tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (02/13/86)
Part two of response on "God Loves, Man Kills". In article <2667@colossus.fluke.UUCP> moriarty@fluke.UUCP (The Napoleon of Crime) writes: >If you find super-hero stories infantile, then I'm >sure you won't enjoy the majority of things reviewed in net.comics. For >better or worse, the majority of comics deal with the super-hero genre. >Most of us who read a lot of comics accept that genre, even though a lot of >us believe that Sturgeon's law about the percentage of crap in anything >extends to the comics field. Me, I grade on several things: depth of >characterization; artwork and the way it's presented; dialogue; absurdity; >and most importantly, whether I enjoyed myself or not. "Thunder Bunny" is >certainly not Twain, but I get a kick out of it nonetheless, due to its >light-hearted manner to the super-hero theme. Not satire, but more the >tongue-in-cheek effect of Beck & Binder's Captain Marvel. I'm sorry, but I'm getting awfully tired of this use of Sturgeon's Law to excuse failings of a genre. Do you read the crap, or do you make an effort to only read the ten percent? Frankly, from the usual run of comics to appear in reviews here, I have come to the conclusion that =none= of the reviewers here makes this effort, that they are in fact very happy to pour the 90% into their minds with the same zest as the 10%. Any mention of the obvious failings of the field, such as the artificial plot devices that usually take the place of real personal transactions, or the incredible sameness of plot, or the obvious appeal to vicarious power- trippers, or the unsubtle exposition of characters in artificial introductory sequences (see the novel under discussion for a perfect example), or the reduction of characters to origin stories, is easily dismissed with "Yeah, but nine-tenths of EVERYTHING is crap!" Sorry, but that is not an adequate excuse for stagnation. I would someday like to hear a superhero fan try at least to respond to these criticisms, not just to ignore them. I have to wonder if people are even capable of understanding them! I'm not sure what your point is in the passage starting with "Me" and ending with the paragraph. I discussed each of those factors. It seems almost as if you have ignored everything except my criticisms of unoriginality, and then claimed that I judge on nothing but originality. Shades of net.religion! Incidentally, I think Thunderbunny is unreadable and pretentious. >So, in summary, the above is why I put God Loves, Man Kills where I do. I >wouldn't rate it any higher than an A, i.e. one of the best products of that >year in comics. It has a niche in my comics memory. Mainly, it moved me, >due to the elements above. If you feel the sentiment is smarmy, fine; I >don't, and I feel that in this book Claremont has captured the "persecuted >family" that defines his X-Men better than in any other X-Men appearance he >has written (a feeling which has been lost of late in his works). Oh well, only an A, that's certainly not putting it up on a pedestal :-). As for "the elements above", the only one you discussed in any depth, as in giving one or more whole sentences to it, was Anderson's cinematic style. So I really don't know what you're referring to. There was no particular instance of good characterization or plotting cited, though I cited several specific cases of bad plotting and characterization. There was no mention other than Sturgeon's Law hand-waving of how you felt the obvious flaws were made up for. I remain in ignorance.... >Well, onto the minor point. You seem to feel that Stryker lost his potency >because of his one-dimensionality; that it comes down to "Black Hats vs. >white hats". Well, I admit that Stryker is not developed into a full >character, though I don't think he's the icon you seem to elaborate on. A >comic or graphic novel has a limited amount of space to define something in, >and Stryker shows the limitations of this. This sort of special pleading is uninteresting. If Claremont is incapable of using a short graphic story format in order to characterize well, then he should not write graphic novels in that format. I also find the length plea irrelevant. If 60-some pages are not enough for a novel-quality story, then write one with 120 pages or 240. I think this is a big problem with most so-called graphic novels; they are not graphic novels, but two-issue or three-issue comic book stories. They take perhaps ten or fifteen minutes to read, and are really not novels at all, in any way. There are very few subplots, very sparse characterization, and little depth of description of anything that happens, all of which are fundamental to the novel form. Typically, you also ignored my criticism of the particular trite comic book device used to bring out Stryker's character, the origin story. I showed how this can never produce complex characters. No response. >However, I don't see (and I've >said this before) why you feel Stryker represents fundamentalists. He seems >to be someone who has mixed religion with the anti-mutant fervor, and I'm >not at all sure that it goes any farther than that. Besides, I don't see >Stryker as evil, especially "comic book evil" (`Nyah-ah-ah'). I think the >reason I found him effective was that he is a crazed fanatic, who believes >absolutely that he is doing God's work. In comparison, I find Fallwell and >the majority of the fundamentalist preachers you and I both seem to object >to as ranging from intolerant narrow-minded people who are trying to alter >the constitution to fit their ideas of morality, to con-men (Fallwell fits >here). "Comparison" was definitely the right word to use, not "contrast", though I think you probably meant the latter. It is plain that Claremont was trying to inject a theme by using Stryker, although it was an unsuccessful effort. (Most super-hero fans would be incapable of seeing a real theme no matter how obvious in any case.) He was trying to show that intolerance is a continuum, and that there is no real difference between a seemingly benign intolerance like that of Robertson and a fanatical intolerance like Stryker's. But he missed the real point that effective bigots rarely preach hate explicitly, and he exaggerrated Stryker into a very typical high-tech super-villain. The theme lacked any depth of analysis beyond pointing out that intolerance is really a desire to destroy, and this has been pointed out many times in far better ways. >And as to a "punch-out", by FAR the best thing about this book is >the conclusion, with the X-Men and Kitty refraining from attacking Stryker. This sort of Star Trek "I'm better than you are"-ism is one of Claremont's worst points. Someone actually LIKES this sort of heavy-handed moralizing??? (Of course, Marv Wolfman does. Next question.) What I enjoy is watching for the deus ex machina that invariably resolves the situation. Will the aliens come down and tell Kirk that he wins because he wouldn't kill? Does a cop blow away the bad guy? Stay tuned next week for "Too Wimpy To Make My Characters Face Up to their Responsibilities".... >His own fanaticism leads him to draw on her, and the rescue comes from >OUTSIDE the group of heroes -- from someone not involved in the conflict, >someone who has seen that the prejudice Stryker believes in is wrong -- >from someone ORDINARY (the implication: "like us"). This moment is >effective due much to the frame-by frame pull-away from Stryker to the >close-up of the cop -- but I find that this scene almost always makes me >release tension, due partly to the effective build-up in tension in the >frames before that, but due mostly to the feeling that this IS still a >society that believes in right and wrong, and has not let fear dull its >humanity completely. I'd almost call it a moral K.O., or a re-affirmation, >after all the fear and bigotry in the rest of the book, that there is still >a right and wrong in this country; that the fanatics are not in control, and >that the reason of the masses is still there. That feeling about this society is precisely the sort of smug "Well, I'm much better than the villain" feeling that I wrote about originally. Naturally, this point was ignored. >I feel that it had much less to do with than the idea of prejudice. One >can still think back to some of the atrocities of the 60s during the civil >rights movements and realize that things like this are possible in Americans >(another good moment -- perhaps trite, but effective -- is where Kitty says >to Ms. Hunter "What if she'd called me a NIGGER-lover?"). Perhaps, there, >is the core point to the excellence of this book -- Claremont and Anderson >got the true, awful feeling of prejudice by the seat of the pants and held >onto it through the majority of the book, depicting it from it's more >conventional, frequent forms (name-calling, suspicion) to the very rare >ultra-extreme (child killings). Wrong. He started with child-killings. Name-calling and suspicion on the part of the black hats was never seen. (I've already talked about how badly the "Nightline" scene was bungled...) Prejudice is held very much at arm's length: one feels that one could never be suckered into participating in such an obviously hateful movement, and there is never any question that the people behind the movement are malevolent and evil. Their motivations have far more to do with an excuse for conflict than with anything we can imagine in a real, complex human being, which all of us are, even Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. In fact, prejudice is very subtle, and the reasons people have for their prejudices are very complex and well worth exploring. I do not think Claremont even tried to do this. Because nothing even slightly new is said about prejudice, and in fact the same old comforting untruths (prejudice is obvious, it couldn't happen to me) are put forth, there is really no theme. And theme, together with characterization, plot, and in-depth description, are absolutely vital to a novel. This is not a novel, but a typical comic-book story. It may be diverting, but it is ultimately trivial, and hardly worth praise or even a second look. Incidentally, if you are honestly interested in the theme of prejudice, may I recommend Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here", about a fascist takeover of the United States? Lewis truly understands, and explains without overt moralizing, the social and psychological dynamics of the subject. It may at least show you why I consider Claremont's treatment of the theme pathetic and completely worthless. Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot {sun,ihnp4,ptsfa,frog}!hoptoad!tim
phoenix@genat.UUCP (phoenix) (02/22/86)
In article <512@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: >Part two of response on "God Loves, Man Kills". > >In article <2667@colossus.fluke.UUCP> moriarty@fluke.UUCP (The Napoleon of Crime) writes: > >>And as to a "punch-out", by FAR the best thing about this book is >>the conclusion, with the X-Men and Kitty refraining from attacking Stryker. > >This sort of Star Trek "I'm better than you are"-ism is one of Claremont's >worst points. Someone actually LIKES this sort of heavy-handed moralizing??? >(Of course, Marv Wolfman does. Next question.) What I enjoy is watching for >the deus ex machina that invariably resolves the situation. Will the aliens >come down and tell Kirk that he wins because he wouldn't kill? Does a cop >blow away the bad guy? Stay tuned next week for "Too Wimpy To Make My >Characters Face Up to their Responsibilities".... > *I* like this kind of "heavy-handed moralizing". Possibly I am infinitely naive, but I happen to think that "Good" *is* better than "Evil" and one of the reasons that I think so is because *good* while admitting that it may be imperfect, strives to do better than its limitations; and it does not fight *evil* with its own weapons. If *good* does so, then *evil* has already won, has it not? The end never justifies the means. -- The Phoenix (Neither Bright, Dark, nor Young) ---"A man should live forever...or die trying." ---"There is no substitute for good manners...except fast reflexes."