Alan Moore vs Grant Morrison

[T Hedge Coke]

Get the F out of here!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA1iawlsKLg

I don't remember many runaway prostitutes in Gaiman's stories specifically. I just tried to make up a character that sound's like one of his. In half the stories, there are regular girls with unconventional lifestyles, like Calliope, Delirium, Desire, Wanda, Ishtar, Barbie, chantal and Zelda, Judy, Foxglobe. He rarely does sunny goodie-goodies like Mary Marvel, he rather makes you sympathize with girls and women in unique situations.

So many not-prostitutes on that list it's amazing. Or, runaway children. Foxglove, really? Delirium? Zelda?

There's so much implicit judgment going on in that list and it is, I'm confident, yours and not Gaiman's.

I'm a detail guy, It's kinda like the Bible, I don't read it that often, but when i do, I need annotations at the bottom and a dictionary at hand.

Perhaps, you're using these comics (or the Bible) as hypertexts, but they weren't intended for us that way, at least not the Bible, Last Rites, or Batman 700. You aren't meant to jump around in Last Rites, you're meant to read it straight through beginning to end.

You can jump around in it, but it's a straightforward narrative. There's nothing in those comics begging you to jump around.

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA1iawlsKLg




So many not-prostitutes on that list it's amazing. Or, runaway children. Foxglove, really? Delirium? Zelda?

There's so much implicit judgment going on in that list and it is, I'm confident, yours and not Gaiman's.



Perhaps, you're using these comics (or the Bible) as hypertexts, but they weren't intended for us that way, at least not the Bible, Last Rites, or Batman 700. You aren't meant to jump around in Last Rites, you're meant to read it straight through beginning to end.

You can jump around in it, but it's a straightforward narrative. There's nothing in those comics begging you to jump around.

... You misread the comment about Gaiman's girls. It doesn't say that they are prostitutes or runaways anywhere.

Same thing with the jugedment, but a little more insightful. I'm not making a judgement, and I'm not aware of Gaiman making any either. However, it's clear that he doesn't pick Dorothy, Goldie Locks, Little Red Riding Hood, Wendy, Alice, Supergirl, or Mary Marvel types. They used to be the common stereotype of leading girls for a while, and Gaiman contributed to broaden the repertoir of interesting pics.

I think you got the impression that I believe the annotations make a book hypertextual. But no, specially when talking about the Bible or From Hell, the examples I made. Those are cases in which I do it to enhance the experience.

I don't think you need to jump around in Last Rites at all. And that's not what I said about 700. I checked annotations (mostly out of overreaction after reading the Return of Bruce Wane), but I don't remember jumping around (I might have, it has been a while).

The jumping around is relative. I'd be surprised if there was a book that really forced the reader to jump around. Not even Borges does that. The rationale is this, Morrison commonly tempts readers to jump around (specially in FC-Superman Beyond, and 7S) comparatively more than other comic book writers or even Borges. If you make a list of writers that make people jump around more, it would be very short. Call it what you want, but it's an undeniable phenomenon that there are far too many readers reconstructing events in Morrison's stories or complaining because they don't want to do the reconstructions, the "ikea complains" are the most common when it comes to him. I honestly believe a lot of people wouldn't feel that need, though, either great memory or they can just move with the stories ignoring details (or leaving them for a second straight read). I reread Rogue's Revenge as well. I liked it ok, but it's the opposite experience. If you take just one issue to the toilet, you'd still need something to do for most of the ride, and rereading or jumping around is very pointless. Same thing with Watchmen or any Sandman story, just to point out widely different types of stories.

[carabas]

I don't remember many runaway prostitutes in Gaiman's stories specifically. I just tried to make up a character that sound's like one of his. In half the stories, there are regular girls with unconventional lifestyles, like Calliope, Delirium, Desire, Wanda, Ishtar, Barbie, chantal and Zelda, Judy, Foxglobe. He rarely does sunny goodie-goodies like Mary Marvel, he rather makes you sympathize with girls and women in unique situations.

Regular girls?
Calliope is the immortal muse of epic poetry.
Delirium and Desire are of the Endless, the antrompomorphic personifications of delirium and desire (and Delirium is rather goodie-goodie.)
Ishtar is Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, war, love, and sex.
Barbie is human but akmost conventional lifestyle personified to the point of parody.

The rest are human but hardly prostitutes.

What's wrong with conventional lifestyles? You couldn't pay me enough to have one of those.

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

Regular girls?
Calliope is the immortal muse of epic poetry.
Delirium and Desire are of the Endless, the antrompomorphic personifications of delirium and desire (and Delirium is rather goodie-goodie.)
Ishtar is Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, war, love, and sex.
Barbie is human but akmost conventional lifestyle personified to the point of parody.

The rest are human but hardly prostitutes.

What's wrong with conventional lifestyles? You couldn't pay me enough to have one of those.

Calm your horses. I think you're trying to pick up a fight where there's none. I just came up with something that would sound to me like a Gaiman character, even if it doesn't literally apply to any.

You're right in that as soon as I started to include non-humans in the list "regular girls" stopped aplying. Many of them pose as random/regular women or girls.

I do not have a stand on using or not conventional lifestyles for fictional characters, and I din't make a pro-or-con point. I just pointed that most of Gaiman's heroines are not Dorothy Gale (or wendy Darling or Alice) types like Sarah Williams. Perhaps Rose Walker or Coraline would be one of the closest to that, but without the shabby chic thing (and whatever its clothing equivalent is called) going on.

[direction9]

Get the F out of here!!
That's the problem right there. From early on, you think that if I get you to admit that he's following labyrinthine structures in any of his works, it would mean that he's an ass. You have now gone to the extreme of polarizing it to the point that he can't be any more difficult than Dora the Explorer (even if it was a joke).

these things didn't happen. 1, you implied the first part in this thread and then backpeddled away from it. go reread your earlier posts. 2, you invented that polarization, which is why i was just sarcastic about it.

My position right now is that
1. he has done that kind of structures in various of his works (at least in FC and, more obviously in 7S),

you've demonstrated for pages now that "that kind of structure" is some loose thing you can't define but for some reason find comfort in comparing it to borges, unnecessarily

2. that using those structures doesn't make him better or worse,

this imparital bit is relatively new.

3. that he's convoluted on top of those structures,
4. and that if he's going to agree to give away all the blurry plot points in an interview, he might as well provide annotations like Moore did in From Hell (which were really fun to read).

still no counter to readers who say...i didn't find anything convoluted. didn't need any annotations.

I can't really recall if Batman #700 had much of that kind of Borgesian hypertextuality (I feel that at least a bit), but I do remember that with annotations at hand it was really fun to read. Probably because it was a short. Last Rites was a similar experience, when I reread it, but I missed the annotations of #700.

I'm a detail guy, It's kinda like the Bible, I don't read it that often, but when i do, I need annotations at the bottom and a dictionary at hand.

Batman 700 indeed had quite a bit of Richardsonian lampshade to it, but it's strange to me that you needed annotations. let me just be clear. your desire for annotations isn't coming from any confusion in the story, any lack of essential knowledge, but by your sort of fanboy completist tendencies, and the habit in the past to spell everything out (because the audience was about a decade younger). From Hell was just full of historical research, notations, but it still had some dreamlike structure and scenes that forced the reader to do some work. it wasn't some fully explained textbook for the layman.

you're a detail guy.
that has nothing, nothing to do with borges, comics, storytelling quality, or really this thread.
know what i mean?

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

these things didn't happen. 1, you implied the first part in this thread and then backpeddled away from it. go reread your earlier posts. 2, you invented that polarization, which is why i was just sarcastic about it.



you've demonstrated for pages now that "that kind of structure" is some loose thing you can't define but for some reason find comfort in comparing it to borges, unnecessarily



this imparital bit is relatively new.



still no counter to readers who say...i didn't find anything convoluted. didn't need any annotations.



Batman 700 indeed had quite a bit of Richardsonian lampshade to it, but it's strange to me that you needed annotations. let me just be clear. your desire for annotations isn't coming from any confusion in the story, any lack of essential knowledge, but by your sort of fanboy completist tendencies, and the habit in the past to spell everything out (because the audience was about a decade younger). From Hell was just full of historical research, notations, but it still had some dreamlike structure and scenes that forced the reader to do some work. it wasn't some fully explained textbook for the layman.

you're a detail guy.
that has nothing, nothing to do with borges, comics, storytelling quality, or really this thread.
know what i mean?

The polarization I meant was your sarcasm, which I wasn't sure was sarcasm.

I did back away from associating hypertextuality with negative aspects of Morrison's works.

I sustain that is hypertextuality is both flexible and relative. By relative I mean that you won't find a comic book writer using more hypertextuality than Morrison and that GOTFP itself does not produce as much jumping as some of Morrison's works. The problem is that you imagine hypertextuality as being some some sort of impossible structure. It's shades of gray.

The impartality thing towards hypertextuality is old, but I'm sure you still see it as having negative connotation.

I think I used annotations in 700 rather for the classic references, not as necesary thing. I never rea Morrison with annotations prior to that, so I kinda arrived late to the annotations party. Still, in that case, hypertextuality or not (can't remember) I do remember that issue was a lot of fun with the annotations.

I might be wrong, but I don't think there's much hypetextuality to From Hell, as dense as it is. After I finished I went through the annotations, rereading only the pages they indicate. Yeah, the dream like things add the end were trippy, I just took it as something that might or might not be paranormal without giving it much though.

I think the degree of influence of Borges and Garden on each work is up for debate and relative, however, it's a clear influence. I find 7S a lot less convoluted than FC, yet it's hypertextuality and the references to Garden and Borges are more blatant to the point of undeniablility.

And I've been taking into account people that don't jump while reading (and that large chunk of them just claim so). My point being that while they are there, they are a much more reduced number when it comes to most of the other works of most of the other writers. Say it's 50:50, or even 60:40, most writers get less.

[T Hedge Coke]

What's wrong with conventional lifestyles?

On what planet is Mary Marvel leading a "conventional lifestyle," anyhow?

Because in this one, we have considerably more Foxgloves and Wandas than we do Mary Marvels and I'm not saying that only because I'm still bitter SHAZAM doesn't work for me.

(And in the DCU, statistically, it's still probably the same.)

[carabas]

Calm your horses. I think you're trying to pick up a fight where there's none. I just came up with something that would sound to me like a Gaiman character, even if it doesn't literally apply to any.

You're right in that as soon as I started to include non-humans in the list "regular girls" stopped aplying. Many of them pose as random/regular women or girls.

Ony one poses as human: Ishtar.

You're the one that said that runaway prositutes are a Gaiman thing, and I asked to clarify that, which you can't, because to the best of our recollection he's never had a runaway prositute in his stories.

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

On what planet is Mary Marvel leading a "conventional lifestyle," anyhow?

Because in this one, we have considerably more Foxgloves and Wandas than we do Mary Marvels and I'm not saying that only because I'm still bitter SHAZAM doesn't work for me.

(And in the DCU, statistically, it's still probably the same.)

Well, there's common-conventional an idealized-conventional. Mary Batson is a sort of idealized 50s girl. But yeah, it's basically just her and Ice at that extreme. The point was rather about Sarah not looking much like other Gaiman girls.

If you go with common-conventional, I'd say that the typical DC girl, is an Iris West that might have a secret identity as well. A white, straight woman around 30 years old, with an office work who has one or two main relationships. the second most common type are full time superheroes, like Wonder Woman, Fire, Ice, Starfire, Donna, etc. In any case, they don't remind of girls in Gaiman stories or the Sarah type of fairy tale non-princess little girl (Alice, LRR Hood, Goldie, Dorothy, Wendy).

You're the one that said that runaway prositutes are a Gaiman thing, and I asked to clarify that, which you can't, because to the best of our recollection he's never had a runaway prositute in his stories.

No I didn't say , and I've sustained that since the first reply. And the clarification, which also sustains so, has been repeated at least twice: "I don't remember many runaway prostitutes in Gaiman's stories specifically. I just tried to make up a character that sound's like one of his." and then even in the very comment you were replying to "I just came up with something that would sound to me like a Gaiman character, even if it doesn't literally apply to any".

The endless often kind of pose as regular people although they don't go as far as establishing full identities (well, save Destruction).

[direction9]

The polarization I meant was your sarcasm, which I wasn't sure was sarcasm.

I did back away from associating hypertextuality with negative aspects of Morrison's works.

I sustain that is hypertextuality is both flexible and relative. By relative I mean that you won't find a comic book writer using more hypertextuality than Morrison and that GOTFP itself does not produce as much jumping as some of Morrison's works. The problem is that you imagine hypertextuality as being some some sort of impossible structure. It's shades of gray.

The impartality thing towards hypertextuality is old, but I'm sure you still see it as having negative connotation.

I think I used annotations in 700 rather for the classic references, not as necesary thing. I never rea Morrison with annotations prior to that, so I kinda arrived late to the annotations party. Still, in that case, hypertextuality or not (can't remember) I do remember that issue was a lot of fun with the annotations.

I might be wrong, but I don't think there's much hypetextuality to From Hell, as dense as it is. After I finished I went through the annotations, rereading only the pages they indicate. Yeah, the dream like things add the end were trippy, I just took it as something that might or might not be paranormal without giving it much though.

I think the degree of influence of Borges and Garden on each work is up for debate and relative, however, it's a clear influence. I find 7S a lot less convoluted than FC, yet it's hypertextuality and the references to Garden and Borges are more blatant to the point of undeniablility.

And I've been taking into account people that don't jump while reading (and that large chunk of them just claim so). My point being that while they are there, they are a much more reduced number when it comes to most of the other works of most of the other writers. Say it's 50:50, or even 60:40, most writers get less.

trolling of the highest order. salute.

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

trolling of the highest order. salute.

Well for someone who is pretty sure on his grasp on definitions, your use of trolling is totally wrong. Firstly, I didn't bring back the topic, secondly, it's not off topic (as it is an attempt to try to elucidate what Morrison does, specifically something pointed in different unfair ways by his detractors), not really emotional, and finally, I'm making it very clear that as much as I think I'm right, it's my *view*.


I think that you're just running out of things to say, specially since most of my last comments make room for mistakes and you're just making a personal attack without addressing anything. And what's your constant need to make personal attacks, anyway? Take it easy, if you disagree there's no need to bite.

[direction9]

Well for someone who is pretty sure on his grasp on definitions, your use of trolling is totally wrong. Firstly, I didn't bring back the topic, secondly, it's not off topic (as it is an attempt to try to elucidate what Morrison does, specifically something pointed in different unfair ways by his detractors), not really emotional, and finally, I'm making it very clear that as much as I think I'm right, it's my *view*.


I think that you're just running out of things to say, specially since most of my last comments make room for mistakes and you're just making a personal attack without addressing anything. And what's your constant need to make personal attacks, anyway? Take it easy, if you disagree there's no need to bite.

you however, will never run out of things to say about this topic despite how little
eh forget it

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

you however, will never run out of things to say about this topic despite how little
eh forget it

Easy. why so surly? It's all about attacking the person with you, isn't it? If you get tired or run out of arguments, just say "well, I don't agree". That's it.

[carabas]

No I didn't say , and I've sustained that since the first reply. And the clarification, which also sustains so, has been repeated at least twice: "I don't remember many runaway prostitutes in Gaiman's stories specifically. I just tried to make up a character that sound's like one of his." and then even in the very comment you were replying to "I just came up with something that would sound to me like a Gaiman character, even if it doesn't literally apply to any".

So basically you're just blabbering on without much content to what you were saying... You made a blatantly untrue statement and rhather than admitting it you keep on defending it.

The endless often kind of pose as regular people although they don't go as far as establishing full identities (well, save Destruction).

No, they really do not.
Death does it one day per year and that's about it.

[tony ingram]

Morrison v. Moore is just comics' version of Morrissey vs. Robert Smith, Oasis vs. Blur, Lennon vs. McCartney, Robbie Williams vs. Take That . . .

For two British comic writers that think of themselves as rock stars, its appropriate that they would follow the great British rock star tradition of intense feuds over nothing substantial.

I don't think they think of themselves as rock stars.