I was also a bit confused as to why I had barely even heard of any of these books. I’m not asking for them all to be superhero blockbuster events, but even one great mainstream book would have been nice.

Don’t forget “Holy ____, Batman!” in your list of journalistic sins.

It’s really not popularity they’re avoiding, it’s superheroes. There are plenty of good, unpopular superhero comics. If you think about it, these publications don’t have a comics department, but they maybe have a book critic who was an English major who loved Maus and Cerebus, and I think that’s reflected in these lists.

Your opinion is right, Lucas. Hey, I don’t mind some “art-house” stuff if it’s about something that interests me. I’ve been turned on to some really great stuff that’s not capes & tights. Good storytelling is good storytelling, regardless of the genre. It’s wny a movie like TDK can be serious Oscar contender.

Anyhow, I appreciate hearing about things I might’ve otherwise missed. But there’s no reason why a book like Azzarello’s “Joker” (for instance) shouldn’t be a on a list with the more “artsy” stuff. Assuming that the critic is open to such a book and indeed liked it. I haven’t read it yet, but the reviews I’ve read have generally been very good.

Aw, get over yourself. Superheroes are a dying genre, and while they reigned supreme for years, your assertion that “the majority of comics are superhero books” isn’t even true anymore, unless you’re limiting that with qualifiers like “direct market, monthly, pamphlet format”. Sure, the shelves of the local comic shop are dominated by Marvel and DC, but as for comics that SELL? It’s all manga and graphic novels, with people buying them at bookstores. The superhero-fan babymen don’t even have the “we’re more popular” argument to desperately cling to anymore.

No, if you’re talking mainstream, there’s lots more out there that people want to read other than over-serious, over-complicated, over-stupid stories of guys in tights beating each other up (or, as is more likely these days, crying about their fellow spandex fetishists being raped and dismembered). Maybe some people will recognize the one or two actual decent good superhero comics (All Star Superman will probably show up on quite a few lists), but you’re not going to see the likes of Green Lantern or New Avengers on any self-respecting critics’ best-of-the-year roundup for one simple reason: THEY. ARE. NOT. GOOD. So get over it already and read some actual good comics for a change.

I would agree with Matt Brady, were it not for the fact that he opened with a “get over yourself”, which always undermines the validity of the rest of what is said by whoever uses it.
Everything else, yeah, but please, it’s a phrase that needs to die.

“I am very glad that comics and graphic novels can be used and do get used for so many different kinds of stories.”
“I love the idea of celebrating the diversity that has been brought to comics, with much of that diversity coming in the last few years thanks to publishers like Top Shelf, Oni, AiT, and many others.”

I just hoped that maybe if I put that there again, you’d be able to read it this time, Matthew. Those sentences must have been invisible the first time you read them, through some kind of glitch.

A large majority of Shonen Manga is, in fact, Superhero comics. Much of the fantasy genre in Manga is essentially superhero comics, as well. The stories feature beings with powers beyond those of mere mortal men, using their abilities to combat evil. I have a hard time accepting that Superheroes are a genre in the first place, as stories featuring superheroes are told in many different genres. Accepting they are for your argument, it’s hard to think they’re dying, especially since you didn’t limit your generalization to just comics. There was a movie that came out this year that featured a superhero. It made about a billion dollars in the theaters, with several other superhero movies right behind it.

You’re right about one thing, All Star Superman was a great book. However, one of your examples of “NOT. GOOD.,” Green Lantern, has also been a very good book.

By the way, Ed’s right, your “get over yourself” goes a long way to exactly proving my point. The real point of this blog was to note that there are good stories for every set, in every genre, which you kind of repeated, so maybe you just didn’t get it. I’d like to note, as well, that I never said what I do or don’t read myself anywhere in this blog post. Thanks for reading!

I don’t understand why you have to hide behind weird out-of-left-field insults (”hide in your ghetto with your creepy friends”…what?), but that unfortunately ends this conversation. I’ll engage pretentious people, but I won’t engage all-out trolls beyond this kind of statement.

Lucas: Matthew Brady outright insulting you is a hell of a lot more respectable than you implying that you’re privy to the motives and intentions behind the people who make other “best of” lists. You title the post “pretentious”, a clear snipe at the creators of said lists–none of which you have the integrity to actually refer to directly–and then assign them motives that fits your argument, which, at it’s core, is simply “I’ve read some best of lists, and they don’t list works I think have quality.” That’s fine, except that you don’t actually produce those lists. And you make up a reason why these ethereal magic lists exists in a fashion you don’t agree with. And you don’t even respect your own taste and intelligence enough to say what those works are, or where they belong on your own magical list, one that apparently won’t have time for…well, what? You don’t make it clear. It’s not like you have an argument here to defend. You’ve got some random thoughts that you’ve constructed an insular reasoning that only you can define, which is sort of genius, because it means you don’t have to actually say anything. You can just keep throwing out “you’re a troll” and “that’s not what I said.” Well of course that’s “not what you said.” You didn’t “say” anything. You just made up a fantasy snob and than called him a snob. Good job.

I’d rather somebody outright say “You are dumb” then sit around ham-handedly implying it and hiding behind the stance that they aren’t picking a fight themselves. Besides, if you’re going to have the audacity to say “My opinion is right,” than you’ve either got to back it up with an actual argument that has some basis in something other than imaginary motive, or you’ve got to start prefacing all of these by saying “hey, i’m not going to actually stand up for myself by explaining why I think I know everything, or give an example of what I want, but I am going to make a bunch of vague remarks that irritate people and than i’m going to act all surprised when people get irritated back at me.”

It ain’t that hard. It’s blogging.

To Matthew J. Brady:

I know that you’re a respected blogger in many quarters, so consider this a friendly warning. You said: “But hey, you can hide in your ghetto with your creepy friends and wonder why people don’t want to come visit if that’s what you prefer.”

That’s incredibly insulting to Lucas, his decidedly non-creepy freinds, and anyone who enjoys super-hero fare in general (a group that I might remind you that you also belong to on occasion). It doesn’t include some of the earlier things you spewed, either. It’s also ironic that you would drop such a sentence in a piece titled “Pretentious Comic Readers”. Do you think that invoking the term “ghetto” or trying to classify people that you don’t know as “creepy” will win you any readers, friends, or awards? No. And we don’t need that here.

Earlier this week, Raven Gregory made a post that others took issue with. Lisa Fortuner came here to disagree, but she made intelligent points and raised high-minded issues of debate. You’re guilty of throwing any fans that like different things than you into the maw of a “creepy” “ghetto”. Nice.

I don’t want that here. If you want to debate Lucas, fine. Keep your insults to yourself.

The Oscar comment was in response to somebody else’s comment. It’s on this same thing here. Not Lucas. Some other dude was making a comment about artsy fartsy Best Picture winners, so I listed all the ones I could think of off the top of my head that were artsy fartsy. Like Braveheart and Driving Miss Daisy. Wasn’t in reference to Lucas in the slightest. If you read the comment two up, it’s pretty obvious, but I can understand skipping it, because I wish I had too.

And here’s the scoop: Too Cool To Be Forgotten? The book Matthew Brady brings up? It’s total crap. Well drawn, but sentimental trash. A nonsensical book that I loathed. Don’t know what Matthew Brady sees in it, and I love the guy like I love hot kisses. I can’t speak to Green Lantern, but that rage of the red lanterns thing was pretty awful too. I’m not sure which one is worse–i mean, Red was cheaper, but it had that whole vomiting thing going on. Most comics–most of the ones Marvel publishes, DC, Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, AiT, Drawn & Quarterly, Pantheon, Image, and…oh, I don’t know. Anybody else, including manga. They aren’t good. I don’t care if they’ve got Superman or they’ve got Wah Wah The Crying Rabbit And His Sensitive Feelings. Bad is bad, yes, it’s universal. You don’t get to turn me into an art first snob for the purpose of your argument–one, because I’m not an art first snob, I’m a hate-first jerk, and two, because this Isn’t An Argument. It’s a statement of irritation at terminology, of definition, and of the attitude that Lucas wasn’t being just as insulting as a guy who said “hey, you’re a stuff and stuff.”

Just like Lucas, you’re ignoring what is the basic insult that I find in the whole premise he wrote from, which is that he assigns intent to people who he doesn’t know and could have no possible way to interpret properly. He’s got no idea how or why the New York lists he referred to (in the comments, not the post) was created, yet feels confident to assign his own personal prejudice–which seems to be “this list fails to acknowledge popular mainstream work”–and that’s taken as if it’s somehow a worthy foundation for attack. Okay, why? Did Lucas talk to the people who came up with the list? Did he research it and call them on the phone? And they said “We only like what’s obscure and hard to find.” Because if they did that, then hey, we got their motives. Otherwise? Otherwise, what you got? This?

Ain’t enough man.

Yeah, and you know what? Now that Lucas–in the comments section, hours after the initial post, and only when it came up repeatedly–has made it clear what lists he was talking about, some of his stance does become clear. So, hey, egg on my face for not reading his mind in the first place, but still egg on my face for not reading it immediately after he mentioned it. All he had to do was link to it and point it out specifically! If you guys–and this is your prerogative–are going to have internetworked conversations with other posts, how hard is it to just link them and point them out? You’re updating the site pretty frequently, it’s not that hard for people to lose track of the conversation.

On your other thing–and man, I’m not sure if you’re serious, but here’s a serious answer: Not liking something isn’t the same as finding it painful. Loving comics means you read comics, not that you like them all the time. The second that somebody–me, you, a monkey in the sky–decides that they won’t try out a new work of art because of a previous experience where they didn’t like some other work is the second they join the club for weak, stupid people.

The majority of most creative output–comics, film, books, poetry, music, photography, painting–probably sculpture, I don’t know–are bad works. But in the long run, the bad will submerge in the face of the great, and you can re-read the great comics the rest of your life. That’s what makes them “great”, that’s what makes them Worth Searching For. And if there aren’t people–and I’m not one of them, so don’t think I’m referring to myself as one–who stand between the consumer and the publisher and say “this is crap” than you’ll be at the mercy of whatever the publisher, the advertiser, and the hype-monster provides. You’ll be at the mercy of people who reprint press releases, throw softball interviews at egomaniacal creators, and worst of all, the people who don’t care about comics as an art form, but instead chase after obsessive collecting impulses that won’t allow them to walk away from something they inherently don’t like and will never read again–the people who have longboxes of fetishized collection pieces they don’t care to read or look at, comics they don’t long to dive into for the zillionth time, or–if these maggots still exist–the speculating types who hold sway with a box of variant covers. That’s what happens when you say “let’s be positive all the time.” You cede the ground to the people who don’t care about art, and you give up on your own personal taste and intelligence. Because somewhere, there’s going to be a kid whose looking for his first comic–and god hopes it’s Calvin and Hobbes and not The Family Circus.

Tucker, I was indeed serious. And I appreciate your answer.

I’m not sure if you’re saying that “Let’s be positive all the time” is my approach. I don’t believe that you are, but I’ll make a note on it: I don’t believe in writing something positive every single time. I do believe in approaching the form with optimism and our audience with positivity. There are just times when I see some comments that bloggers make, and I have to question why they choose to spend their time doing what they do.

Again, I appreciate your answer.

Matthew, it seems we’re finally seeing eye to eye a bit here. I absolutely don’t think that non-superhero stuff is pretentious, just that the way these lists are presented sometimes is. I’m glad by your last couple sentences of your second paragraph there that you seem to realize that.

The ghetto comment really didn’t apply, even in the metaphorical way you intended here, and I hope you realize that. I don’t read *only* superhero comics by a long stretch. I’d like to think that with 6 years in the Army, having sung with Pavarotti at a young age, and not only having kissed a girl, but having actually married one that’s quite pretty, I’m not really the “stereotypical nerd,” either. (edit: which is not to say I’m not a nerd, cause I am. Although I really lean more towards geek…eh, that’s another post)

Those headlines ARE pretty terrible, and are really what sparked the whole blog!

Tucker, I just wanted to say, you are absolutely right about me not including the links in the first place. I forget how fast-paced this blog is running sometimes, and really it was just a slip. I’ve added them to the very first sentence for future readers. Thanks for that, but in the future just point it out civilly. Not every mistake is one that people have to be taken to task for by strangers on the internet (and yes, I recognize the somewhat hypocritical undertone to that statement, and I’m ok with it).

I wrote a long reply and the blog just lost it.
I’m really pissed.

Why is it that every contrary opinion that has come here kicks it off with a variation of “I’ll try to think of the worst mainstream book I can think of, and assume Lucas Siegel meant that”? I didn’t see him talking about Secret Invasion. I’ve seen him and Troy Brownfield making fun of it for months in their “Damn Dirty Skrulls” stuff.

Maybe he meant Fables (which was in the NYM list), or maybe he meant Jonah Hex or The Walking Dead. If he meant super stuff, maybe he meant Umbrella Academy. Shit, did anybody ASK him which super books he meant, or did they all just go “let’s get this guy”.

This whole needing validation of superheroes is just silly. Just like what you like. If you disagree with a list, tell the author of the list he’s a poopyhead or whatever. Lord knows I’ve told Tucker and Matthew that on more than one occasion. If they were to ever write back, “Kenny, you sir are the true idiot for having your own opinion,” then yes, they’d be pretentious then. But they don’t.

Ask Tucker, I’ll argue for Millar being a quality read at the drop of a hat, but I certainly wouldn’t consider his books to be on any serious list alongside Bottomless Belly Button or Kramer’s Ergot 7.

Stories can be fun and good on their own merits and yet still be crap when looking at art on the whole. I’m sure someone at sometime has had a deep love of Family Circus for some legitimate reason, but that doesn’t mean it stands the test of time or is good.

I don’t see how calling someone an idiot for having an opinion is pretentious. Mean, maybe, but pretentious? Some people have genuinely wrong opinions, and it’s hardly pretentious to point that out.

Interesting comments so far. I would say that the biggest problem with this essay (and I’ve noticed that it’s not alone on Blog@) is that it’s fluff. No substance. It’s basically a general generic rant against “pretentious art-house” best-of lists. You don’t really offer any specific critique of the selections and you don’t give any sort of criteria on how you would judge comics (be they “art-house” or not - heck, I’m not even sure how you’re defining “art-house”).

Basically it looks like an entry that was dashed off in a half-hour or less - and that’s fine, it is a blog after all, I’m just used to expecting a bit more.

So, you’re not looking for a Top Ten Best of 2008 list, you’re looking for a Top Ten “Popular” Things to Get More People Reading Comics. Those are two different things. Like, I could give the MK Ennis Punnisher Omnibus to a few people and they’d love it (it came out in 2008), but it’s not one of the 10 best things to come out this year.

On the other hand, I think trying to argue superhero comics as “popular” is a losing proposition. Manga outsells Marvel and DC stuff like mad. Comics based on video games outsell them. Superhero comics largely appeal to the same insular demographic and no one wants to join them. So, if you’re advocating a list of 10 books to get people to start reading superhero comics, good luck, a lot of people have been trying for a lot of years at that. No one’s buying into it.