Spider-Man — Threat or Menace?<\/p>\n
Oh, you know that one already? How about …<\/p>\n
Comic Books — Art or Writing?<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is, of course, far more complex than that. <\/p>\n Good art catches the eye. It can draw you to a comic book more quickly than writing, because it’s visible at first glance, even across the room.<\/p>\n Good art can, naturally, greatly enhance the joy of a story being told. It makes the telling <\/em>of the story better, though not necessarily the story itself<\/em> any better.<\/p>\n Good writing is <\/em>the story. It sustains <\/em>the book. It keeps you wanting to come back. And, six times out of ten, it will help keep, or attract, good artists. Hey, they gotta read the stuff, too, right?<\/p>\n A comic with good writing and good art is the ideal. A comic with bad writing and bad art is the nadir. “Good” and “bad” is relative and YMMV, of course. <\/p>\n So …<\/p>\n … A comic with good writing and good art gets a bad artist:<\/em> I wince. I’ll stick with it, though. I come back for the story, for the characters being described. The bad art interferes with that, like a good dinner not piping hot, or a nice piece of furniture with a big scratch. <\/p>\n … A comic with good writing and good art gets a bad writer:<\/em> I’ll stick with it … for a while. It takes an extraordinary artist to keep me going with bad writing. And if I stick with it, it’s in the hope that a good writer will be coming along soon, or that the artist will move somewhere else. But, to be honest, I’m just as likely to end up dropping it as not. It’s an attractively presented dinner that tastes off. It’s a pretty room with furniture that’s dreadfully uncomfortable.<\/p>\n At least that’s me. Comic books may be a visual medium, but “a medium for what”<\/em> is also very important. Even more important, to my mind.<\/p>\n (listening to: Sinatra, Frank, “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” from <\/i>Classic Sinatra)<\/i><\/small> Spider-Man — Threat or Menace? Oh, you know that one already? How about … Comic Books — Art or Writing?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogathon","category-media-comics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15360,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/25\/bt09-l-is-for-lonely-blogathon.html","url_meta":{"origin":7832,"position":0},"title":"BT09 – L is for Lonely (#Blogathon)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 25-Jul-09 5:54pm","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Liberty Meadows, Book 4, \"Cold, Cold Heart\"\u00a0(Image) w\/a.\u00a0Frank Cho\u00a0 Writing New reader? Art Non-comics reader? I need to look up Liberty Meadows some time next week, because I'm not sure whatever happened to this title -- originally a comic strip, then a web comic, and collected and reprinted, it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogathon"","block_context":{"text":"Blogathon","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogathon"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/stars4.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":15395,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/26\/bt09-fortune-and-glory-kid-blogathon.html","url_meta":{"origin":7832,"position":1},"title":"BT09 – Fortune and glory, kid! (#Blogathon)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 26-Jul-09 1:35am","format":false,"excerpt":"Cool -- I'm featured on the main Blogathon page: Dave has been posting fantastic comic book reviews. He\u2019s covered everything from Star Trek to Buffy to The New Avengers and then some. The rating system is separated into four categories: Writing, Art, New Reader, and Non-Comics Reader, which makes it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogathon"","block_context":{"text":"Blogathon","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogathon"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15375,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/25\/bt09-p-is-for-punch-blogathon.html","url_meta":{"origin":7832,"position":2},"title":"BT09 – P is for Punch (#Blogathon)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 25-Jul-09 9:26pm","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Powers, Vol. 10, \"Cosmic\"\u00a0(Icon) [collects #13-18] Powers, Vol. 11, \"Secret Identity\"\u00a0(Icon) [collects #19-24] Powers, Vol. 12, \"The 25 Coolest Dead Superheroes of All Time\"\u00a0(Icon) [collects #25-30, Annual 2008] w. Brian Bendis; a.\u00a0Michael Oeming\u00a0 Writing New reader? Art Non-comics reader? These three volumes wrap up the current run of Powers,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogathon"","block_context":{"text":"Blogathon","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogathon"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/stars4.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":15308,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/25\/bt09-and-so-it-begins-blogathon.html","url_meta":{"origin":7832,"position":3},"title":"BT09 – And so it begins … (#blogathon)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 25-Jul-09 7:00am","format":false,"excerpt":"Everything's ready to rock. Showered, coifed in 2006's Blogathon shirt (they didn't release one this year until this week, alas), coffee made and poured, materials sorted, everything's a go, go, go. The plan is to have my little timer set on the 5-minutes-of mark, to finish up posts before they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogathon"","block_context":{"text":"Blogathon","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogathon"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15348,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/25\/bt09-h-is-for-historical-blogathon.html","url_meta":{"origin":7832,"position":4},"title":"BT09 – H is for Historical (#Blogathon)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 25-Jul-09 2:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Hellboy, Vol. 4, \"The Right Hand of Doom\"\u00a0(Dark Horse) [collects a whole bunch of stuff I'm not going to type] w\/a. Mike Mignola\u00a0 Writing New reader? Art Non-comics reader? Ah, the golden days of the mid-to-late 90s, when Mignola was first introducing Hellboy to the world (I was there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogathon"","block_context":{"text":"Blogathon","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogathon"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/stars5.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":15383,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/25\/bt09-s-is-for-strong-blogathon.html","url_meta":{"origin":7832,"position":5},"title":"BT09 – S is for Strong (#Blogathon)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 25-Jul-09 11:25pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This post puts me 3\/4 of the way through my TPB stack, which, all things being equal, I would have been targeting to be at by 1 a.m., putting me 90 minutes ahead of schedule. On the other hand, I'm running at about 75% efficiency right now, I think, so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogathon"","block_context":{"text":"Blogathon","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/blogathon"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/stars4.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n(listening to: Monty Python, “Bruces’ Philosophers Song (Bruces’ Song)” from <\/i>Sings)<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"