Mediocrity/Appreciation

[halfsmiles]

I Just wanted to drop a quick note to thank you, Steven, for your column from June 6 (and many other columns previous).

I'm in my early 30s and have been a comics fan since I was a child. I'm currently an editor at a well known magazine in NY and make my way to Midtown Comics once every two or three weeks to drop $40 or $50 on whatever interests me. It's usually 80% DC/Marvel, I don't have much long-term attraction to certain characters or writers. I just buy whatever title I'm currently reading, whatever tugs at my sense of nostalgia, or maybe I'll try a title or graphic novel that I've heard something good about. More often than not I'm largely disappointed by what I pick up... and I continually feel that the only sense of satiation comes in the form of sentimentalism: "Ah... I remember when my mom drove me to three different comics shops helping me hunt down as many of Kirby's Black Panther run as I could find. Go get 'em B.P."

I call him B.P.

Knowing the little I do about the comics industry... I've always had this question at the back of my mind... and please tell me if my logic is flawed... but why does the industry run itself like some kind of self-contained ecosystem? Example: The same writers getting assignment after assignment. Churning out books barely distinguishable from books they just finished? At my magazine... we get together once every few weeks and pitch the stories we've received from writers... it's rare that the writer's name alone will get us to assign something unless it's attached to a pitch with some promise. And often writers who have never written for us will write amazing pitches we can't ignore. I'm not suggesting that would be a better system or even applicable. And I know marketing, quantity over quality, etc. play a part. And maybe it's the economics of the business and no one can make enough money writing one title... so they give them three or four titles so they can afford a new Honda. But I'm truly baffled by some of what ends up on the shelf... by some of what... in the end... I wind up spending money on.

It's odd. No other hobby of mine leaves me feeling so often annoyed and so rarely thrilled. Yet... after a few weeks the swelling has gone down and the sting is a memory and I'm lining up to drop $50 on Omega Flight (god help me... but I really want it to be readable) and some graphic novel someone told me I absolutely need to read (hint: I don't). Sometimes I feel like the next time I want to buy comics I should just start reading Lone Wolf & Cub from the beginning again. I'll have more fun and save $50. And I can't imagine that's what any industry wants its fans to be pondering.

Ha! Now I see how you can turn out so much text in your columns. I could be at this all night and I know this has barely touched the issue. Anyway... Thanks for calling attention to the mediocrity of the products the industry as a whole is producing. I love comics... and I believe in them as a genuine art form... I just wish they would get a handle on quality control.

[Dennis]

Steven said he was entertained by what he was reading, so calling it mediocre is a little unfair. if you're entertained, then that means it's good.

[Steven Grant]

Not necessarily. It's entirely possible to be entertained by mediocrity. NUMBERS, for instance, is a completely mediocre cop show, yet though I know that I still enjoy watching it in the moment.

The biggest mistake you can make aesthetically is to assume that something is good just because you like it, or that you only like good things. It doesn't work that way. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with liking crap, just as long as you don't try to pretend that it's not crap simply because you like it.

- Grant

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Not necessarily. It's entirely possible to be entertained by mediocrity. NUMBERS, for instance, is a completely mediocre cop show, yet though I know that I still enjoy watching it in the moment.
- Grant

I had vowed to watch every episode of that... but then it turned out it wasn't going to get cancelled after three episodes, so I stopped.

They rival Stan Lee with faulty applications of maths and science on that one.
"It's like raindrops falling from the sky [INSERT MUMBO-JUMBO AND MISAPPLICATIONS OF MATHEMATIC THEORY] the killer lives here!"

[Dennis]

at the end of the day, in the grand scheme of things, what's the difference between entertaining crap and entertaining works of genius? at another board i was reading today some poster said that all fiction is worthless, no matter how entertaining. interesting opinion. is arguing about good comics and bad comics no different than debating who makes the best chicken nuggets? even if a story is exciting as hell, it doesn't change my life. doesn't make me smarter, or funnier, or better looking. it's just an exciting story. does fiction have any life changing ideas? any ideas in fiction have probably already been expressed in a non-fiction book years ago.

off-topic: i read a lot of new age conspiracy occult stuff, and the most mind blowing stuff (and the most helpful) is usually free or self-published. maybe it's best to avoid the bookstore altogether and look for the fringe writers who can't get published.

so i'm looking for something with either entertainment value, or mind blowing ideas. fiction doesn't have ideas, so we're left with something that's just a good story, which is fine.

how about a story that inspires you to change your life and become more courageous and heroic and nicer? i don't think it exists. well, it's the type of motivation that lasts for 5 minutes. it's like going to see some cheesy motivational speaker.

so what can a story really do for you? a good story will make you want to know what happens next. and that's about it. and once the story is over, it has no more value. at least for me, i don't see the point of rereading stories. i think pauline kael said she only watched a movie once.

not bashing stories, just recognizing the limitations.

[Steven Grant]

at the end of the day, in the grand scheme of things, what's the difference between entertaining crap and entertaining works of genius?

For most people, nothing.

There are things that are just there to help you pass the time, on the premise that you're willing to pay good money for that help.

I generally don't reread a lot of books myself simply because there are so many books out there to read and I haven't got time for them as it is. But sometimes I do read books. It's a matter of focus. The first time you read a book, you largely focus strictly on the nuts and bolts of the plot, and learning plot points so you can understand the story. Once that's out of the way, though, rereading allows you to focus on other things - how the author has structured the story, the flow of the language, character setups, stylistic tricks and other subtleties not immediately apparent on first reading. Any truly good story is a good story even if you know how it ends.

But not everything bears up under rereading, and, in fact, a lot of material doesn't. A book you might have believed terrific on first reading can strike you as a flaming pile of crap on rereading.

But here's an analogy. There's a test that's been run many times to learn how alcohol affects people. There's a movie about basketball players that lasts only a few seconds. What they do is give some people in the group non-alcoholic drinks and some alcoholic drinks, and the latter will get their blood alcohol level raised to about half of the legal limit, which is considered a very mild dose. All participants are then shown the movie and tasked with counting the number of basketball players on screen during the duration of the film.

In the middle of the film a woman in a gorilla costume walks through.

In all tests, the vast majority of those who'd had the alcohol were able to count the basketball players but failed to even notice the gorilla! They were so fixed on the task they didn't even see it, and were startled to find out afterwards that it had been there.

For most people, and I don't exclude myself, reading a truly good book once is like counting basketball players. You see what you need to see, but you might not be seeing everything that's there.

Which isn't to say that in many books there actually is anything else there... but that's what it's up to us to figure out...

- Grant

[Dennis]

i can sorta appreciate complex work by smart writers, and i know there can be a lot of clever subtle stuff going on that i'm not smart enough to catch. but i'm more like the average fan and i'm happy with crazy action and toilet humor. the average person likes dumb stuff - ghost rider, 300, transformers. i know plenty of guys who seem to like everything. this morning my coworker said he saw transformers, and i asked him if he liked it even though i knew the answer. of course he liked it. most people seem to like everything they see. it's only the internet geeks who are so picky.

you gotta please the crowd. when i saw the hulk, i knew that it bored the handful of people in the theater. it was just so depressing, and a little too smart. the average person wants to see the hulk break stuff and crack jokes and that's all. the last thing they needed to see was some insane soliloquy from nick nolte.

maybe comics are too smart? maybe dumbing it down would be an improvement. get back to the basics - action, jokes, babes. even if it's a really dumb comic, the fact that there are words on a page makes it too smart for most people.

but how smart are the smartest comics? i had this english professor in college who was pretty amazing. he could spend this ridiculous amount of time analyzing a story. he could spend over 30 minutes analyzing a 2 page Hemingway story (every single line had to be explained since every line had meaning). 10 minutes on a 4 line poem. there is some deep deep stuff going on in literature.

[dancj]

But not everything bears up under rereading, and, in fact, a lot of material doesn't. A book you might have believed terrific on first reading can strike you as a flaming pile of crap on rereading.

So the literary equivalent of a Manic Street Preachers album then

[DavidAllred]

maybe comics are too smart? maybe dumbing it down would be an improvement. get back to the basics - action, jokes, babes. even if it's a really dumb comic, the fact that there are words on a page makes it too smart for most people.

but how smart are the smartest comics? i had this english professor in college who was pretty amazing. he could spend this ridiculous amount of time analyzing a story. he could spend over 30 minutes analyzing a 2 page Hemingway story (every single line had to be explained since every line had meaning). 10 minutes on a 4 line poem. there is some deep deep stuff going on in literature.

I think like everything else you need a balance. If not balance within the title, then keep balance between titles. I am a decade behind the Denny O'Neil Green Lantern / Green Arrow comics, but they were pretty smart books, not just in the social themes, but also in their analysis of human nature. I think both characters have been dumbed down since then. Yet, these books have been reprinted over a dozen times.

I'm just saying there is a market out there for an intelligent, hard hitting comic book. I'm not sure DC is making that a priortiy, and when they do make one, I have to confess, that I have no idea how they should market it. To quote the great movie Barton Fink, "No one wants to see a movie about two men wrestling over their souls." Or at least the ones that are a hard to reach market.

[CBikle]

you gotta please the crowd. when i saw the hulk, i knew that it bored the handful of people in the theater. it was just so depressing, and a little too smart. the average person wants to see the hulk break stuff and crack jokes and that's all. the last thing they needed to see was some insane soliloquy from nick nolte.

I noticed the same thing. In a lot of ways, the movie was like the TV show version (which also dealt with social issues).

My then-boss, took his kid to see it and was angered/disappointed by it, because the movie scared his kid (mommy & daddy yelling at each other; daddy using a needle on young Bruce, the police taking away daddy, etc.).

Of all the things in the movie that could scare the kid, it was all the flashbacks to Bruce's troubled youth that did it.

Personally, I liked the tone of the movie, but just wished they'd given Bruce a villain from the comics like the Leader or the Abomination.

[Michael P]

The biggest mistake you can make aesthetically is to assume that something is good just because you like it, or that you only like good things. - Grant

And the second biggest, of course, is the converse: to assume that something is bad because you dislike it, or that you only dislike bad things.

[bartl]

And the second biggest, of course, is the converse: to assume that something is bad because you dislike it, or that you only dislike bad things.

I was once in charge of arranging lectures at a New York venue. I booked a lot of lecturers I really disliked. One, in particular, I thought was an overegotistical prig, but he always had an SRO crowd show up. And if a speaker who I really liked couldn't attact the crowd, I would not book him or her again unless there was a sufficiently significant change to make me believe that they had a chance the next time.

It was NOT an easy task to check my ego at the door, and to differentiate between what I liked, and choose based on a combination of what was appropriate and what would sell. And even then, you don't always get it right. One lecturer, whom I booked quite reluctantly, had brought in a full house. When she suggested an all-day workshop, I agreed. 5 people showed up for the workshop. Sigh.

Which, of course, means that there's yet another dimension in there. There is not only good and bad, and what you like or dislike, but also what will sell, and what will not.

[Steven Grant]

And the second biggest, of course, is the converse: to assume that something is bad because you dislike it, or that you only dislike bad things.

True, yes. But most people are driven by ego to refuse to accept that they like things that are mediocre or worse.

You can see this at work in comics fandom, when a comic gets canceled. If a comic they like gets canceled, they always claim it's because the audience was too dumb, ignorant or ruined by Marvel Comics to appreciate its genius. If a comic they don't like gets canceled, they always claim it's because it sucked. That's all just ego masquerading for critique.

Another corollary of what I said is: it's at least as stupid to dislike something because everyone else likes it as it is to like something just because everyone else likes it.

- Grant

[badMike]

You can see this at work in comics fandom, when a comic gets canceled.

It's also horrifically bad in movies fandom. Like when "Grindhouse" totally bombed, ALL the geek sites totally freaked out saying how stupid the American moviegoing public is and how they don't get something that's so "original." Of course, they were saying that about a film that was a deliberate rip-off of other, much better, movies.