CSotD: bitch bitch bitch
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Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter is one of my most important stops of the morning, despite the fact that about 90% of what he talks about relates to comic books, which are a different medium from the strips I talk about.
For one thing, the sheer volume of stuff he posts every day means that I'm going to find something of interest. And I also appreciate the fact that he doesn't try to justify everything he links to as Great Important Content — often he admits it's just up there because he found it amusing or bizarre.
I can admire a person who knows a lot about what he does and yet resists the urge to take himself all that seriously.
Which is a segue, because Spurgeon tossed a lemon into my basket this morning and I'm going to do something that is outside the mission of this blog — I'm going to stop praising good work for a discursion on the subject of mean-spirited, egotistical snark that takes itself way too seriously.
I started CSOTD in part to offer an alternative to a couple of snarky sites where people make fun of comic strips. It's not that I don't think cartoonists should be immune from criticism. But a site that trashes the same half dozen strips day after day after day is not offering criticism anymore.
It kind of reminds me of the blowhards in Bully Beatdown who, in the first segment of the show, explain that they pick on their victims because they want to toughen them up. Right.
This in turn reminds me of the deep satisfaction I get in the second segment of the show when the bully steps into the cage with a professional MMA fighter and gets his ass kicked.
But you know what? Even Bully Beatdown gets kind of repetitive after you've watched a few episodes.
Still, the fans of Bully Beatdown are nominally taking up the side of the victim and cheering to see a swaggering jackass get what he deserves.
The attraction to these snarky websites is the desire to be invited to sit at the lunch table with the popular-but-mean kids. I understand that adolescent impulse, but I gotta say that, if you can hang with them and not begin to be filled with self-loathing, that's cool, but don't cut yourself shaving, because you won't enjoy the way your new friends react to the smell of fresh blood.
There are any number of these websites around, but Spurgeon linked to one by Tom Hart, who is an established cartoonist with a background in teaching cartooning. And other people who know about this stuff seem to know who the guy is, so it's not entirely a case of a frustrated wannabe trashing the work of people who are making it.
I guess. The guy has set up a blog in which he republishes the cartoons from the New Yorker and eviscerates them, and, given that he seems to be making a living at his craft, his motivation escapes me. Which makes me dislike the site a whole lot more than if he were just some pimplefaced wiseass in his parents' basement.
If you follow that above link, he'll tell you at great length exactly why New Yorker cartoons as a group suck, but then you have to go to his Tumblr account to find out exactly why each one really sucks. Or nearly sucks. Or pretty much sucks.
Here's an example of his expert analysis:
I think I like this one. The pins are pretty great. I think the walking ball could have been a bit funnier, made to look like it’s moving, as the pins are, but whatever. This is three decent cartoons in a row.
I would love to sit him down with a particular professor I had back in college who, I promise, would have cut him off at the start by suggesting he wait until he's sure whether or not he likes the cartoon before he raises his hand, then asked him how something can be "pretty great." Which I hope would have ended the colloquy, because the "whatever" would have been met, I think, with a pretty cataclysmic explosion of sorts probably I suspect maybe depending.
The goddam bowling ball is slanty. The leash is taut. What the hell do you want, Perfesser?
Speaking of college professors who wouldn't have tolerated this sophomoric bitchery even from their freshmen, it reminds me of a story another prof told us of a woman who cornered Ezra Pound (I think it was) and asked him to explain the meaning of one of his poems.
"It's a poem," he replied. "It doesn't mean anything, lady. It's just a goddam poem."
Meanwhile, I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend trying to figure out how to transmute this into a reality show about snarky cartoon sites:
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