Matt Seneca had a couple of great comments defending Geoff Johns against Matt Brady’s takedown. Here’s Seneca’s first comment.
geoff johns green lantern is consistently the dopest hero comic on the stands, at its best truly visionary. wasn’t henry darger like clinically retarded? wasn’t gg allin like borderline illiterate? that’s the pantheon this shit belongs to, art whose stupidity provides greater ease of access to legitimate emotion and a broader appeal. i heart these comics. green lantern #0 is currently whomping the piss out of tezuka in the “comics that heavy handedly reference u.s. military engagements” category this week.
And here’s the second.
i have a long thing about the black hand prelude issue to blackest night (gl #39?) where i compare it favorably to pim and francie, yah. i haven’t read it since i wrote it but i think i have an even higher opinion of johns since then, mostly informed by chill seshes with andy khouri, who knows him on real life. none of the stuff about bravery and hope is contrived, those are real messages he is sincerely trying to impart. how many comics, super or not, want to inspire their readers to be better people? johns is speaking a language more people understand than what pretty much anyone else in comics is speaking, and he’s working out some heavy cosmological shit with it – creating a fictional universe with no relation to ours whatsoever but using it to address the most basic (or hell, base, i’ll say it, who cares) human emotional concerns. motherfucker is a g. also: doug mahnke consistently amazes me with the level of high focus horrorcore drafting he is able to produce on a monthly basis.
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Matt, just to correct a minor misspelling:
“geoff johns green lantern is consistently the dopest hero comic on the stands”
when the correct version runs, of course:
“geoff johns green lantern is consistently the DOPIEST hero comic on the stands”.
Glad to be of service!
I don’t know Matt. Johns is earnest, yes, but that doesn’t make it good art. Johns appeal to his audience is not that he is particularly deep, but–as Too Busy Thinking About Comics points out–because Johns spells out every emotional moment with a big red (or green, or yellow, etc.) sign, both through action and through dialogue. Especially through dialogue. Its high ideas with low delivery, something that mainstream audiences seem to adore. Furthermore, Johns often skillfully engages in the sort of continuity porn that kids in comics like to read about. Put the two together (easy to read/loves that continuity shit) and you get yourself an unexpected hit comic.
Does Johns want to make people better? It seems so. Does he try to do this through the message in his comics? Yes. Ought we consider the intention of the artist when judging his or her work? No. The work itself does not stand. It’s (and I say this as something who ‘thinks he is intelligent’) silly.
That said, GL was once a very FUN comic that I collected for roughly 50 issues. But now it is not fun. So I can’t even say that about Johns any longer.
With love to the most high God, etc.
ZZZ