this is my mad face

[thehefner]

The contemporary zeal for graphic novels— fiction, let us remember, equipped with drawings and speech bubbles— has, to this spectator, encouraged the emperor to parade before an adoring public in a threadbare Speedo, if that. For filmmakers, they're smokin' assets, serving as ready-made storyboards as well as trailing a pre-sold and, dare I say, undemanding readership behind them. Beyond Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World, there doesn't seem to be an American subgenre entry suitable for adult teeth; it's little surprise that David Cronenberg hadn't even heard of the comic origins of A History of Violence before he began rewriting the script. Arguably the luckiest beneficiary of the fad is writer Neil Gaiman...

And so on like this. From the Village Voice's review of Mirrormask. Now maybe I am overreacting. Maybe the author of this article has a point. Maybe...

No fuck that. Fuck that and fuck you, Michael Atkinson you condescending smug ignorant fuckwad. It doesn't matter that you can't hear me, that I'm not really addressing you. Your head is so far up your ass, you don't deserve a rational argument from me. I had thought we'd finally reached some cultural acceptance for the art form, but clearly not. "Adult teeth"? "Fad"? Fuck you.

The worst part is, this is just a reminder that people like this are out there, and there are a lot more than I think there are. Just when I think otherwise, another comic store owner is being sued by some PTA group for selling "obscene" material.

What the hell is wrong with some people? Why are comics considered legitimate art in Europe and Japan and South America and yet are still considered slightly higher than billboard-painting here in America?

Fucking pisses me off. It's one thing to dismiss superheroes as "kids stuff", which gets me angry enough as it is but I can understand it. But to shoot down an entire genre, a "subculture" as he puts it, as not being "adult," makes... well, it makes Hulk want to smash everything, to put it one way.

If I'm mistaking what Atkinson is saying, please let me know. Even if I cam, the sentiment still holds for the masses out there who still share these views. It is one of my goals in life to eradicate such opinions and to make the art form as accepted and respected as film, literature, and "fine art."

Comments

[covenhouse-cat.livejournal.com]

What infuriates me is that the people who denounce comics or theatre think of themselves as somehow more cultured than the Average Joe. Personally, I think they lack imagination. Both theatre and comics require the "leap" from what is actually there to what is implied, and people with no imagination just don't get that.
I've had students say that they "don't like theatre". I then ask them how much theatre they've seen, and the reply is usually one to three high school plays, maybe one college play. So, I can understand that. They might have seen a couple of doggy plays. I tell them to imagine the _possibilities_ of film, music, dance, special effects, and the immediacy of having people performing/doing this stuff in the same room, right in front of you. It's not so much that theatre is always exactly right for whatever kind of entertainment one might enjoy. But that the theatre has almost as much range of possibility as film, added to the fact that it's all right there makes it awesome, limitless, exciting in my book.
And comics? Come on, now. Words are capable of everything from poetry to reporting to scripture to creating whole worlds explored in fiction. They are our primary tool of communication between other members of our species.
And pictures can represent everything from photographic realism to painted surrealist art to iconography to anything you can imagine in your mind's eye. And comics are both words and pictures. What on earth is adolescent about that?