10 January 2011

Why Does This Post Suck?

This post is in two parts. The first part is the sucky part. The second part is where I ask why, and that part, maybe, doesn't completely suck.

First part: The Sucky Part

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In my penultimate post...

[I just love that word: "Penultimate!" Yay! It sounds like this HUGE exclamation, but it just means "next to last."]

Uh, anyway, in my next to last post, I was still on the Alan Moore theme, and I still am. I am chipping away at this. I am going somewhere with this. And we will get there, soon.

Sometimes it seems that there are, like, eight people on the whole planet are are interested in comics, and of these, one or two are interested in the kind of edgy, artistic comic that catches my attention.

I am not a comic fan, in general.

In fact, I mainly dislike comics. They are boringly drawn infantile fantasies, most of them. But Alan's work is different.

I became a fan of Alan Moore when I first read The Watchmen. It blew me away. I hear that it changed everything, but I see that is not true. Most comics are still boringly drawn and infantile. What I think happened is that Alan influenced a handful of artists and writers who then realized that they too could break away from all that.

I know it made me want to DO comics. I did. It is an INSANE amount of work! Another Story, Another Time.

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And speaking of insanity, they made a movie. It was pretty good (for a movie). I watched it twice, and that's saying something, but the comic was brilliant.

Alan, one will gather if you read the wiki (linked above), is not a fan of the movie and did not participate in its production, regarding the comic as intentionally "unfilmable" because he purposely exploited the comic form to do things that can be done only in that medium.

That is a great topic, and I agree with him, but it is not where I am going at the moment; rather, it was I alluded to previously: who watches the watchers?

Second Part: The Maybe Not So Sucky Part

This post sucks. Why?

Here is my list.

  • It does not really invite a response. That "Who Watches the Watchers" was a fake question, really.
  • Most people don't care about comics.
  • Most people don't know who Alan Moore is.

Now, I had hoped to pique people's interest in Alan, and I may have succeeded to some small degree, and to an extant, I think I have covered that I am really not a fan of comics, in general, either, so the last two points are not so important, and actually, I am interested in the state of the world and serious social criticism, so I do want to address those on an ongoing basis.

BUT, I did not write something that genuinely engaged feedback.

Maybe.

I did some soul searching. I asked myself, "What opinions am I really interested in? Am I really interested in criticism?"

Well, I do want to know how to write a post that doesn't suck. And, yes, I find criticism to be very useful.

Any advice is welcome.

2 comments:

Andrea L. Cole said...

An ex of mine got me interested in the Watchmen.. I haven't read it though, sadly, because A) I live in a tiny tiny town and our library's collection of books runs neck-and-neck with our population and B)I find the prices of graphic novels prohibitive. As much as I want too, I have a hard time justifying 40 bucks for graphic novel when my kids are outgrowing their clothes at an alarming rate. It's on my to-read list, though.

Richard G. Crockett said...

Hi Yandie,

Boy do I ever understand that. The first copy I read was borrowed from a friend. The next copy, I confess, was a pirated internet version. I felt guilty about that. I like to support artists, so I eventually did fork out the bucks.

It's got to be something I want to read and re-read before I'll pay that kind of money.

Some libraries do Inter-Library loans. Don't know about yours, but it might be worth looking into.

Anyhow, thanks for your thoughts,

Rick

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