CSotD: The Case of the Crowd-Sourced Critics
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Brian Fies is very high on my list of good friends I've never met, but that's not why I'm plugging his newest project here. Well, except to this extent:
In 2004, when Brian was working on his first book, Mom's Cancer, he posted pages online and solicited input from the gang at rec.arts.comics.strips.
That was not particularly unusual: A lot of people posted webcomics and solicited input from racs in those days, but a lot of that input consisted of faint "That's nice. Keep it up!" praise in a world where silence was to be interpreted as a bad review.
But Mom's Cancer was so above and beyond what anybody else had brought to the party that it got geniune criticism, in particular over a character he depicted in a way that some people thought was wonderfully inventive and some of us (note that phrasing) thought broke format and needed to not happen.
Debate went back and forth and, in addition to making several smaller changes suggested by the gang, Brian eventually sided with the latter group and changed the character, which is not why the book was then picked up by Abrams and went on to win an Eisner and be translated into several languages, but perhaps it was part of the reason.
While he only showed preliminaries of his second book, "Whatever Happened To The World of Tomorrow" to a select group of critics, Brian has begun posting pages of his latest project, "The Last Mechanical Monster" and is actively soliciting comments from visitors. That could be you.
I have to admit that, while I added some thoughts to get the ball rolling, most of what I had to say was more or less along these lines:
I really like the mood and tone of this piece, and I don't want to add a lot of spoilers or suggest how other people should feel about it, but there is a combination of levity and suspense that, in my always-humble opinion, is very well-handled.
The story is an extension of a 1941 Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, a beautifully restored version of which Brian includes on his site, and there are several notable aspects of that piece which fit what I wrote about Superman recently: This is early Superman, so he isn't completely almighty, and he is still leaping tall buildings at a single bound rather than actually flying.
The more DC tampered with Superman — extending his powers and then coming up with ridiculous explanations that tried to make him logical — the more charm he lost. It's as if Warner Brothers felt compelled to explain how a rabbit could walk upright and talk.
Sometimes, when someone asks "How is that possible?" the answer is "Relax, kid. It ain't a documentary."
Superman isn't in this book — the cartoon has slipped out of copyright, but the character is trademarked — but Brian continues the same enjoyable flirtation with reality as was in that early incarnation.
This does not, however, free him from some obligations to credibility, and you don't have to make sweeping critical observations to be helpful: One anonymous reader saw this panel and commented, "those look like clip-on braces/suspenders. A classy old gent like your protagonist would wear button-on braces."
Brian acknowledged the comment, thanked him and promised to become more well-informed on classic suspenders. And that's the kind of niggling little continuity/authenticity flaw that, had it gotten into the final product, would be of much more importance than whether or not giant robot monsters could actually exist.
So come one, come all, and, even if you don't find you have something to add to the pot, it will be an opportunity to watch a work-in-progress as it progresses.
Meanwhile, speaking of robotic fantasies
The Amazon drone cartoons continue, at which point the lame factor begins to be overcome by the "What, are you just hearing about this now?" factor because, come on, man, this is like the third wave of something that didn't deserve a first wave.
However, I do have something positive to say about them: They aren't about shaking hands with unapproved foreign leaders and they aren't about celebrating at a celebration.
Brace yourself for a torrent of tiresome cartoons, folks: We've got another Benghazi on our hands, a manufactured outrage that requires ignoring both reality and precedent, to which, in this case, we add the inexhaustible arrogance of the prototypical Ugly American.
The issue with the selfie is somewhat related to people who share stupid urban legends on Facebook without bothering to check Snopes.
In this case, it would have taken all of five seconds to learn that joy, laughter, singing and celebration are not only appropriate but expected in South Africa.
In fact, today's Mail & Guardian criticizes the service for not being merry enough:
Whether the many foreign dignitaries had a sense that the crowd, as representing the people of South Africa, respected Mandela, is not clear. Many were left confused as their speeches had to compete with the sound of boisterous singing. …
The singing, of course, is simply how South Africans celebrate a life well lived – especially when stuck in a stadium for too many hours, in the cold rain, and especially when subjected to stadium-quality sound that made nonsense of most speeches, even those not boring to begin with. …
(T)he sentiment of the day was not expressed in the eloquent words from many worthies, or the number of people who kept their seats for more than eight hours to provide a respectable backdrop. It was seen in the first chorus of Shosholoza on a train platform at 5.15am, and in the cries of "Viva Madiba, viva!" as people drifted from the stadium later in the afternoon.
Of course, those who want to hate Obama are delighted to find another empty vessel in which to dump their bile. But it requires arrogance.
You would think that having someone say, "That's how they do it in South Africa, and good manners include fitting in with the mood and spirit of your host's gathering" would inspire some backing off on assumptions, but one angry Obama-hater responded that this is all well and good for the South Africans, but Obama is not South African and should have behaved differently.
Oh, right, I forgot: He's not from South Africa. You've been telling us: He was born in Kenya.
As for the handshake with Raul Castro, this is a bonus Benghazi fantasy for the haters, who seem to think that, while celebrating at a celebration is rude, refusing to be polite to your host's other guests is the essence of good etiquette.
It also, of course, requires them to forget the 1972 handshake that made it possible for us to ship all our jobs overseas in order to enrich what is now the sole major Communist nation in the world, as well as to ignore Don Rumsfeld's handshake with that man whom we don't admit we ever knew in the first place.
Or, I dunno, maybe they just figure, if they're gonna lose the Latino vote, they might as well lose it all, because I know there are plenty of Cuban-Americans who would like to see more normalization take place.
Anyway, it could have been worse. At least he didn't say, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul."
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