dogpoet

Started in on Delusion's Master by Tanith Lee last night.

I think his problem - at least, a year or two ago - was the exact opposite. He's lazy and easily distracted, relying on decompression to pad out desperately thin stories and ideas that he's snatched out of New Scientist and The Guardian seemingly at random. He's also in the habit of pumping out the same old characters over and over: the sassy, smart-arsed tough woman and the weary old male protagonist being the two most obvious ones.

 

Then again, I haven't read any of his stuff outside of Fell and Nextwave for years, so maybe he's much better these days.

I always get the impression that his main source of ideas is more issues of New Worlds from the early '70s, but perhaps that's unduly harsh.

Thanks, CC.

 

Doggie, good entries, both. I was too fascinated by the first one to be uncomfortable. I think the second one, same thing, too interested in trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

Actually I got the idea for the second from a (possibly erroneous) account in an internet news source of a Chinese tattooist who was writing vile Cantonese insults on his clients, who of course were all white folk who didn't have a clue what he was saying.

It's a fair criticism, though.

"The World's #1 Horror Author! He will show you the horror of nothing happening for 500 pages straight!"

Anne Rice does (or did when she wrote horror or porn, anyway) that as well.

It's more of a self-deprecating comment than a jab at the comic.

My mistake.

(Actually, this is better)

To my mind, anybody stupid enough to believe me when I said that I can tattoo the underside of his skin deserved no better than to be flayed alive, but even that got boring after a while. When he stopped whimpering I put him out of his misery and resolved to tell the next idiot that I could tattoo his eyeballs instead.

A vagina dentata is, in theory, a fine and useful thing, but it appeared to have driven Angela to suicide because she couldn't find a dentist who was willing to look at it after she'd broken a couple of teeth under circumstances she failed to describe in her suicide note. The stumps were in a bad way, and it looked like a blood borne infection that had started there had left her in utter agony for some days before she'd killed herself. Of course, it was hard to tell just how bad the infection of her second set of gums had become, as it was several days before the stench of her body rotting attracted enough attention to have the door of her flat down.

(Repulsive rather than disturbing, probably.)

Do they? I thought they didn't respect anything outside of a few graphic novels.

They do indeed: Krazy Kat, Little Nemo and Pog in particular get talked up an awful lot.

Anyway though, I won't hold an opinion because they do, nor because it's opposite to one they hold.

You wouldn't, but it sounds like Luis does.

Fair enough James, I bow to you superior knowledge and powers of recollection.

 

Ok, I still quite liked the artwork. Even though I can't remember the gratuitous nudity and large breasts.

 

To be honest, it's all I can remember.

I didn't think the plot was quite that bad, myself.

Funny to recall how the hardcore Cure fanz thought Friday was too upbeat. By any normal standard it's melancholy.

Well yes, but it's hardly 100 Years or All Cats Are Grey, is it?

And I disagree that Kirby is the most influential comics artist ever. I've said it twice, I'll say it again: without Winsor McCay, there probably wouldn't be Eisner and Kirby; if he's not a direct influence, he's at least important for being a pioneer and predating them for 30 years. You surely underestimate the importance of Little Nemo. Kirby's art influenced American comics, but art in South America and Europe evolved from different sources.

You appear to be confusing "comics" and "newspaper strips".

I consider the notion that newspapers strips are not comics to be completely bogus: sequential art is sequential art.

This'll be why newspaper strips are generally taken far more seriously than comics by Luis' beloved cultural definers and commentators, then.

Notice that he said 'chosen medium', and superheroes last I checked aren't a medium in themselves, much to the chagrin of John Byrne, I guess. So, yes, the matter of international influence plays a lot of importance here.

I disagree: superheroes are the main reason a lot of people view the medium with naked contempt, and the justification for the culture defining critical bigshots you're in awe of dismissing the whole medium out of hand. They aren't the only thing the medium has going for it, but they seem to be its main bequeath to western culture (as not even the SF anoraks read Olaf Stapledon or Phillip Wylie).

There are certainly more superhero comics published in the 'States than all the other genres put together.

As for international influence, presumably you hold the late Don Lawrence to be a more significant figure than Windsor McCay, then? Very influential man in European comics, who spent the last twenty years of his career producing work for the French market.

Fucking A!

 

I loves Rankin.

 

 

Seconded!

 

That would be fucking nice, a Rankin-penned Constantine.

If we're going for another thriller writer, how about Andrew Vachs? He's written a comic or two.

I hate most of the characters in Seinfeld. Not too much do I hate them, but just enough.

 

As do I; but someone told me that that was the "point of the show" or something. Bah.

I'd go along with that: I foundf it amusing initially, but after a while I started to find it very smug and irritating, and realised that I wanted to punch all of the characters apart from Kramer.

Can I correct the spelling with a red pen?

You might as well: I've had that from a proofreader. You could tell she used to be a teacher, put it that way...

And I disagree that Kirby is the most influential comics artist ever. I've said it twice, I'll say it again: without Winsor McCay, there probably wouldn't be Eisner and Kirby; if he's not a direct influence, he's at least important for being a pioneer and predating them for 30 years. You surely underestimate the importance of Little Nemo. Kirby's art influenced American comics, but art in South America and Europe evolved from different sources.

You appear to be confusing "comics" and "newspaper strips".

Also, bringing up once more the greatest cartoonist in History, the one and only Carl Barks, what visible influence did The King have on him?

"The most influential artist ever to work in the comics field" and "an influence on every single artist to work in the comics field" are not synonymns as a rule.

That's only your opinion about Barks' merits, btw. Others may disagree.

I'd also question that Pratchett's discworld books are a series in the sense you're talking about: they have a common setting and recurring characters, but it isn't like each one to appear is a sequel to the prior volume. (The last time he did that was The Light Fantastic, iirc.)

 

If you're restricting it to a chronological order of books, then no. But Men at Arms is a sequel to Guards! Guards! and The Last Continent is a sequel to Interesting Times even if other books were published in between.

 

And the kids' Discworld books from Wee Free Men onwards have been proper, consecutive sequels.

True enough, but I'm not sure that the occasional direct sequel (and apart from the kid's discworld books, which I haven't read, I can only think of three offhand) is quite the same thing as a series like Zelazny's Amber or Terry Brook's Shannara where each book to be published sequels the one published before.

Family highjinks once more. Oh. The joy. Somewhere, RTD is sitting in a room cut off from the rest of reality, thinking how much people love his family themed stories. Russell, why?

Presumably because he hates science fiction.

Ah. That would explain it. When they used to put it in inhalers.

A lot of asthmatics developed serious speed habits in the '50s due to those inhalers. (William Burroughs' wife was another.) Dick's taste for amphetamines is frequently cited as the main reason for his productivity in the '60s.

P.K. Dick actually died of heart failure following a stroke.

Right, I didn't know that.

I think a large problem is the same as in say the genre of sci-fi. Many of the writers entering the field are people who only read that particular genre. They have little accumulated literary knowledge outside mainstream comic books (meaning superheroes).

That was the reason the 1980s were so wonderful for comic books. You had writers who loved comic books, but had a vast literary knowledge and interest of different genres as well.

It was something rarely seen in the comic book world until that time.

Writers with backgrounds similar to the non-genre prose fiction writers working in the comic book field, branching off outside of mainstream superhero stories.

I don't know if that's entirely true though: Jack Kirby dragged a lot material from outside of the generic Superhero set of tropes into his comics in the '60s and '70s: mythology and all that cosmic space opera stuff for a start.

Director Michael Winner believes his 1974 film Death Wish to be the most copied film in cinema history.

 

Winner, 70, said Death Wish, which starred Charles Bronson as a vengeful vigilante, was a "watershed film".

 

The British director, who made two sequels, said that before he made the film it was "inconceivable" that a hero could be shown killing other citizens.

 

"It broke barriers that had existed since the inception of cinema," Winner told Reuters news agency.

Not even a trace of self importance or bullshit there, you'll note.

(And there was me thinking it was a crappy rip off of Dirty Harry...)

Easy, dogpoet. That song is to be saved for when Thatcher finally goes.

*affects high pitched munchkin voice and starts singing "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead..."*

Perhaps there are no geniuses period. Perhaps the world has created the notion because someone felt that we needed geniuses.

I'd assumed that a man of your socialist principles would be arguing that the idea of "the genius" apart from and above the common herd is a form of elitism?

(may of who, as mark says, would probably shit blood if you accused them of reading comics)

 

You mean James, not me.

You're right, that was James. My mistake.

When he can be arsed - which is increasingly rare these days, I'll admit - Ennis has a grasp of pacing, dialogue and characterisation that's as good as anyone else I can think of. And since the criteria for this bit of the conversation was "better than average", I think he can most certainly be included. His off days are shit, of course, but that applies to everyone.

It is a bit annoying that somebody who's greatest strength as a writer is his flair for characterisation and dialogue is pretty much restraining himself to writing about characters who are ridiculously grotesque freaks these days, right enough.