wherein I totally abandon all literary cred I might have with the comics crowd

[thehefner]

It always bothers me whenever I don't "get" a work of art that's praised and respected by those I would consider my peers. It shakes me on a fundamental level, right down to the squishy core of my neurotic tenderness.

It's not just the feeling of being left out of something, which isn't fun either. No one likes to feel on the outside of something. Seems to me that even outsiders seek the company of other outsiders. That's what I've always done. "The unwashed masses may gobble up dreck," I think, "but me, I ally myself with those like-minded snobs who can appreciate the great works!"

And it's so rare to find those great works of art, y'know? The ones that can move me, that hit me in the gut, that make me gasp and utter little squeaky noises. The stuff that makes me wanna find those people--the people I know who's "get" it--and shout, "CHECK THIS OUT!!!" while doing my best impression of Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube-Man.

But when other people feel that for something I feel like I should but I don't, it gets under my skin, eats away at me. Every time I see it in a store, or hear someone raving about it, I obsessively wonder, "What the hell am I missing?"

Case in point: the AV Club's list of the Best Comics of the Decade. I've read most of these, but I can't say I actively enjoy them all. In some cases, I plainly just can't understand the big deal.

ACHEWOOD strikes me as one of those stranger Adult Swim cartoons (or perhaps more apt, like TIM AND ERIC AWESOME SHOW GREAT JOB!), and while I could appreciate the strangeness on occasion, I've never felt any instances of anything deeper.

BLACK HOLE was beautifully drawn, but hit none of the personal feelings that seemed to resonate in everyone else. When it comes to "the transitional period between adolescence and adulthood, a time when the need for companionship is as strong as the inability to grasp it," my own personal experiences were far from common, a fact I've struggled to write about in a way that can actually resonate with others. Then again, I have absolutely no interest in stories that accurately evoke that era, like DAZED AND CONFUSED, possibly because I hated my teenage years so much. Either way, BLACK HOLE does nothing for me.

See also: EIGHTBALL. I haven't read "The Death Ray," and it actually sounds interesting, but GHOST WORLD? What the fuck? That book seemed utterly pointless, and the only reason I liked the movie is because they actually made it into a story by adding the entire Steve Buscemi subplot.

Then there's BLANKETS, which I really liked when it first came out, but only because of the "first love/first heartbreak" stuff. I was deep in my own first and second, so I was a sucker for stuff like that (although I far preferred Jeffery Brown's raw and unpolished UNLIKELY in that respect). But I felt very uncomfortable throughout the rest. As with PERSEPOLIS, there's something I find very bothersome about the subject of religious oppression, to the point that it ruins any enjoyment I have of the story.

And then there's FUN HOME. I... dang it, I'm just going to need to read it again. It just did nothing for me. Then again, I'm starting to realize that most autobiographical comics do little for me. It's strange, considering how many great autobiographical solo shows I've seen performed (not to mention those I've done myself), how rarely their comic counterparts seem to affect me in any way.

Then again, maybe this all ties into one of the reasons I'm a writer myself: because people aren't making the kind of stories that really matter to me. They clearly matter to others, but time and again, I look at lists like that and think, "Where are the stories that can hit me like that?" Maybe I'm not missing something at all. Maybe I "get" these stories about as well as I can. They're good stories, but they're just not for me. And I'm guessing, then, that they're not for everyone else either.

Often times, I write because I want to tell these stories because no one else is going to tell them. Either they can't, they won't, or they wouldn't think to, so I feel driven to do it myself.

That said, I just read a recent exception:





Anyone else read this? It's a semi-autobiographical (best as I can tell) graphic novel published by Vertigo, which is finally starting to branch out of genre stories. I had never heard of THE ALCOHOLIC when I found it at the library. I've seen no press, nor has anyone posted scans on scans_daily, nor is it on any "Best Of" lists.

And yet, I dare say THE ALCOHOLIC hit me in the ways that FUN HOME seems to have hit so many others. There was an awful lot of personal resonance that I saw in the themes, the awkward humor, the raw emotion, and particular Ames' narrative voice. This book inspired me so much that I had to stop reading every few pages to write.

And while I think it sort of dwindled and wandered off in the last quarter, this book was a vindication that those kinds of stories I can enjoy do exist, while reminding me that I just need to have the strength of my convictions. I still have a hard time with that, particularly in a world where SCOTT PILGRIM--perhaps the biggest example of everything I'm struggling with here--is hailed as the graphic novel of our generation.

I was thinking of commenting on the AV Club's choices that I did agree with, but I had my own thoughts and amendments to those choices, and this post is long enough. So to heck with it. Next post, I'll do my own list of the Best Comics of the Decade. Hopefully with that, I'll earn back some of the cred I've lost by admitting some of the above.

Comments

[bagelofdeath.livejournal.com]

You are right to dislike all those things, for the record.

And I hate Tim & Eric so much. I try to write humour quite a bit, obviously, and the popularity of that show makes me wonder what I am doing.

[chickenhat.livejournal.com]

Amazon link for The Alchoholic here:
http://www.amazon.com/Alcoholic-Jonathan-Ames/dp/1401210570

And I will SMACK you if you go out to see the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie. (I'm sorry, I wish I was making this up.) For your own good I really will.

[surrealname.livejournal.com]

I remember you lending me blankets. It moved me very deeply that one time, but for the same reasons you just mentioned. Every time I've tried to read it since, I've been out right embarrassed by it's jackhammer subtlety approach to attempting to pull at one's heart strings.

The other book you gave me at that time, "Unlikely" has had far greater staying power and resonance. I think it's because it doesn't try to be anything other than a memory. Scott Mccloud has a big problem of overly romanticizing his past. My Intro To Sequential professor put it thusly "I hate Scott McCloud because he acts like he's writing about childhood, but he's just another jerk writing what he thinks his childhood should have meant through the eyes of an adult."

[mellifluous-ink.livejournal.com]

...my own personal experiences were far from common, a fact I've struggled to write about in a way that can actually resonate with others. Then again, I have absolutely no interest in stories that accurately evoke that era... possibly because I hated my teenage years so much.

THIS.

This pretty much sums up how I end up feeling about everything that other people say is amazing or that resonates with them or anything. And the stuff that ends up resonating with me (few and far between) is stuff that people say is lame or shallow. Frustrating as all hell.

*hug*