zzot was the first user I ran into while searching for my social bookmarking soulmate (on delicious.com), and we clicked right away. Being the careful and picky person that I am, I looked around a little (and by a little I mean a lot) longer to see if there was a more perfect match, but after several minutes (hours), I ended up back back where I started. Which just goes to show, if it's good, take it first time around!
Luckily for me, zzot was not going to go anywhere, or be soulmated to another person (gasp!), so now we are happily living our social bookmarking lives together. But sadly, my partner seems to have been MIA for a while: he has not socially bookmarked something since October 27, 2011! Oh no, it seems I was too late for him afterall! Our interests were so in sync as well: he seems very crossdisciplinary with tags in design, art, music, games,culture, writing, to marketing, entrepreneurship, and technology as well. In fact, what he is missing is exactly what I would be missing: tags in science and engineering. I love that he has an "inspiration" tag; that is something I would totally do as well. His most prominent tags are design with 240, blog with 186, food with 146, art with 146, and music with 143. He has many many many tags: I believe he was trying to stay very organized but the effect of this is that it creates so many tags that the organization is questionable. But this is very similar to something like I would do as well..... It would have been useful if he organized his tags and bookmarks into stacks as well. This guy is, or was, a very prolific bookmarker: he has 1708 links in his name! He joined a while back though, in September of 2007. That's around 600 bookmarks a year!
What I especially like about zzot's bookmarks is his one and only stack: storytelling. This stack seems to have been created right before he stopped bookmarking, and there are only 8 links in it, but the links are very informative and interesting. I especially liked a link to an article called "Storytelling in China and America", which briefly compares the differences between the cultural mindsets of Chinese and Americans through interviews with children and examining how the children answered the questions about their lives. In addition, looking through his comics tag, I find that most of them are links to webcomics and some interesting comics blogs as well. One of the links I found really interesting was a link to a website called "What Things Do", which seems to be basically an online periodical for new comics to come out every month. I love the layout of the page and the comics on it seem very interesting as well, I hope to be reading them some time soon.
All in all, zzot seems like a very artsy type of guy with an interest in a wide spectrum of things. He seems to use this site only as a collection for his links, although he does follow 9 users, he doesn't make any comments on his links or seem to interact extensively on this website. That's probably how my social bookmarking websites will end up as well...
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Restrategizing: No Wonder all these Comic Blogs do Comic Reviews!
OK, so remember how I said at the beginning I wouldn't be doing comic reviews? CHANGE OF PLANS. Now I know why so many comic websites to comic reviews!
And it totally makes sense too. I mean, if you love reading comics, naturally, you're going to want to spread the word, and what better way than by writing a review of them?Well duhhh girl what were you thinking when you started this blog? So from now on I'll try and start incorporating more of the comics I read into my posts. It'll be good for me as well, since it'll "force" me to read comics I've been wanting to read but been putting off for god knows what reason. It'll also force me get more personal with you all and share my interests and passions within comics. My niche within the comics niche. Oh boy here we go!
But while I will be doing more "comic reviews" of sorts, they won't exactly be comic reviews. Rather, I hope to analyze the comics I am interested in and find the broader implications they make about the author, society, the world, etc... Sort of like writing an English paper on a comic, yeah! Except hopefully not as boring. Hopefully...
So there will most likely be spoilers in my posts. Major spoilers. So before you read my post I recommend you go and read the comic(s)! I will make a list of the comics I will be going over at the very beginning of my post so that you can decide whether you want to read my post or not.
Hmm I had a lot less to say about this than I thought I wanted to say. But I just wanted to let y'all know that I will slowly start to figure out where I want this blog to go! I'm already miles ahead of where I was weeks ago when I first started this blog. And slowly I am starting to decode the formless and wordless thoughts and ideas in my head into English I can actually put down and communicate to others. Feels good, feels good, to be doing this! Although I have to admit it's a booger to do this as well. I definitely wouldn't have been able to do this if it wasn't for the blogging class which pushed me to start this, and it's still a struggle to try and write something every week, but hopefully by the end of this semester I'll be motivated enough to continue this blog on my own. One tends to languish in comfort and apathy, even when it makes them more and more miserable...
That's enough about me, and enough for this post. From now on look forward to more talk about comics and their awesomeness! The whole reason for my starting this blog was to proliferate the idea that comics were just as valid a source of serious thought-provoking material as novels and movies, and I think this is a good step in that direction to prove my point. Yes, comics are fun, and they can also be.... LIFE CHANGING!!!!
And it totally makes sense too. I mean, if you love reading comics, naturally, you're going to want to spread the word, and what better way than by writing a review of them?Well duhhh girl what were you thinking when you started this blog? So from now on I'll try and start incorporating more of the comics I read into my posts. It'll be good for me as well, since it'll "force" me to read comics I've been wanting to read but been putting off for god knows what reason. It'll also force me get more personal with you all and share my interests and passions within comics. My niche within the comics niche. Oh boy here we go!
But while I will be doing more "comic reviews" of sorts, they won't exactly be comic reviews. Rather, I hope to analyze the comics I am interested in and find the broader implications they make about the author, society, the world, etc... Sort of like writing an English paper on a comic, yeah! Except hopefully not as boring. Hopefully...
So there will most likely be spoilers in my posts. Major spoilers. So before you read my post I recommend you go and read the comic(s)! I will make a list of the comics I will be going over at the very beginning of my post so that you can decide whether you want to read my post or not.
Hmm I had a lot less to say about this than I thought I wanted to say. But I just wanted to let y'all know that I will slowly start to figure out where I want this blog to go! I'm already miles ahead of where I was weeks ago when I first started this blog. And slowly I am starting to decode the formless and wordless thoughts and ideas in my head into English I can actually put down and communicate to others. Feels good, feels good, to be doing this! Although I have to admit it's a booger to do this as well. I definitely wouldn't have been able to do this if it wasn't for the blogging class which pushed me to start this, and it's still a struggle to try and write something every week, but hopefully by the end of this semester I'll be motivated enough to continue this blog on my own. One tends to languish in comfort and apathy, even when it makes them more and more miserable...
That's enough about me, and enough for this post. From now on look forward to more talk about comics and their awesomeness! The whole reason for my starting this blog was to proliferate the idea that comics were just as valid a source of serious thought-provoking material as novels and movies, and I think this is a good step in that direction to prove my point. Yes, comics are fun, and they can also be.... LIFE CHANGING!!!!
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
A Valentine's Day Special: Romance in Comics
So in honor of Valentine's Day (or for the luckier ones out there, Single Awareness Day ;D), I've decided to write a post about romance comics~!
I'll admit it, I've read a lot of romance manga over the years. In fact, one of the first manga I read, Peach Girl, was a romantic roller-coaster of a story. The heterosexual romance manga I read is geared towards young girls, or Shoujo Manga, although I do read the occasional Josei title, and some romance manga geared towards guys as well, in the Shounen and Seinen category. And that's only the heterosexual end of the spectrum. On the other end, I read comics focusing on LGBT relationships as well, most commonly Yaoi and Yuri manga. As I was doing research for this topic, however, I didn't want to focus on any particular genre, so I typed in the general term "romance comics" and found that this is actually a term "generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War (1947 - 1977)"! Wow, I did not know that, but that's what this blog is for after all, to learn more about the history of comics! (And apparently women read these sorts of comics in the past just as casually as they read these sorts of novels nowadays!).
For a brief summary, I went to Wikipedia and got: "Romance comics (sometimes love comics) is a comics genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache. Romance comics of the period typically featured dramatic scripts about the love lives of older high school teens and young adults, with accompanying artwork depicting an urban or rural America contemporaneous with publication."
Upon doing a little more searching, I came across Matt Thorn's article on the subject and was intrigued by his statement near the end: "you can't help concluding that the vast majority of these comics were dreadful, both visually and narratively. Of course, the same can be said of every genre of any medium, but I think the biggest problem in the romance comics was the fact that the stories were being written mostly by men in their forties and fifties". When I read this statement I was reminded of the yaoi genre - manga about romantic relationships between males written by women for women. I've read many manga within the yaoi genre, searching for gems, and I can say that there are few. However, I do believe more gems will pop up in the future, as the genre matures and changes and can hopefully gain a more respectable standing within society. But if it were to decline without being given the chance to develop properly as a genre, would it end up with the same reputation as romance comics have nowadays?
In fact, I am convinced that the fall of the romance genre was due to just that: its growth was stunted by the Comics Code in 1954, after which romance comics were self-censored by the publishers themselves and they started playing it safe "with stories focusing on traditional patriarchial concepts of female behavior, gender roles, love, sex, and marriage". Ironically enough, it's never safe to play it safe.
One only needs to look to Japan to see how the growth and maturation of shoujo manga has only made it more popular (Matt Thorn also has an excellent article on the history of shoujo manga). Genres spawn subgenres which in turn spawn more subgenres. A genre does not stay homogenous for long left to its own devices, but unfortunately the romance genre was contained, in a jar, so to speak, and bottled up until it finally imploded on itself. I am left saddened by the loss of potential of what could've been.
However, there is hope. At the end of his essay, Matt Thorn speaks of the changing landscape caused by the digital world, in which comic artists are left unrestricted by editors who think they know best what their audience wants (more specifically, "female artists who have been restricted for decades by male editors who think they know best what female readers want". But it applies to all artists and editors, male and female). In addition, in a TED Talk by Johanna Blakley about Social media and the end of demographics, Blakley speaks about how "women are driving the social media revolution". She later goes on to say, "Will the next big blockbuster movies actually be chick flicks? Could this be possible that suddenly our media landscape will become a feminist landscape?" But later discounts it, saying it probably won't happen and even going as far as to say that women will actually be the ones to "drive a stick through the heart of cheesy genre categories such as the chick flick".
"Cheesy genre categories". That is the key word of the last quotation. "Cheesy". Romance, in one form or another, has always been relegated to such a category, whether overly dramatic or comedic or with their happy endings and all that. Sure, many stories that contain romance are highly regarded and there is a romantic element to many critically-acclaimed features/novels, but once romance becomes the main element of the story, it is labeled with that word, "cheesy".
And maybe it is cheesy. I'd have to say a happily ever after ending after a long duck and goose chase which barely allowed the development of any substantial form of relationship is a tad superficial. If chick flicks want their place in the Oscars they're gonna have to step it up a notch. I'd say "500 Days of Summer" is a good step in that direction. How about Brokeback Mountain? Okay, so maybe that's not a chick flick, and it was critically-acclaimed and romance was the main element of the story...
Back to the main subject, what Blakley and Thorn seem to be suggesting is that there is still a vast amount of unexplored creative frontiers in the realm of a female's mind. And with the digital revolution, women will be allowed, more than ever before, to freely express the deepest realms of their consciousness, and the romances that lurk within it. To un-cheesify chick flicks with their epic or not so epic tales that may or may not have happy endings. Yes, chick flicks won't exist anymore because they'll be called by their proper name: romance.
So in defense of Valentine's Day and everything related to love, I say there's a lot of room for romance comics to grow! One could learn a thing or two from my favorite book, "Demian", by Hermann Hesse, about the development of a deep relationship that walks the thin line between platonic and romantic love. Now that's something I'd be interested in seeing in comic book form! And with that, I hope everyday had a lovely Valentine's Day~!
I'll admit it, I've read a lot of romance manga over the years. In fact, one of the first manga I read, Peach Girl, was a romantic roller-coaster of a story. The heterosexual romance manga I read is geared towards young girls, or Shoujo Manga, although I do read the occasional Josei title, and some romance manga geared towards guys as well, in the Shounen and Seinen category. And that's only the heterosexual end of the spectrum. On the other end, I read comics focusing on LGBT relationships as well, most commonly Yaoi and Yuri manga. As I was doing research for this topic, however, I didn't want to focus on any particular genre, so I typed in the general term "romance comics" and found that this is actually a term "generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War (1947 - 1977)"! Wow, I did not know that, but that's what this blog is for after all, to learn more about the history of comics! (And apparently women read these sorts of comics in the past just as casually as they read these sorts of novels nowadays!).
For a brief summary, I went to Wikipedia and got: "Romance comics (sometimes love comics) is a comics genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache. Romance comics of the period typically featured dramatic scripts about the love lives of older high school teens and young adults, with accompanying artwork depicting an urban or rural America contemporaneous with publication."
Upon doing a little more searching, I came across Matt Thorn's article on the subject and was intrigued by his statement near the end: "you can't help concluding that the vast majority of these comics were dreadful, both visually and narratively. Of course, the same can be said of every genre of any medium, but I think the biggest problem in the romance comics was the fact that the stories were being written mostly by men in their forties and fifties". When I read this statement I was reminded of the yaoi genre - manga about romantic relationships between males written by women for women. I've read many manga within the yaoi genre, searching for gems, and I can say that there are few. However, I do believe more gems will pop up in the future, as the genre matures and changes and can hopefully gain a more respectable standing within society. But if it were to decline without being given the chance to develop properly as a genre, would it end up with the same reputation as romance comics have nowadays?
In fact, I am convinced that the fall of the romance genre was due to just that: its growth was stunted by the Comics Code in 1954, after which romance comics were self-censored by the publishers themselves and they started playing it safe "with stories focusing on traditional patriarchial concepts of female behavior, gender roles, love, sex, and marriage". Ironically enough, it's never safe to play it safe.
One only needs to look to Japan to see how the growth and maturation of shoujo manga has only made it more popular (Matt Thorn also has an excellent article on the history of shoujo manga). Genres spawn subgenres which in turn spawn more subgenres. A genre does not stay homogenous for long left to its own devices, but unfortunately the romance genre was contained, in a jar, so to speak, and bottled up until it finally imploded on itself. I am left saddened by the loss of potential of what could've been.
However, there is hope. At the end of his essay, Matt Thorn speaks of the changing landscape caused by the digital world, in which comic artists are left unrestricted by editors who think they know best what their audience wants (more specifically, "female artists who have been restricted for decades by male editors who think they know best what female readers want". But it applies to all artists and editors, male and female). In addition, in a TED Talk by Johanna Blakley about Social media and the end of demographics, Blakley speaks about how "women are driving the social media revolution". She later goes on to say, "Will the next big blockbuster movies actually be chick flicks? Could this be possible that suddenly our media landscape will become a feminist landscape?" But later discounts it, saying it probably won't happen and even going as far as to say that women will actually be the ones to "drive a stick through the heart of cheesy genre categories such as the chick flick".
"Cheesy genre categories". That is the key word of the last quotation. "Cheesy". Romance, in one form or another, has always been relegated to such a category, whether overly dramatic or comedic or with their happy endings and all that. Sure, many stories that contain romance are highly regarded and there is a romantic element to many critically-acclaimed features/novels, but once romance becomes the main element of the story, it is labeled with that word, "cheesy".
And maybe it is cheesy. I'd have to say a happily ever after ending after a long duck and goose chase which barely allowed the development of any substantial form of relationship is a tad superficial. If chick flicks want their place in the Oscars they're gonna have to step it up a notch. I'd say "500 Days of Summer" is a good step in that direction. How about Brokeback Mountain? Okay, so maybe that's not a chick flick, and it was critically-acclaimed and romance was the main element of the story...
Back to the main subject, what Blakley and Thorn seem to be suggesting is that there is still a vast amount of unexplored creative frontiers in the realm of a female's mind. And with the digital revolution, women will be allowed, more than ever before, to freely express the deepest realms of their consciousness, and the romances that lurk within it. To un-cheesify chick flicks with their epic or not so epic tales that may or may not have happy endings. Yes, chick flicks won't exist anymore because they'll be called by their proper name: romance.
So in defense of Valentine's Day and everything related to love, I say there's a lot of room for romance comics to grow! One could learn a thing or two from my favorite book, "Demian", by Hermann Hesse, about the development of a deep relationship that walks the thin line between platonic and romantic love. Now that's something I'd be interested in seeing in comic book form! And with that, I hope everyday had a lovely Valentine's Day~!
Trifecta
Hello, World
Hello
Everyone!
As the title of this blog suggests, I will be posting my thoughts on
comics here. What sort of thoughts, you may ask? Good question, I don't
quite know the answer to that myself. All I know is that I've had a
passion for sequential art ever since I read my first manga around the
6th grade, and ever since then, despite some self-denial, I've wanted to
use sequential art as my own form of storytelling.
Is
it not ironic, then, that even though I say I want to create comics,
I've never really drawn one? Or that even though I say I love comics so
much, I haven't read as many as the average fan? When speaking with
friends who also read comics, I often can't talk about it because I
haven't read the series they've read! I believe there are several
reasons for this: the comics I read tend to cater towards a more "mature
and serious" audience while my friends read more mainstream titles, and
as an aspiring creator myself, the way I appreciate comics and would
like to talk about them is probably quite different than the way a
reader appreciates and talks about comics. Nonetheless, there are a lot
of comics and a lot of knowledge out there I need to inform myself
about, and I will use this blog as a record of my research, findings,
and subsequent thoughts. As I do this I hope to discover what it is I
really want to do in the world of comics.
As
a comics reader, I mostly read manga, although I do read a couple
American comics (mostly webcomics) and have wanted to delve into comics
from all over the world as well! I hope to use this blog to inform
myself about great comics around the world, the differences and
similarities between these comics, as well as to inform myself more
about the business aspect of the comics industry in various nations
around the world. In addition, I'd like to discuss what comics can learn
from other forms of storytelling, such as literature, film, art, music,
etc., and perhaps how seemingly totally unrelated topics can inform
comics as well! I'll probably start with what I am most familiar with,
manga and the United States, before researching less familiar topics
(like webcomics and European comics), and finally out into the unknown!
I
know many comics blogs out there do a lot of reviews, and many blogs
are even dedicated to the sole purpose of comic reviews. This blog most
likely won't be doing as such. I will be pointing out comics I find
interesting or comics that I believe a lot can be learned from, but a
full length review most likely won't be happening on this blog. Who
knows, this may change at a later point in time, but for now I'd like to
inform myself about the larger picture before digging into the
specifics. :-)
Finally,
I hope this blog can bring about more awareness about the current
diversity in the comics medium and the diversity that can be achieved by
the comics medium. Many people already know that comics have
superheroes, tell epic adventures of fantasy and the like, but it is the
lesser known stories, the unheard of and the untold ones (of the
"normal" everyday person perhaps), in which I believe comics have the
most potential to grow, to not only redefine themselves but also add to
their repertoire of works. This blog is geared towards a future in which
there is as much variety and experimentation in the comics medium as
there is with film and literature, as much critical analysis, acclaim, and accessibility, and as many creators and fans!
Profile
Profile
It was really difficult for me to find a blog that
was similar to the way I wanted to write about my topic, but I finally
found one by the name of Manga Widget. The
problem with many comic, particularly manga, websites that I've found is
that they seem to be dedicated solely to reviews, but this one, as
stated on the "About" page, "features essays on various topics
concerning manga and the American manga market and business, as well as
reviews of licensed, translated manga".
The author's name is Alexander Hoffman, and he is a hobbyist comics reader. There seems to be no system for when he posts, but he seems to post at least 3-4 times a month, sometimes bunched all together over the span of 1-2 weeks and at other times spaced evenly. There is no ranking for this blog on technorati.com and no list of followers either, but on a visit to his Twitter page we see he has a following of around 260 people. I believe his two most recent posts, "A Discussion on Crowd-Sourcing and Digital Manga’s Barbara Kickstarter Campaign" and "Manga Widget Investigates: Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita", excellently sum up what this author is capable of.
In "A Discussion on Crowd-Sourcing and Digital Manga’s Barbara Kickstarter Campaign", Hoffman talks about Digital Manga Publishing's Kickstarter Campaign for one of Osamu Tezuka's works. I find the way he initiates the discussion by tackling another author's skepticism about this project before going into his own reasons to support this project very effective and convincing. He concludes with his thoughts on the future of manga publishing and how he hopes "that licensing and publishing in the United States continues to grow out of the system created in the 90's and in a more open, more consumer-oriented way".
His second blogpost, "Manga Widget Investigates: Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita", is a brief discussion on a manga that "focuses on the relationship between family members". I like the way he talks about his opinions on the manga very honestly and portrays his hope to be able to read it someday. He also discusses potential publishers that may be able to license the series and ends with the note, "I would love to see manga like this in the United States, and I challenge publishers to redefine the meaning of manga with titles like Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita".
I find Hoffman's thoughts about the manga industry very similar to mine and believe I have much to learn from him, and much to learn from the people that disagree with him as well. He writes about manga with a lot of love and respect for the medium, and belief in its potential and future as well. One thing his blog could do better is have a more effective archive system, since I have a very difficult time reaching the first post of his blog. Also, I am not too sure what the links on top mean, such as the MMF Archives. Those could use some explanation, and it would be even better if he had Archives to his own posts on top as well. All in all, I hope to write with the same earnestness and depth of knowledge as he does as I attempt to portray my own thoughts about comics on this blog.
Voice Critique
"It is definitely something--DC's bestselling graphic novel of all time, a beloved classic taught in schools, one of Time's Best 100 novels of the last 100 years, the book that defined grim and gritty"
The author backs up his high regard for the comic with evidence of society's own regard for Watchmen, implying that if we don't feel the same way, then back off, this article is not for you! However, if you are even the slightest bit open to the idea, the author provides links to educate you, in this paragraph and throughout the article, if you want to understand more deeply what he is talking about.
"Like all great works, it's multifaceted". What a great word, "multifaceted"! As I read this article again, I can't help but speak those words in my mind over and over again. The word in itself is multifaceted! Moving on, I find his comparison to "Scarlett", the infamously horrid "sequel" to the multifaceted classic "Gone with the Wind", to start off the next paragraph absolutely witty and ingenious! If that's how the Watchmen prequels will turn out, then that would be an absolute disaster! In addition, he continues to inject some of his own thoughts on the issue in this paragraph. With "it brings up every argument over whether comics are literature or licensing," after his previous paragraph where he rather clearly insinuated that he thinks of comics as literature, along with the sentence after this line where he restates "WATCHMEN is literature", we get a feeling of how he feels about this issue. But he shows his sympathy for the fans as well, with his humorously stated understanding of "the obsessive need of devotees to get MORE", and then he throws in another literary reference, this time to the author of the Lord of the Ring series J.R.R. Tolkien. And if you're a fan of that series, you know just how obsessive they can get! (or fans of any series, for that matter).
Then the block quotes war begins! Line after line we are bombarded with lines and lines of quotes, at least they're interesting! And they serve their purpose, backing up the claims of the author solidly. And the author acknowledges the bombs he's thrown at us too at the end of his raid: "Okay. Deep breath." This helps to mend the relationship between the reader and the author, as the author somewhat apologizes for dropping the bombs and thus ensures he won't be throwing any more of that at us.
The author's name is Alexander Hoffman, and he is a hobbyist comics reader. There seems to be no system for when he posts, but he seems to post at least 3-4 times a month, sometimes bunched all together over the span of 1-2 weeks and at other times spaced evenly. There is no ranking for this blog on technorati.com and no list of followers either, but on a visit to his Twitter page we see he has a following of around 260 people. I believe his two most recent posts, "A Discussion on Crowd-Sourcing and Digital Manga’s Barbara Kickstarter Campaign" and "Manga Widget Investigates: Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita", excellently sum up what this author is capable of.
In "A Discussion on Crowd-Sourcing and Digital Manga’s Barbara Kickstarter Campaign", Hoffman talks about Digital Manga Publishing's Kickstarter Campaign for one of Osamu Tezuka's works. I find the way he initiates the discussion by tackling another author's skepticism about this project before going into his own reasons to support this project very effective and convincing. He concludes with his thoughts on the future of manga publishing and how he hopes "that licensing and publishing in the United States continues to grow out of the system created in the 90's and in a more open, more consumer-oriented way".
His second blogpost, "Manga Widget Investigates: Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita", is a brief discussion on a manga that "focuses on the relationship between family members". I like the way he talks about his opinions on the manga very honestly and portrays his hope to be able to read it someday. He also discusses potential publishers that may be able to license the series and ends with the note, "I would love to see manga like this in the United States, and I challenge publishers to redefine the meaning of manga with titles like Tzusuki wa Mata Ashita".
I find Hoffman's thoughts about the manga industry very similar to mine and believe I have much to learn from him, and much to learn from the people that disagree with him as well. He writes about manga with a lot of love and respect for the medium, and belief in its potential and future as well. One thing his blog could do better is have a more effective archive system, since I have a very difficult time reaching the first post of his blog. Also, I am not too sure what the links on top mean, such as the MMF Archives. Those could use some explanation, and it would be even better if he had Archives to his own posts on top as well. All in all, I hope to write with the same earnestness and depth of knowledge as he does as I attempt to portray my own thoughts about comics on this blog.
Voice Critique
Sarcasm and analogies can be hard to pull off, but
the author of "After Before Watchmen: the industry reacts" was able to
pull both off successfully, at least to the audience the article was
intended for.
Peppered with links and plastered with thick blocks of quotes, the journalistic masterpiece could rival the subject of its existence in its craftsmanship! From the first two paragraphs the author demonstrates his knowledge of not only the comics industry but the entire field of literature.
Peppered with links and plastered with thick blocks of quotes, the journalistic masterpiece could rival the subject of its existence in its craftsmanship! From the first two paragraphs the author demonstrates his knowledge of not only the comics industry but the entire field of literature.
In the first paragraph he demonstrates his
high regard for comics and the comic in particular he is talking about,
Watchmen, with his quotation of facts:
"It is definitely something--DC's bestselling graphic novel of all time, a beloved classic taught in schools, one of Time's Best 100 novels of the last 100 years, the book that defined grim and gritty"
The author backs up his high regard for the comic with evidence of society's own regard for Watchmen, implying that if we don't feel the same way, then back off, this article is not for you! However, if you are even the slightest bit open to the idea, the author provides links to educate you, in this paragraph and throughout the article, if you want to understand more deeply what he is talking about.
"Like all great works, it's multifaceted". What a great word, "multifaceted"! As I read this article again, I can't help but speak those words in my mind over and over again. The word in itself is multifaceted! Moving on, I find his comparison to "Scarlett", the infamously horrid "sequel" to the multifaceted classic "Gone with the Wind", to start off the next paragraph absolutely witty and ingenious! If that's how the Watchmen prequels will turn out, then that would be an absolute disaster! In addition, he continues to inject some of his own thoughts on the issue in this paragraph. With "it brings up every argument over whether comics are literature or licensing," after his previous paragraph where he rather clearly insinuated that he thinks of comics as literature, along with the sentence after this line where he restates "WATCHMEN is literature", we get a feeling of how he feels about this issue. But he shows his sympathy for the fans as well, with his humorously stated understanding of "the obsessive need of devotees to get MORE", and then he throws in another literary reference, this time to the author of the Lord of the Ring series J.R.R. Tolkien. And if you're a fan of that series, you know just how obsessive they can get! (or fans of any series, for that matter).
Then the block quotes war begins! Line after line we are bombarded with lines and lines of quotes, at least they're interesting! And they serve their purpose, backing up the claims of the author solidly. And the author acknowledges the bombs he's thrown at us too at the end of his raid: "Okay. Deep breath." This helps to mend the relationship between the reader and the author, as the author somewhat apologizes for dropping the bombs and thus ensures he won't be throwing any more of that at us.
He
continues
the rest of the article in much of the same vein as the beginning, with
the same humorous and sarcastic tone of voice. Thus, the author is able
to keep his audience engaged throughout the entire article through
clever manipulation of his own voice.
Analyzing Voice: "After Before Watchmen: the industry reacts"
Sarcasm and analogies can be hard to pull off, but
the author of "After Before Watchmen: the industry reacts" was able to
pull both off successfully, at least to the audience the article was
intended for.
Peppered with links and plastered with thick blocks of quotes, the journalistic masterpiece could rival the subject of its existence in its craftsmanship! From the first two paragraphs the author demonstrates his knowledge of not only the comics industry but the entire field of literature.
Peppered with links and plastered with thick blocks of quotes, the journalistic masterpiece could rival the subject of its existence in its craftsmanship! From the first two paragraphs the author demonstrates his knowledge of not only the comics industry but the entire field of literature.
In the first paragraph he demonstrates his
high regard for comics and the comic in particular he is talking about,
Watchmen, with his quotation of facts:
"It is definitely something--DC's bestselling graphic novel of all time, a beloved classic taught in schools, one of Time's Best 100 novels of the last 100 years, the book that defined grim and gritty"
The author backs up his high regard for the comic with evidence of society's own regard for Watchmen, implying that if we don't feel the same way, then back off, this article is not for you! However, if you are even the slightest bit open to the idea, the author provides links to educate you, in this paragraph and throughout the article, if you want to understand more deeply what he is talking about.
"Like all great works, it's multifaceted". What a great word, "multifaceted"! As I read this article again, I can't help but speak those words in my mind over and over again. The word in itself is multifaceted! Moving on, I find his comparison to "Scarlett", the infamously horrid "sequel" to the multifaceted classic "Gone with the Wind", to start off the next paragraph absolutely witty and ingenious! If that's how the Watchmen prequels will turn out, then that would be an absolute disaster! In addition, he continues to inject some of his own thoughts on the issue in this paragraph. With "it brings up every argument over whether comics are literature or licensing," after his previous paragraph where he rather clearly insinuated that he thinks of comics as literature, along with the sentence after this line where he restates "WATCHMEN is literature", we get a feeling of how he feels about this issue. But he shows his sympathy for the fans as well, with his humorously stated understanding of "the obsessive need of devotees to get MORE", and then he throws in another literary reference, this time to the author of the Lord of the Ring series J.R.R. Tolkien. And if you're a fan of that series, you know just how obsessive they can get! (or fans of any series, for that matter).
Then the block quotes war begins! Line after line we are bombarded with lines and lines of quotes, at least they're interesting! And they serve their purpose, backing up the claims of the author solidly. And the author acknowledges the bombs he's thrown at us too at the end of his raid: "Okay. Deep breath." This helps to mend the relationship between the reader and the author, as the author somewhat apologizes for dropping the bombs and thus ensures he won't be throwing any more of that at us.
He continues
the rest of the article in much of the same vein as the beginning, with
the same humorous and sarcastic tone of voice. Thus, the author is able to keep his audience engaged throughout the entire article through clever manipulation of his own voice.
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