Thanks.

Also…you’re correct that Tucker does express some modest interest in the work of Chris Ware. But the stuff he really says he’s enthusiastic about is Nana (read by many, many more people than any super-hero book you’d care to name) and 100 Bullets. Of course, neither of those fit into your thesis quite as neatly, so I can see how you skipped over them….

-Some reviewers want to be friends with everyone, and will try to find a way to make every review a positive, no matter what tripe they are reading. The more extreme member of this category is the “quote whore”, who wants to keep getting free books and keep getting quoted, so their reviews will be regularly positive and full of sound bytes.

-Some reviews can be either positive or negative, but you get the impression that the opinions expressed are hest and informed.

-Some reviewers have made a career of their acerbic wit, which is best used when the review is a bad one. You can only compliment something so many ways, but there’s no end to the ways you can come up with to lambaste something.

Too often, reviews are just excuses for the writer to show off how witty they are. They’ll lash out with vitriol on the work being reviewed, the genre it’s a part of, and the people that enjoy it. The writer comes off as being independent and edgy, he gets lots of publicity, usually from the people he’s lambasting, and he goes off and takes advantage of his newfound “fame”. See above.

The basic problem is that when someone like Simon Cowell pillories another poor harpy with delusions of grandeur, he has a great deal of experience in the music industry. He’s speaking from a position of knowledge and experience. You may not agree with his opinion (and of course, that’s all a review is), but at least he’s got the history to suggest that he’s getting his opinion from a position of experience.

I don’t get any sense of enjoyment for comics from Mr. Stone’s diatribe. When I rail against things that happen in the industry, it’s from a position of “This is wrong, or foolish, or just plain stupid, and should be fixed or improved to make the industry better.” When I read the piece, I never got any message other than “This is just plain stupid”.

He strikes me as one of the many folks in new York who will turn up their noses at any musician that dares to get a big contract, insisting that only the obscure bands with 18 fans are making “real” music. The folks who said They Might Be Giants lost their edge once they stopped putting out EPs ad signed with a big label. The guy who’ll espouse the obscure for the sole purpose of making themselves appear more edgy and hip. You know…art snobs. The Dead Milkmen had a harsher name for them in their song “You’ll Dance to Anything”.

He tried to show he was “down” with comics by saying he liked an issue of the Detroit Justice League that found by accident. But he immediately started espousing the glories of Chris Ware and the “Arty” comics that he can find in NYC.

He comes off like the guy at Entertainment Weekly who they make review things he hates. Wit for wit’s sake is fine, but if you want to write a witty column, don’t bother trying to pretend you’re actually reviewing this stuff. This is Dr. Laura for comic books. If you expect an honest and helpful opinion, you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you’re looking to see a guy rip a new one to some random thing, be it a comic book TV show or childresn’t sticker book, sit down and get some popcorn.

It’s a shame the Weekly world News is out of business. If they ever needed a new ghost writer for Ed Anger, he’d be perfect.

Final Crisis and all the stuff that built up to it is bad enough, but DC letting Morrison run wild with Batman and all this R.I.P. stuff after The Dark Knight movie’s success is just incredibly short-sighted. They might sell a lot of Year One, Killing Joke, and Dark Knight Returns trades to new readers, but the new stuff isn’t going to sell to those same people. Hell, some readers who have been around and have familiarity with the DCU/Bat-mythos aren’t buying (including me)!