Joe Rice Smacks Down the Aesthetic Subjectivists
by Joey Manley
My entry into the webcomics world as a vocal fan, circa 2000 or so, was marked by numerous accidental flamewars I kicked up on the subject of quality. For example, I had a link-list of comics I liked here on TalkAboutComics.com, and the headline above that list read, “Quality Webcomics.” Offensive in the extreme! For some people, the very idea that some stuff might be better than other stuff was obnoxious and rude, because “everything is subjective”; others acknowledged that some stuff is actually better than others, but felt indignant that somebody might say so, (I think the argument went: “This is the Internet, everybody can look at the comics themselves for free and make up their own minds, so SHUT YOUR TRAP ABOUT IT OH! AND ADD MY COMIC TO YOUR GODDAM LINK LIST YOU PINK-BODY-SUIT-WEARING TURDMONGER”– that kind of thing).
And then when Modern Tales launched. Sheesh. The word “elitist” never had so much play! I felt like I needed to buy a set of blue china and a pince-nez just to live up to my online reputation! If I didn’t already smoke a pipe, I would have had to start!
Similar flamewars erupted around the existence of the Webcomics Examiner (which I had almost nothing to do with, except for providing free hosting). And, again, when some friends and I launched Graphic Novel Review (if I remember correctly, that was mostly about my comparing corporate franchise comics like Spider-Man to Harlequin Romances in the submission guidelines — erm, maybe I was asking for it, there, with that one, I’ll grant you).
Anyway. Everybody’s a critic of the, um, critics, I guess.
Joe Rice is talking about print comics, not webcomics, in this post over at Comic Book Resource’s blog, but he hits the nail on the head.
It is possible for art to be good or bad; even moreso it is possible for art to be better or worse. And the more extreme the difference, the easier it is to tell. If I draw a little cartoon, that cartoon is not as good as a Quitely piece. Even if my mom looks at it and loves it, it isn’t better. It is worse. It’s OK for my mom to like it more; that is her subjective opinion. But it would be silly of her to try to objectively claim it was better. It isn’t. That is a fact. I don’t know how to draw. Every technical aspect would be worse. Every creative aspect would be worse. And if I drew more panels I guarantee the storytelling would be in every way worse than a Quitely page. Is my mom stupid for liking mine more? No. Do I look down on her? No. But is my page better? Absolutely not.
There’s a lot more in the post. Plus, like, a five-hundred-comment-long thread. Check it:
No, Art is Not Purely Subjective
[EDIT: the blog was originally incorrectly attributed to a different comics news site -- I'm tempted to say that I have trouble telling'em apart, but that would be snarky and untrue. It was just me being stupid.]
February 4th, 2007 at 12:17 am
A lot of critics of the critics in webcomics are astoundingly afraid of the words “The emperor has no clothes”. A number of people have found fame and money with bare skills and unoriginal material by simply providing free content. Comic readers have been conditioned to accept this stuff as the standard, and the reading public demanding better would pretty much make their location within the status quo uncertain.
Things like the WCCAs, or the Examiner… these are/ were part of the same “word of mouth” process that gained the critics of the critics their audience. They don’t grant audiences, they make a potential audience aware of the product. So the “Examiner didn’t make anyone famous” dismissal some folks keep swinging around like a dead cat has no worth. It wasn’t designed to do so.
The problem is that they highlight comics that are significantly better than the ones the critics of the critics are putting out. Whether they admit it or not, that is seen as a threat to the status quo they wish to benefit from.
But that’s not the REAL problem in this topic.
The REAL problem is that those people trying to highlight what was better out there, gave up because they just didn’t want to keep putting up with the bullshit being thrown at them by the critics of critics and their sycophants. The critics of critics got the status quo they wanted because they shouted down The Examiner, Webhead, and anyone who may have implied that there are alternatives out there. It’s much like how right-wingers have turned the word “liberal” into a curse. Same methodology. Rush Limbaugh would be proud of them if he wasn’t so busy trying to bone south east Asian ladyboys.
But I can’t blame people for backing down and being quiet. Everyone who’s gone up against the status quo and their sycophants have always come out the worse for it.
It’s a geek thing, though. Geeks want their sandbox to remain their sandbox. Sure, they’d be happy if everyone without a sandbox wants to come and play with them, but at the end of the day, everyone needs to be reminded just whose sandbox it is. And that’s why comics will always remain the worthless medium it is.
Ah, it was good getting this off my chest. I can’t wait to finish my comics so I can leave all of this stupidity behind.
February 4th, 2007 at 6:06 am
I had two reactions of the article: “No shit,” and “How are you supposed to raise the level of comics criticism by spewing simplistic crap that art school freshmen have already gotten bored with?”
The real problem as I see it is, most so-called webcomics “critics” couldn’t get two sentences past a real copy editor to save their life. That’s not to say that I was the Greatest Film/Comics/Book Critic Ever when I wrote them, but I stated my theoretically educated opinions specifically and backed them up where I felt they needed to be. And even then I wasn’t too proud to accept that they WERE “just” opinions.
February 4th, 2007 at 6:08 am
“TO” the article. Where’s my copy editor when I need her?
February 4th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Hey Gordon!
I do agree that the critics should have critics, and that the things Joe Rice says, even the paragraph I pulled, are pretty much axiomatic in critical circles. But my own experiences — the fact that just labelling my link list “Quality Webcomics” back in the day stirred up such a fuss — lead me to believe that freshman-level lectures about the role of criticism are required. Even in the more mature “debates” about webcomics criticism — the ones that developed in the wake of the Webcomics Examiner, for example — there were more childish trolls decrying the notion of criticism *at all* than there were honestly concerned and educated people (like, say, Kris Straub) whose concerns were genuinely about the quality of the criticism being offered. If you set yourself up as a critic, and get one response saying, “Hey, that critical essay you wrote has problems; here are some thoughts on its weaknesses,” (or, in Kris’ case, “Here’s a pitch-perfect parody of the worst of pop culture criticism, and nobody’s going to be able to tell the difference”) and twenty thousand responses saying, “How dare U set yooorself up to judge us you cuntlips let the peeeeeeeeeeeeeeple decide,” then it seems that there’s room for a freshman-level lecture on the nature and uses of criticism. Especially if the people screaming the cuntlips line are considered influential “figures” in the “industry,” like our friend over at Your Mama dot Net.
I could be wrong!
February 4th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Glad to be of help.