Best Online Comics Criticism 2012 – The Final List

Late is better than never. Presumably.

The truth is that I almost chucked this whole thing into the trash heap because of a number of last minute exits from the voting process.  I lost 3 judges in the early months of 2013 but, thankfully, Jacob Canfield stepped in at the last minute to give this year’s judging an extra voice and hopefully more diversity in taste. So diverse in fact that there was very little agreement as to which articles should make it to the final list in the initial voting.

The jurors this year were Jacob Canfield, Ken Parille, Caroline Small, and myself.

Looking back on the final list for 2010, I have to say that, in general, I’m happier with the final selection this year.  Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that this is the first year I’m actually participating in the voting (while restricting the number of votes I actually use). The voting process for 2011 was a wash but my personal feeling is that 2012 was a better year for comics criticism than 2010. Perhaps readers here will pipe in with their own thoughts.

As for the final list, let me just remind everyone again that there is nothing less dependable than collective taste.

 walking-man-7

Three Votes Received

Craig Fischer – “Taniguchi Blossoms”

Fischer received a vote each for “The Lives of Insects: On Photography and Comics” and “Devils and Machines: On Jonah Hex and All Star Western” as well. So the final choice here is a bit of a compromise. Of these three articles, I would say that Fischer’s piece on the intersection(s) between photography and comics has the most to say about the art form. It is divided into 3 sections, moving from traditional photo comics, to the synthesis of both art forms and hence to the photo comic as “found” object (hinging on the indefinability of comics). I have little little doubt it was the most poorly received of the three in view of its intellectual content and semi-obscure sources.

“Taniguchi Blossoms” is a close and passionate reading of one of Jiro Taniguchi best comics, The Walking Man. The pleasurable emotions Fischer derived from that manga are communicated with a deft touch, though I will say that I disagree with his concluding comments where he cites Taniguchi’s A Zoo in Winter as another example of “the frisson between the perfection of [Taniguchi’s] diagrammatic art and the pressed by percolating emotion of the characters.” That latter manga has an obviousness and predictability which I associate with pot boiler Japanese romances.

 steinberg-newyorker

Matthias Wivel – “New Yorker Cartoons: A Legacy of Mediocrity”

Wivel also received a vote for his article, “Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes.” The Barks-Donald Duck essay is a detailed run down of the comics being reprinted, giving historical background and story detail, before throwing light on past editorializing and the issue of recoloring.

The New Yorker article seems to be the more interesting selection, not least for the thoroughness of its negative criticism. It probably helps that I personally find The New Yorker to be a bright shining repository of shallow cartooning (with the usual exceptions). The publication targeted is certainly august, pays well, and is seen by many as the holy grail of paid cartooning work. It has attracted very little cogent negativity over the years.  The article is a welcome corrective.

 

Two Votes Received

Corey Creekmur – “Remembering Locas

This was part of a Locas roundtable in early 2012. The title is self-explanatory and takes in the long tradition of continuity and fan memory in comics with special emphasis on the intricacies of this mechanism in Locas. Creekmur extends this act of remembrance to all aspects of the work: the publisher-gods; the demands on Jaime’s readers; the action of memory and time on the characters; the essence of nostalgia in Locas; the purposeful and inescapable recollections on the part of the artist.

 

Heather Love – “The Mom Problem”

This is a lengthy article at Public Books about Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?  I think it is safe to say that of the dozens of articles written about that comic in 2012, this is one of the better ones, providing basic background information before moving on to more detailed analysis. The focus here is less on Bechdel’s command of comic language but the Freudian aspects of Bechdel’s relationships and the structural importance Donald Winnicott’s work plays in the comic.

The article is a useful example of the dichotomy between comic criticism written for an intellectually serious site meant for general readers and that for a specialist comics site. While the latter sites often contain a mixture of traditional literary and more comic-based readings, it is only in recent years that more extensive, less technical reviews have appeared in the other type of publication.

 

Sean Rogers – “Flex Mentallo and the Morrison Problem”

Rogers is one of the best new(-ish) writers that the editors of TCJ.com have decided to employ and his article on Grant Morrison probably his most discussed piece of comics criticism. Bad Morrison (of which there is plenty) is certainly all too easily maligned, but what of the more “canonical” works (Animal Man, Doom Patrol, All-Star Superman etc.) For Rogers, the problems with Flex Mentallo are representative of a much deeper rot and Morrison’s soulless insularity.

 

Peter Wilkins – “Pluto: Robots and Aesthetic Experience”

This article was cited by Caro as “probably” being her favorite. The title is once again self-explanatory.  The article succinctly ponders the nature of humanity, intelligence, and the aesthetic imperative. It ends with an insoluble question concerning the transaction between violence and art.

_______

A short comment on a notable omission.

2012 was probably the best year on record for TCJ.com in terms of comics criticism so it’s a bit strange that so few pieces managed to get enough votes to pull through to the final list. Part of this has to do with the fact many of the more impressive critical endeavors at TCJ.com this year were the result of accretion and accumulation.  I would say that the best writing on Chris Ware’s Building Stories in 2012 was probably at the roundtable at TCJ.com. There was a more superficial blessing to be had as well. In contrast to many of the mainstream reviewers, most of the writers eschewed boosterism while remaining overwhelmingly positive. For this small mercy, I am grateful.

Articles at TCJ.com which received a single vote include Joshua Glen on “The Pathological Culture of Dal Tokyo“, Glen Gold on the Hand of Fire roundtable, Jeet Heer on Crumb, Ryan Holmberg on Tezuka Osamu, Dan Nadel on Born Again,  Nicole Rudick on Frank Santoro’s Pompeii, and Dash Shaw on Jeffrey Brown’s Cat Comics.

Of these, I would single out Ryan Holmberg’s articles on manga at TCJ.com for special mention. His work follows in the long line of comics historical scholarship which has been the primary mode of engagement for much of the history of comics criticism. The exception in this case being that the subjects being discussed—vintage manga—have never had a “popular voice” in the English language.

Most of the judges won’t have time to write about their choices this year so I’ll list one other writer who was considered during the voting process. Two articles by Nicolas Labarre found favor with one of the judges. One on City of Glass at Comics Forum and the other on Art and Illusion in Blutch’s Mitchum at The Comics Grid.
_____
Update: Judge Jacob Canfield discusses his selections here.

 

Best Online Comics Criticism 2012 – 4th Quarter Nominations

(A call for nominations and submissions.)

This is the final list of nominations for 2012. The judges are now deliberating on the nominations and we should have the list of articles with the highest number of votes by the end of January.

Reiteration: Readers should feel free to submit their nominations in the comments section of this article. Alternatively I can be reached at suattong at gmail dot com. Web editors should feel free to submit work from their own sites. I will screen these recommendations and select those which I feel are the best fit for the list. There will be no automatic inclusions based on these public submissions. Only articles published online for the first time between January 2012 and December 2012 will be considered.

Cartoon-Utopia-cover1

Jenna Brager on Madeleine L’Engle and Hope Larson’s A Wrinkle in Time.

Jacob Canfield – “Subversion, Satire, and Shut the Fuck Up: Deflection and Lazy Thinking in Comics Critcism”.

Brian Cremins – Captain Marvel, The Master, and the Feminine Embrace.

Michael Dirda – “A Duckburg Holiday”. I don’t think Michael Dirda does that many comics reviews so I’m including it here more as a formality. It’s probably more competent than great.

Elisabeth El Refaie – “Visual authentication strategies in autobiographical comics”.

Emma (of Get Me Some Action Comics) on Sex in The Walking Dead.

Glen David Gold – “The Lure of the Oeuthre: On Charles Portis and Flannery O’Connor”.

Nicholas Labarre on Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli’s City of Glass.

David Large – Palimpsests and Intertexts: The Unwritten.

Peter Tieryas Liu On Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco’s Days of Destuction, Days of Revolt.

Adrielle Mitchell – “Is Comics Scholarship Ekphrasis?”

Andrei Molotiu – “Abstract Comics and Systems Theory”

Rick Moody – “Fugue for Centrifuges: On Chris Ware’s Building Stories” (Nominated by a jury member)

Jason Thompson on The Heart of Thomas.

Gabriel Winslow-Yost on the works of Chris Ware.

 

The Comics Journal

Craig Fischer – “The Lives of Insects: On Photography and Comics”

Katie Haegele on Ron Regé, Jr.’s The Cartoon Utopia.

Nicole Rudick on Frank Santoro’s Pompeii

A selection of Building Stories Essays by Martha Kuhlman, Katherine Roeder, Daniel Worden, David Ball, Matt Godbey, Margaret Fink, Georgiana Banta, Joanna Davis-Mcelligatt, Shawn Gilmore, Peter Sattler, Paul Karasik, and Craig Fischer.

The individual essays are linked to here for the judges to peruse. Since this process is only selecting individual pieces of comics criticism, the roundtable as a whole is not eligible for consideration.

 

Also see:

First Quarter Nominations

Second Quarter Nominations

Third Quarter Nominations

 

 

Best Online Comics Criticism 2012 – 3rd Quarter Nominations

(A call for nominations and submissions.)

This is part of an ongoing quarterly process to find the best online comics criticism of 2012. Five comics critics have kindly agreed to adjudicate and create a final list based on the long list of nominations. Nominations from previous quarters can be found here and here.

We’ve just ended a lengthy Hate Anniversary at HU and judging from the results, it would appear that “hate” is both entertaining and popular. On the other hand, it does seem that “hate” isn’t as easy it appears. My feeling is that while the criticism generated in the last few weeks has been useful and informative, less of lasting worth (to comics) has emerged than in previous HU roundtables. In fact, I would not hesitate to say that one of the worst pieces of comics criticism I have read this year emerged during this roundtable.

The usual reasons—as listed by Noah in his introduction to “hate”—apply.  I am also puzzled as to the repeated justifications for “hate” in those articles. Rather, writers should be apologizing to readers and consumers (like myself) for loving so much dreck. There’s always the small possibility that the world of comics criticism is, for the most parts, a happy-clappy world of positive energy with practitioners ill-suited to the arts of ridicule and general nastiness. The preponderance of words of affirmation in this year’s nomination list is evidence of the same. There are far worse things then this to be accused of.

[Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke’s Allegory of Criticism.]

Reiteration: Readers should feel free to submit their nominations in the comments section of this article. Alternatively I can be reached at suattong at gmail dot com. Web editors should feel free to submit work from their own sites. I will screen these recommendations and select those which I feel are the best fit for the list. There will be no automatic inclusions based on these public submissions. Only articles published online for the first time between January 2012 and December 2012 will be considered.

There were a number of good articles on HU this last quarter but I won’t be nominating most of them due to a conflict of interest. Readers (but not contributors) of HU should submit their own nominations for this quarterly process.

 ***

Jordi Canyissa – “Pictureless Comics: the Feinte Trinité Challenge”

Jared Gardner on Joe Sacco – “Comics Journalism, Comics Activism”. This one was recommended by Noah. I will add here that I’m definitely not sold on the idea (suggested in the text) that Sacco is under appreciated or polarizing. If anything, there’s almost universal support for his political positions and comics within the comics critical sphere. He certainly hasn’t been kicked around like Norman Finkelstein for example. This might actually reflect well on comics critics for once but I’m more inclined to put this down to a lack of diversity in opinion.

Laurence  Grove – “A note on the woman who gave birth to rabbits one hundreds years before Töpffer.” (According to the author, the article has appeared as “A Note on the Emblematic Woman who Gave Birth to Rabbits”, ed. Alison Adams and Philip Ford, in ‘Le Livre demeure’: Studies in Book History in Honour of Alison Saunders (Geneva: Droz, 2011), pp. 147-156.)

Dustin Harbin on Steven Weissman’s Barack Hussein Obama.

Jeet Heer on Building Stories (“When is a book like a building? When Chris Ware is the author.”)

Christopher J. Hayton and David L. Albright – “The Military Vanguard for Desegregation” (from ImageTexT)

Nicolas Labarre – Irony in The Dark Knight Returns.

A. David Lewis (writer) and Miriam Libicki (artist) on Harvey Pekar’s Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me. This is a useful Jewish perspective on a comic about Jewish matters. The problem as with most drawn reviews of comics is that it really doesn’t use the tools of the medium in any useful sense.  Much of it reads as if it was adapted from a prose form review as opposed to a comics script. This review didn’t need to be a comic.

Heather Love on Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother (“The Mom Problem”).

Mindless Ones on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Parts 1 and 2

Adrielle Mitchell on the relationship between Comics Studies and Comics. (“Mutualistic, Commensal or Parasitic?”)

Alyssa Rosenberg on Doonesbury.

Marc Sobel on Alan Moore’s “The Hasty Smear of My Smile”. Part of a guest written series on Alan Moore’s short form works at Comics Forum.

Steven Surdiacourt – Graphic Poetry: An (im)possible form?

Matthias Wivel – “New Yorker Cartoons – A Legacy of Mediocrity” (as published on HU).

Frank M. Young on John Stanley’s Little Lulu Fairy Tale Meta-Stories.  I’m including this article here despite the rather ridiculous comment near the start that Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and the Tarzan newspaper strip aren’t comics. It’s an argument from the Land that Time Forgot which Young explains in detail in the following short summary:

“But part of the distinct recipe of comics is the speech or thought balloon. It is a narrative device unique to the form. The creation of this tool, in the 19th century, gave comics the one thing that set them apart from prose, paintings, plays, movies, video games, TV shows and any other visual-verbal container for a flowing narrative.”

The real question here is whether an outdated and eccentric idea about comics should detract from the piece.

 

From The Comics Journal

Rob Clough on Dan Zettwoch’s Birdseye Bristoe.

Craig Fischer – “Devils and Machines: On Jonah Hex and All Star Western

Richard Gehr on The Carter Family.

Joshua Glenn – The Pathological Culture of Dal Tokyo.

Ryan Holmberg – “Tezuka Osamu and American Comics”

Bob Levin – “To Hell and Back”

Dan Nadel on David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again Artist’s Edition.

Sean Rogers – “Flex Mentallo and the Morrison Problem”

Carter Scholz on Dal Tokyo.

 

 

 

 

Best Online Comics Criticism 2012 – 2nd Quarter Nominations

(Honoring online comics criticism written or published in 2012. A call for nominations and submissions.)

This is part of a semi-annual process to choose the best online comics criticism.  The first quarter nominations can be found here.

When I survey the field of comics criticism, it sometimes occurs to me that  the popularity of a piece is frequently inversely related to the amount of effort and thought put into writing it. Why then do individuals continue to produce long thoughtful articles? The truth is that they don’t or rather not with the kind of frequency the form actually needs, and especially not when the work is done gratis. But putting these things aside, perhaps it is in the nature of these writers to go to such lengths. We can put some of this serious writing down to a sense of personal endeavor, academic training, and the intense hobbyist with a competitive spirit.

There is also the question of critical communities. If a community favors the latest costume changes, creative team shifts, and the latest news from the big two then news hungry one-upmanship will probably be the norm.  If the central idea of a community is to contribute to a critical project centered on comics (social, aesthetic etc.), then the tone of the articles will follow suit. The quality of the articles will be dependent on the taste and discipline of the editor and the commitment of a core team of writers; both these factors engendering a critical climate in which only writing of a certain quality is to be expected of all who contribute. A piece meal promotion of more elevated writing will depend far too much on the individual writer’s proclivities and drive to sustain quality (a central problem with an earlier incarnation of TCJ.com.) This is especially true for comics criticism where amateur sites have a disproportionate influence and editorial influence severely curtailed.

Reiteration: Readers should feel free to submit their nominations in the comments section of this article. Alternatively I can be reached at suattong at gmail dot com. Web editors should feel free to submit work from their own sites. I will screen these recommendations and select those which I feel are the best fit for the list. There will be no automatic inclusions based on these public submissions. Only articles published online for the first time between January 2012 and December 2012 will be considered. I have included some Hooded Utilitarian articles in the selection, mainly from people who I have little to no contact with. Readers (but not contributors) of HU should submit their own nominations for this quarterly process.

[Matt Seneca burning some pompous rubbish…apparently]

 

Sarah Boxer on Krazy Kriticism. At one point in her article, Boxer writes:

Now that Krazy Kritics have gotten their dearest wish — all of the SundayKrazys published in book form — what will happen to Kriticism? Will it yield to real criticism?…One essay in Yoe’s collection, Douglas Wolk’s “The Gift,” offers a ray of hope. Wolk finds something new to analyze in the strip — its peculiar pace: “The real comedy of Krazy Kat is almost always slower than its surface humor, which is appropriate for a strip whose central joke is miscommunication on a grand scale. The one way you can’t read it for pleasure is quickly.”

While Boxer offers a nice survey of Krazy Kat criticism, this revelation seems more like stating the obvious than anything novel.  Not that stating the obvious isn’t useful but it should be correctly labeled as such. Her more interesting point, I think, is that Krazy Kat lacks development, a claim which I think is not indisputable but worth discussing.

Steven Brower on Kirby’s collages.

Robb Fritz – Moves Like Snoopy. Fritz’s article doesn’t have the beauty of language which I usually associate with nostalgia-tinged pieces and a lot of the interest in it stems from the collection of quotations from various sources. You can certainly see the seams where the research was fitfully stitched in. It didn’t work for me but that doesn’t mean it won’t work for some.

Kelly Gerald on Flannery O’Connor and the Habit of Art. This is actually an excerpt from the afterword to an upcoming collection of cartoons by Flannery O’Connor. I suppose this only goes to show that people put in an effort when they’re in print (and presumably paid for it.)

Lee Konstantinou on Metamaus (“Never Again, Again”)

Bob Levin on Manny and Bill, Willie and Joe.

Farhad Manjoo on Editorial Cartoons.  The news that editorial cartoons are “stale, simplistic, and just not funny” is about as fresh as the idea that superhero comics suck. Manjoo’s insights into the inferiority of  Matt Wuerker’s (Pulitzer prize winner) cartoons are also not particularly challenging. Furthermore, the suggestion that political cartoons should be excluded from the Pulitzer PR game is somewhat nonsensical. If the Pulitzer committee was seriously interested in offering prizes only to the best works of American literature and journalism in any one year, they would put serious consideration into adopting and liberally using a “No prize this year” category. As it is, they don’t. Nonetheless, I’m putting this here simply because someone outside the comics reading room finally noticed the obvious. It should also be noted that he does offer some other poor alternatives to political cartoons.

Hannah Means-Shannon – Meet the Magus Part 1 (The Birth Caul) Part 2 (Snakes and Ladders). This article is a bit of a departure for Sequart.org, a site which focuses largely (but not exclusively) on medium to long form articles on superhero and mainstream titles.

Evie Nagy on Tarpé Mills & Miss Fury (“Heroine Chic”).

Meghan O’Rourke on Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?

Katie Roiphe on Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?

Matt Seneca – Why You Hate Grant Morrison (Life on Earth Q Part 3). This piece was recommended by Noah but, in my opinion, it’s not Seneca doing what he does best. It has a kind of novelty appeal since Seneca hardly ever does negativity but he still needs a few more practice swings to get used to the feel of the hatchet.

Jason Thompson on Shigeru Mizuki. As evidenced by the poll 2 years ago, Thompson’s articles for his House of 1000 Manga column are a big favorite in the manga blogging community.

Kristy Valenti on Astro City and the White Man’s Burden.

Chip Zdarsky – Who Writes the Watchmen? From the first quarter of 2012. Nominated by Jones.

 

At The Hooded Utilitarian

Eric Berlatsky on Los Bros Hernandez (Parts 1 and 2).

Corey Creekmur – Remembering Locas. This is from the tail end of March but wasn’t included in the previous listing. Nominated by Jeet Heer.

Sharon Marcus – Wonder Woman vs. Wonder Woman

Andrei Molotiu – Built by a Race of Madmen. From the first quarter of 2012. Nominated by Gary Verkeerts.

Katherine Wirick on Watchmen: Heroic Proportions.

 

At TCJ.com

Prajna Desai on Bhimayana.

Jeet Heer – Crumb in the Beginning

Ryan Holmberg on Tezuka Osamu and The Rectification of Mickey.

Ken Parille – Six Observations about Alison Bechdel’s Graphic Archive Are You My Mother?

Dash Shaw on Jeffrey Brown’s Cat Comics.

Kent Worcester on British Comics: A Cultural History.

The Jack Kirby: Hand of Fire Roundtable (Parts onetwo, and three). Organized by Jeet Heer and starring Glen Gold, Sarah Boxer, Robert Fiore, Doug Harvey, Jeet Heer, Jonathan Lethem, and Dan Nadel. I have no doubt that this roundtable will be on many people’s short list of best comics criticism for the 2012. It’s messy, sometimes incoherent, occasionally funny and, towards its close, reasonably informative. Some of the participants are true blue Kirby experts which makes it all the more disappointing they weren’t pushed in the right direction or milked more thoroughly.  As James Romberger suggests in the comments of the third section of this roundtable, this should have been extensively edited so as to ensure a sensible flow of ideas (not to mention the excision of ridiculous amounts of noise). Personally, I would have preferred fully worked-out essays as opposed to a mailing list discussion.

I had hoped that TCJ.com would expend its energies on topics and comics which have had 1/100th of the exposure Kirby’s comics but I think that would be asking too much. There has been a consistent devotion to the comics of Kirby in The Comics Journal since its inception and TCJ.com and Jeet et al. merely extend this tradition. The lack of a balancing voice in the exchange is also telling. Sarah Boxer’s dissent (in the third section of this debate) while amusing hardly constitutes a proper reassessment of Kirby’s influence and real worth.

 

 

Best Online Comics Criticism 2012 – 1st Quarter Nominations

(Honoring online comics criticism written or published in 2012. A call for nominations and submissions.)

Regular readers of The Hooded Utilitarian will remember a semi-annual event celebrating the best online comics criticism. Last year’s survey sank like the Titanic due to sheer lethargy on the part of all involved, most notably myself. For those of us who find it hard to get out of bed for the latest and best comics criticism, allow me to commiserate.

On previous occasions, I would ask the various judges to select quarterly nominations from which the entire group would vote at the end of the calendar year. This proved useful in the sense that it brought in nominations on topics and from sites peripheral to my usual areas of interest, but also limiting in that it was dependent on the variable submissions of the judges for that year. Even worse, when busy lives came to the fore, there were no nominations to be had. Clearly, reading comics criticism can be a tiresome business.

In order to facilitate matters, I’ve decided to take over the nomination process myself and also open it to the HU readership (which I presume is wide enough in its taste). Web editors should feel free to submit work from their own sites. I will screen these recommendations and select those which I feel are the best fit for the list. There will be no automatic inclusions based on these public submissions. Only articles published online for the first time between January 2012 and December 2012 will be considered. I have not selected any articles from the HU site for obvious reasons but invite HU readers (not contributors) to send in their recommendations.

If all goes well, we might actually have a nomination list to vote on at the end of the year. At that point, a small group of jurors will be invited to read the long list of nominees and select the eventual winners.

The following list consists of articles of note and others which I personally find uninteresting but which have attracted considerable notice online.  The object of this listing is to be inclusive without excessively compromising quality.

(1)  Robert Boyd on Kramers Ergot #8 and the Art School Generation.

(2)  Gio Claival on the art and comics of Dino Buzzati.

(3)  Craig Fischer on Jiro Taniguchi’s The Walking Man.

(4)  Edward Gauvin on David B.’s The Littlest Pirate King.

(5)  Bill Kartalopoulos on Joost Swarte’s Is That All There Is.

(6)  China Mieville on Tintin and censorship. I feel compelled to list this here to forestall any complaints of its lack of citation. Mieville’s piece is certainly criticism (about Tintin, racism, and censorship); a breezy, informative and well written article for newbies but of slightly less worth to the average person informed about such matters. In a famine, even the local burger joint looks like haute cuisine.

(7)  Amy Poodle on Superhero Horror.

(8)  Daisy Rockwell on Craig Thompson’s Habibi. (Full version available at her blog). I have reservations about recommending this review. Lord knows my feelings about Habibi. A truly remarkable review would find a way to make a strong case for the intellectual strength and positive aesthetic value of Habibi. I have yet to read such an article online.

(9)  Khursten Santos – The Tale of Three Tezuka Ladies.

(10)  Matt Seneca on Guido Crepax’s Valentina.

“There’s a fundamental problem underlying all erotic work done in the comics medium, one even more difficult to get past than the lack of audible sound and visible motion bedeviling the action-oriented material that dominates the form’s American market. How does one create art that reproduces a physical sensation created by bodily contact without being able to reach out and touch one’s audience? It’s the same problem that faces makers of pornography in any medium, but in comics it’s especially difficult.”

Even though the initial premise as stated in the opening paragraph is entirely false — if the difficulties faced by comics pornography were so dire, where would that place the reams of exalted illustrated smut over the centuries — this remains Seneca’s best piece so far this year. The usual Seneca traits of overwhelming love and earnest exaggeration (in this instance Crepax is compared favorably to Herriman, Joyce, and Picasso) are all on display but here sharpened by his obsession with Crepax’s Valentina.

(11)  Kelly Thompson (She Has No Head! – No, It’s Not Equal). I’ve put this here because it seems to have found a place in a lot of people’s hearts, not least HU’s own dictator for life. This is a creditable article on that age old issue of women in costumes but somewhat tiresome if one has spent more than a few months reading superhero criticism — the absolute nadir of that cesspit known as comics criticism. If I was judging criticism on the basis of moral virtue, this would probably get top marks but it has little to add to the current thinking about superheroes.

(12)  Kristy Valenti on Frank Miller’s Ronin.

 

(13)  At The Comics Grid:

Kathleen Dunley on Ben Katchor and What’s Left Behind.

Nicholas Labarre on Art and Illusion in Blutch’s Mitchum.

Peter Wilkins on Pluto: Robots and Aesthetic Experience

 

(14)  And at  TCJ.com:

R. C. Harvey – Johnny Hart to Appear B.C.

Jeet Heer on Gahan Wilson’s Nuts.

Ryan Holmberg on Guns and Butter.

Jog on Franz Kafka’s The Trial: A Graphic Novel.

Bob Levin on Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & the New Land.

Seth on his work on The Collected Doug Wright.

Matthias Wivel on Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes.

 

This list is limited by time and my own personal taste and habits. As such, I would encourage HU readers to submit their own recommednations in the comments section of this post.  Alternatively I can be reached at suattong at gmail dot com. The lack of manga criticism in this list is particularly telling and I would be grateful to receive potential nominations in this area — reviews or essays which go beyond mere text-image summary or even textural history and which place a work into the context of real world experience and broader aesthetics, writing which pries open the hidden depths of a work

*          *          *

If the quality of the criticism which an artform attracts provides a glimpse at its health, then surveying the landscape of comics criticism can only be a a sobering experience. The patient while not exactly pallid looks distinctly moribund; sitting idly on the couch shoveling down crisps while shouting epithets at the latest pamphlets.

One is not so much concerned by the proliferation of sites obsessed with the marketing and economics of comics, nor the innumerable sites devoted to the idolization of cartoonists .  These will always be with us and may in fact be signs of a healthy fanbase. Rather it is the stagnation of sites and writers devoted to the serious consideration of comics that should be of concern.

This may be best symbolized by the resurrection of TCJ.com – a site which is finally making an earnest attempt to emulate its illustrious print predecessor. The steady flow of interviews, reviews, and long form essays has seen the masses flocking back to the once fallen giant. This is both comforting to its old adherents and yet a standing rebuke suggesting how little has changed in comics criticism since its emergence into adolescence in the 80s and 90s.

The implication here is that the comics world is so bereft of writers of quality and of a pioneering spirit that there remains little room on the internet for more than a few sites of “serious” comics criticism, and even less that offer an alternative narrative less beholden to fandom. The hope that the internet would lead to a surge of self-publishing and hence sites consistently promulgating quality reviews and essays on comics was nothing but a pipedream. If anything, what we have is consolidation and  a return to the mean. The Comics Comics project now subsumed to the new TCJ.com. The Panelists dead and now absorbed by the same. Even Sean T. Collins, Jog, Chris Mautner, Ken Parile, and Tucker Stone are now writing a significant proportion of their long form criticism for the site. Robin McConnell of Inkstuds hosts occasional critical discussions with the usual suspects listed above. The writers of The Comics Grid continue their quiet, scholarly course. There are few other umbrella organizations of note in North America as far as serious comics criticism is concerned.

This is certainly no fault of Dan Nadel and Tim Hodler who have crafted a site which has attracted the best talents to its shores. In a field where money is of secondary concern, it is the prestige, professionalism, community, and readership (the numbers and quality) which count the most. Both Nadel and Hodler should be commended for their dedication to preserving the legacy of the print Journal (with all the longstanding deficiences intact I should add).

The one bright spot in this age of digital publication is that The Comics Journal no longer holds a monopoly on the best long form reviews available on any particular comic. This situation is certainly preferable to the one in the late 80s and  90s when The Comics Journal was virtually the only game in town. That position has since been displaced by a host of blogs and newspaper websites. Think of any of the marquee comics of the past year and one will be pleasantly surprised to find that the Journal no longer holds “exclusive rights” to serious and informed discussion of those books.

What is missing however is any concentration of this talent to rival a single website like TCJ.com. Without this, and despite the efforts of a dedicated pool of link bloggers, many of these articles will remain unread and unloved. More significantly, it suggests a level of homogeneity seldom seen in other artforms (at least at this end of the spectrum). That no other site or community of critics has come close to challenging TCJ.com in attracting writers of note is a testament to the lack of depth (in numbers and intellectual concerns), diversity, and vision of purveyors of criticism; a problem exacerbated by a shrinking or stagnant comics readership.

 

Best Online Comics Criticism 2010: Kibbitzing

I had no involvement in the selection of this year’s Best Online Comics Criticism. And I don’t plan to talk directly about the list here. Except to point out that it is fatally flawed. Because I’m not on it, damn it.

I did think I’d take this opportunity, though, to talk about two of my own favorite pieces of comics criticism from last year.

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Bill Randall’s List: Best Online Comics Criticism 2010

Critic and one-time HU writer Bill Randall was one of the judges for this year’s Best Online Comics Criticism. He asked to run his essay about the selection process here — and we’re very pleased to have him back under the Hood, however briefly.
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by Bill Randall

How did he know?

Real critics are as pure as new snow, with eyes of a child yet minds learned like the eldest philosopher. They castrate their creativity to write from the place of total mental stillness. Able to see through all walls of personal agenda. They use their pen of young lamb to judge what’s best not for themselves, but for all humanity. Such is the powerful power, the terrible responsibility of the true critic.

I have fasted for three centuries, nailed myself upside down to the Tree of Woe, drained my body of every ounce of blood and replaced it with the freshest plastic-bottled spring water. …I am ready to speak of comics with the furiously unpoliticized gaze of the Real Critic.

Spot on, B.C., as I’ve spent a meditative month staring down Phyllis Hodgson’s 1944 critical text of Þe Clowde of Vnknowyng, in þe whiche a soule is onyd wiþ God, by the unknown author of the Cloud of Unknowing, good for inspiration and revelation as I selected my Best Comics Criticism 2010 votes. Prophetic, you prophet! as I like you and all true critics strive ascetic to write apophatic– kenotic– apocatastatic words, good for instruction and reflection, more sacred than the sacred texts of “Maggots,” “If’n Oof,” and “Þe Book of Priue Counseling.” Words of Groth in red, and remember the worst a comics critic can do is hurt some feelings. It’s not like we excommunicate, move product, make reputations, or stand at the kitchen gallery door with Hans Ulrich Obrist and his flaming sword. I can’t even resurrect the dead, may my essay on Kamimura Kazuo burn in hellfire for all eternity while A Drifting Life glows transfigured on your bookshelf.

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