-то сосредоточится на этическом аспекте и решит, что человек, которому настолько плевать на униженных и оскорблённых, попросту не заслуживает ни внимания, ни денег. Кто-то же отметит, что, как бы там ни было, мягкое игнорирование бушующего до сих пор и едва ли не ключевого для формирования индустрии конфликта в любом случае не может не обернуться невозможностью полноценного анализа, а стремление глубоко цеплять своим творчеством как на эмоциональном, так и на интеллектуальном уровне едва ли сочетаемо со стремлением быть одинаково принятым публикой после каждой смены шкуры.

Грант, конечно, будет в порядке. Его новый проект собирает неплохие отзывы, народ в восторге от его конвенции, а сам он за достижения прошедшей недели справедливо получает от лично меня премию имени Скотта Снайдера ("Заткнись уже!").

В конце концов то, что для внятных критиков и теоретиков медиума его имя теперь находится всё ближе и ближе к имени Стражински, можно и пережить, так?

@темы: Grant Morrison, Ссылки