Lies, lies!! LIES!!!

http://monsterwithoutacause.blogspot.com/2010/03/im-big-pussy-and-i-love-to-lick-myself.html

Eagleton has done a number of reviews of contemporary books for the Times lit supplement; more highbrow than Kael, yeah, but he does have broader audience than I think it may look like right on the surface.

I liked Carl Wilson’s “Let’s Talk About Love”, for example, way more than anything I’ve seen by Kael…..

If the category is weekly reviews of an artform enjoyed by millions….I don’t know that any comics critics can qualify. Does the comics audience extend into the millions?

Probably a different can of worms, but…I have to say, I find the enthusiasm for Pauline Kael by nearly everyone pretty baffling. Her prose is okay, but I find her insights pedestrian and her obsession with the trash/art dichotomy tedious. If comics criticism is going to look outside for a model, I’d much prefer Terry Eagleton or James Baldwin or any number of others, really.

Not sure you realize this, Jeet, but Caroline is now blogging at HU.

I think, personally, that you’re conflating malice and spite with bad faith. I think, actually, lots of things deserve malice, and even spite, and neither indicates bad faith (I do believe I detect an element of the first two in your own response to the roundtable…but not the third.)

I also think you’re being presumptuous in your statement that “It’s important to frame the issues rightly.” There are various issues, surely, and various ways to frame them. Art isn’t a math problem.

On a related note– as much as I loved Kramers Ergot Number Seven, and thought it was beautifully curated and impeccably designed, I thought that it took the raw energy of the medium, and encased it in a high-priced container that felt a bit too fetishistic. I have long been a fan of Kramers along with Harkam’s great eye and enthusiasm, but Kramers Seven just felt like the wrong form of presentation to me, for work that was once available to all at a lower price, and something that you could either fold up, roll up, or just carry with you wherever you go. It isn’t just an issue of pricing and portability, but the fact that high-end editions betray the democratic origins of the comic book. I frankly yearn for the days of newsprint and staples and cheap printing, not from an aesthetic standpoint (for I am quite happy with the advancement of printing and biding quality), but from the view that the form was one of necessity rather than luxury. For unlike many other art or literary related markets, comics has traditionally been a form of transgression available to those without big bucks and specialized libraries. It should never be about the collectibility (something Marvel and DC has milked ad nauseum) but rather about the experience itself. Experience needn’t be over-produced or over-priced– I think we have enough of that to go around today. I believe that an anthology priced between $20 and $25 is a hell of a lot cheaper than most overpriced fetish collectibles out there. Could it be cheaper? Sure it could, but then again kids on bikes are not driving down to the newsstand to purchase the latest Hotwire and a bag of jerky. Instead it’s “grown-up” folk like us who (should) have employment. So in closing– I don’t think we can return to the 25 cent spinner rack variety (newsprint and all), but we certainly should not be heading toward the slipcased, foilstamped, sewn-in bookmark, heavy-duty stock variety. There must be a middle-ground in there.

As for Hotwire’s genetic stew of gags and id– I think it’s great. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Stir them together in a provocative combo, and the two play off of one another so that you can laugh and then you can puke. Hopefully not both at precisely the same time. The full page drawings are a place to pause with a change of reading pace, before heading back into a narrative. In the end, they are both reading spaces that allow for a more complex experience.

Let me first say that I’m a fan of Hotwire. I gave favorable reviews to the first two volumes and plan to do the same for the third volume. Which is not to say that I like every single piece in there, but that I at least appreciate your particular aesthetic stance.

That said, I trust you understand the irony in lamenting that comics are no longer a cheap-thrill medium, yet you’ve put together an anthology priced between $20 and $23. I don’t blame you for the price point or trying to put together the nicest-looking book possible, but the kind of cheap thrill discoveries you’re talking about are found in Mineshaft these days, not in a major release from a publisher.

I don’t say this to be critical, but rather to point out that it’s dangerous to over-fetishize “cheap thrills”. Just because comics used to be printed on crappy paper with a slapdash coloring job doesn’t make them any better. It’s not a bad thing to want your comics to look nice, and I’m glad we’re in an era where publishing can make this happen. But the “cheap thrill” era of newsprint is gone forever, and you can’t get it back unless you make your own cheap zine and try to peddle it yourself. Honestly, the real “cheap thrills” these days are found on the web.

I’m also glad that the humor comic is starting to make a comeback in terms of respectability. Guys like Michael Kupperman and Johnny Ryan, who were fairly obscure less than a decade ago, are now justly lauded. I completely agree with you that in terms of anthologies, humorists are still given short shrift, and I like that Hotwire gives gag guys plenty of room to operate. I would personally love it if Hotwire concentrated more in that direction and less in the id-soaked drawings of David Paleo, but that’s just my aesthetic.