Loving Failure

There are few things more intriguing in the world of art than failure.

I mean, there's the famous kinds of failure where something is ahead of its time, flops, and is later fully embraced by later generations who can look down upon the foolish plebeians in times past. But consider how many hundreds of works--many (most? all?) of which were the results of hard, painstaking work--flopped, and stayed flopped, drifting into obscurity without even so much as a cult fanbase keeping it alive with memory?

The question that might immediately arise is why it failed in the first place. Was it entirely the fault of the artist? Was it ahead of its time, a time which still has yet to arrive (a point I'd hold for AI: Artificial Intelligence and Ang Lee's Hulk)? Was it too dumb, too smart, too weird, too ambitious, too safe? Was it excessive or deficient?

It fascinates me, sometimes to the point of mild obsession. Maybe it's my own fears of that happening to my work. Or maybe it's that feeling of discovering something that no one else has, to show it off to the masses and yell, "Look at what I've found!"

Maybe, as I fear deep down, I just want to feel superior to others for appreciating something no one else does, a feeling that fuels many a cult work. Some fans become rabid converts and missionaries, smiting those they disagree with on the internet, and lord knows I've been one of them on more than one occasion.

But none of that answers the question of why the work failed in the first place. By asking these questions, I think one gains a much better understanding of what makes Great Art Great, either from a creative standpoint or from what provokes audience response.

Now, when it comes to novels, poetry, or music, I usually let those be. I have neither the time, patience, nor interest to sift through all those losers for one that deserves attention, if not love. I did that with plays for a little while, but even that proved too much of a slog.

Because at heart, I'm not quite attuned with the Great Works in those respects. Not in that what that I am with film and comics. Those formats, when Great, thrill me in ways that make me want to sing their praises on blogs and message boards, to thrust them upon friends with maniacal fervor, to dress up like characters that no one knows, and to quote lines that no one will get. I live to find those films and comics.

And yet, much of what I love isn't Great. Nor lower-case great. Nor even good. They are failures. And I think what draws me to them is that so many of them had ambitions they just couldn't attain. Some films are downright quixotic, which I think is much, much better than a film that takes little risks at all.

I'll take a noble failure (example: Gangs of New York) over a safe success (example: The Departed) any day of the week.

I have more thoughts, but they're specifically comic-related, so I'll give them their own post later.

Must-Read List of Must-Read Stories

EgoTV Online lists "10 awesome Batman stories you've probably never heard of."

This list makes me extremely happy, and not just because they've included my favorite Two-Face story, Eye of the Beholder (included with what I suspect is one of my own scans, no less!). I consider Prey to be one of the ten best Batman stories ever written, and one that--if they expanded the Catwoman subplot--would also serve as a perfect template for the as-of-today-named The Dark Knight Rises.

I'm slowly working on a series of posts focused upon Professor Hugo Strange for scans_daily and even about_faces, just as a break from Harvey for a bit. I've come to believe that Hugo was intended to be Batman's Moriarty, and that's the role he should have now, up there on top instead of obnoxious wannabes like Hush and Dr. Hurt. Strange did what they're doing first, and he did it better.

Furthermore, I'm of the opinion that the Animated Series universe of comics are, pound for pound, the finest Batman comics of the past twenty years. There's so much great Harvey stuff alone that I could easily dedicate a couple weeks to Animated!Harvey posts.

So yeah, keep this list in mind next time you guys go scouring back issue bins, until such time as DC wises up and finally puts these gems (back) into print.