Actually, folktales are the closest thing that Americans have to folktales.
But comic books are cooler than film criticism, too.

You might add Stephen Colbert to that list of nerds, although his nerdly tastes don't seem to be limited to comic books alone.

It's a weird American thing, but it seems to be waning somewhat. I think it was probably worse in the 80s and 90s, but it persists. They make fun of table-top role-playing gamers (like myself) for being anti-social, despite the incredibly interactive experience it gives us. They make fun of science-fiction fans, despite the fact that the genre seems to appeal to more and more people, and the subjects are usually deeper than a lot of other stuff.

It's got a certain high school feel to it. They want to appeal to the jocks and the cheerleaders, despite the truth that a bunch of them probably like the "uncool" things themselves these days. It's kind of pathetic, since writing for the school paper was probably a pretty low occupation on the high school and college newspapers.

I clutch a two-liter bottle of Coke Classic myself, secretly pining for the days of beet sugar and X-MEN #101-142.

The people who went to 'The Dark Knight' far outnumbered the people who went to see "the Wrestler", "Frost/Nixon" and "Slumdog Millionaire" combined.

This fools isn't a band geek making fun of the chess club. He's a band geek making fun of the homecoming committee. Almost every boy grew up reading comics, and so did a fair amount of girls. How many grew up reading Siskel and Ebert reviews?

I thought Lane explained himself pretty persuasively:

"The world of the graphic novel is a curious one. For every masterwork, such as “Persepolis” or “Maus,” there seem to be shelves of cod mythology and rainy dystopias, patrolled by rock-jawed heroes and their melon-breasted sidekicks. Fans of the stuff are masonically loyal, prickling with a defensiveness and an ardor that not even Wagnerians can match. One lord of the genre is a glowering, hairy Englishman named Alan Moore, the coauthor of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “V for Vendetta.” Both of these have been turned into motion pictures; the first was merely an egregious waste of money, time, and talent, whereas the second was not quite as enjoyable as tripping over barbed wire and falling nose first into a nettle patch...
The problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon. The result is perfectly calibrated for its target group: nobody over twenty-five could take any joy from the savagery that is fleshed out onscreen, just as nobody under eighteen should be allowed to witness it... Incoherent, overblown, and grimy with misogyny, “Watchmen” marks the final demolition of the comic strip, and it leaves you wondering: where did the comedy go?"

I haven't seen the film yet (Midnight show, bitches!), but it's possible Lane is responding to the 80s era politics of Moore's story. They're fairly overt and are probably the one aspect of the story readers 50 years from now will encounter and go "Wha?"

And as for fanboy stereotypes, be grateful that it's no longer mouth-breathing moron, which is the way every adult comic reader was defined up until the 1970s.

Mike

"The unbridled contempt for people who like comic books reaches something close to the feelings people have for parking cops and tax collectors."

Yeah, but at least we're not mimes!

"The unbridled contempt for people who like comic books reaches something close to the feelings people have for parking cops and tax collectors."
I think it's akin to the feeling some conservatives have towards liberals.
I can't imagine Captain America approving of what's gone on the last 8yrs. The X-men obviously wouldn't go for creationism. Spidey would appreciate a tax-cut and on...Modern technology and Conservatism just don't mix.

Not to question what is, I am certain, the vibrant and thrilling sex lives of film critics

See, for example, David Denby.

This is usually an argument that wingnuts employ, but it is interesting to note that Marvel Comics has a $1.9 billion market capitalization, more than 3x the market cap of the NY Times.

Worst. Post. Ever.

(Not really, but I thought it was incomplete without a nod to The Simpsons' grotesquerie "Comic Book Guy," who may be the most widely recognized example of the stereotype -- ironically from a comic book.)

By the way, the defense of "The Watchman" is not that it's just a great graphic novel, but that it's great literature -- better than Maus and even Persepolis. Perhaps if it slammed Nazis or Mullahs more, Lane would better appreciate it.

The problem, as Jeet Heer pointed out, is that there is no "world of the graphic novel."

It is a medium, not a genre, so the critique falls apart right there.

Class sensibilities are such that proving you have some kind of intellectual/professional "worth" involves a disdain for comic books. To admit an affection for comic books would risk appearing working class, so they're to be avoided at all costs, and their readers mocked in public to ensure the audience that you are truly the book-reading type.

Lane, being British, likely suffers these class insecurities much more than most, and certainly more than people like Colbert, Maddow, and Obama, who've managed to be successful on their own terms.

Now you can go out and rent "Heckler" and watch its great takedown of "film critics".

Clearly, Lane's real problem is with those insane people who think there's such a thing as the military-industrial complex. Like most middle-aged people with cushy jobs he fears nothing more than uppity young people who might - gasp - even be suspicious of his upper class pals.

I loved Watchmen - read it greedily when it first came out - and I'll see the movie as soon as I can. But Lane's take on the movie's politics definitely registered. The political vision does seem incredibly paranoid and nasty, which leaves a liberal like me who wants to believe in good government and rationality a little uncomfortable and wondering what I'm cheering for.

"prickling with a defensiveness and an ardor that not even Wagnerians can match"

That's unpossible.

And, well, the demolition of the comic -- at least the superhero comic -- was the intention of "Watchmen."

I'd like to jump on to Mike's point that Watchmen's 1985 setting is part of the issue. I am nervous about the film b/c I am not sure how well the politics of that era have aged. I would point here to David Edelstein's negative review of the movie in New York Magazine, in which he says that an ending that seemed outlandish in the days of Reagan seems "insanely pessimistic" today. Not yet having seen them movie (but going soon!) it strikes me that this particular line of criticism is more valid than the simple caricature of the leering 19 year old.

And about those 19 year olds who fear that America is/was/will be ruled by the military industrial complex: didn't we just learn that our Bush's lawyers told him it was okay to launch military operations in the US and suspend the Bill of Rights if he deemed it necessary to fight terrorism? And wasn't this pretty much the plot of V for Vendetta? (The recent film--the graphic novel had that great nuclear war spin on military fascism.) I am so glad Anthony Lane is here to tell me how crazy I am for believing in conspiracy theories about governments using war scares to assume dictatorial powers.

The unbridled contempt for people who like comic books reaches something close to the feelings people have for parking cops and tax collectors.

That's because YOU SUCK!

The fact that Moore was writing a critique of the violence present in the super hero genre seems to have fully flew over Lane's head. This isn't The Dark Knight Returns. This isn't Frank Miller trying to get over feeling rage about growing older.

"Lane's real problem is with those insane people who think there's such a thing as the military-industrial complex."

Actually, Lane's real problem is with perverts who take pleasure in spending two hours watching people get mutilated and murdered.

Yes to all y'all, and . . .

Thing is, The New Yorker is a venue that has promoted grown-up comics for fifteen years or so, ever since they brought Art Spiegelman into the fold, and now they run artists like Chris Ware. So Lane is making a genre distinction, he's defining a canon. I guess that's okay if he makes his case, but he is wrong. It does look like the movie is a bloody piece of crap, so I'm not saying he's wrong as a movie reviewer. But to heap contempt upon genre-comic readers is to heap contempt on his own magazine's readers, 'cause the readership for the medium is not that divided.

The more basic problem is that he thinks he can judge the comic by the movie, which is especially stupid when he spends so much time discussing Alan Moore's disgust with the movies of his works, and fan complaints, as if there is no reason for these things.

The passage Bloix quoted above contains the phrase "Snyder, following Moore . . . ." See, that's where he goes wrong. I thought the trailers for the movie looked pretty good (lots of images straight from the original), but then I saw this clip on MTV.com, where Dan and Laurie rescue Rorschach from prison.

***It is the stupidest thing I have ever seen on film.***

More to the point, it is 180 degrees removed from the premise, themes, worldview, characters, etc. of Moore's comic book. Snyder obviously did not understand what he read, though he's copied visual aspects of it. Lane doesn't recognize that there is any difference between the movie and book, and he misses the basic point that the book was a meta-fictional examination of the genre, not just another instance of it. The book has plenty of problems, but it is not what Lane describes.

But I guess I'm just another whining fanboy.

The whole thing is so stupid. First of all, Alan Moore of all writers is not limited to teen fan boys. I'm a woman, and an old one to boot, and I loved his work. To describe the world of Watchmen as eerily old fashioned in its concerns considering it was written with a very particular historical/political milieu in mind is as stupid as complaining that All Quiet of the Western Front involves too many germans and trenches. its *about* something--a particular time and place--in a way that the Incredibles and lots of regular, non animated movies, aren't.

There's something very powerful in the original comic which probably, like most of Moore's work, gets lost in translation even though Watchman itself was designed very cinematographically with a lay out like a camera angle for every shot. I myself have not forgotten the underlying role that nostalgia and kitsch play in enabling a corrupt and repressive political regime to subordinate its citizens. Because it was through reading WAtchmen and getting to that point in the story that I grasped something that I had not understood about Reagan's appeal to the the republican masses. And by god, the comic may be dated but the insights into the republican party are not. The term Kitsch has just been resurrected to explore the current incarnation of the party and what was McCain but an appeal to nostalgia?

aimai

Bloix, I think most of these comments are about Lane's misconceptions regarding genre comics. No one here has seen the film, and from what I've seen Lane is probably right about its being an antinomian, gory, sadistic exercise in shallow brutality. But that is not what the comic was.

But I guess I'm another whining fanboy pervert 42-year-old English professor.

oh, Lane just doesn't like violent movies huh troll boy?

well why isn't he criticizing violent movies then?

he's not. he's issuing standard boilerplate elitism about superhero comics.

please, get smarter.

Referring to something upstream, Frank Miller was in his 20s when he wrote and drew The Dark Knight Returns. Rage about growing older? I think not.
The original DKR was part of the same movement as Watchmen, a deconstruction of the superhero -- they both posit that superheroes are, basically, nuts. And a society that has them would be deeply dysfunctional. Ours is dysfunctional too, but in different ways.

Miller admits it was about him getting older. At 29 he realized he was now older than Spiderman. So he made Batman much older than Miller was at the time in order to deal with his feelings of aging.

The political vision does seem incredibly paranoid and nasty, which leaves a liberal like me who wants to believe in good government and rationality a little uncomfortable and wondering what I'm cheering for.

The thing is, Lane's dunderheaded review -- I'm sure the movie is terrible, but he takes pains to attack Moore as well* -- seems to be mistaken about what is I think a fairly transparent effort to spotlight and complicate the fascistic nature of superhero comics. We might or might not end up rooting for Rorschach, but he's pretty clearly a moral monster, a stunted human being, and (crucially) laughable, to boot. I really can't think of a genre writer other than Norman Spinrad more visibly aware of and uncomfortable with the authoritarian tendencies in his or her genre.

* Including the frankly bizarre conflation of Rorschach's diary with an "urban jeremiad" by Moore. Also, "The Collector" reveals John Fowles to be a rapist, and Dostoevsky was a nihilist who longed to murder women with an axe.

Jesus effin Christ, you guys know he's talking about the movies, right, and NOT THE COMIC BOOK SOURCES?!

Lane is not one of my fave critics, but I'll defend his (and any critics') right to criticize movies for being less than they could be, especially these expensive monstrosities that hold sway over the marketplace for weeks at a time.

And if you read the rest of the article, he makes a distinction between what he feels Moore did and how director Snyder interpreted it.

Because, yes, the source material and the adaptation are two different things.

[Also, since "300" was one of the most seriously unappealing-looking movies I've ever glimpsed, I'm going to take Lane's word that Snyder's crapped out another multimillion dollar CGI gore wankfest.]

There are a lot of great comic books but no good movies derived from comic books. Maybe Spiderman, all the rest stunk.

Shorter Anthony Lane: Alan Moore's comic books must suck, because some bad movies have been made from them.

Would he apply the same standard to conventional literature, I wonder?

And oddly enough, I agree that Lane has some serious misconceptions about this type of storytelling. It's just that He's pretty much gleaning everything he knows from the (meh-looking) movies that get produced from his work (although why he keeps letting them touch it is beyond me).

And it's not because Lane works for the New Yorker or is an insufferable snob; he may be all those things, but he's also a critic, and it's his job to point out when people are passing off bullshit entertainment.

So if your answer to him is "X movie made X dollars so there" or "all these smart people read them too" or "class snobbery!" then you're really just enabling the entertainment industry to waste our time and money on stupid shit. /rant

Sorry.

Anthony Lane's a funny writer and the review was funny. It makes fun of superhero fans, of which I am one, and yet somehow I survive. Grow up, geeks!

Now you can go out and rent "Heckler" and watch its great takedown of "film critics".

That is a terrible terrible film, worth watching for a calibration of what whininess actually is.

There are a lot of great comic books but no good movies derived from comic books. Maybe Spiderman, all the rest stunk.

I give you Superman (1978).

The stereotype is historical...comic books were marketed towards kids, and seen by parents as a detriment to reading Huck Finn, or War and Peace, or whatever. People like this guy probably haven't seen a comic book since he read Archie and Jughead back in the 70's, so of course he's going to portray comic book readers as juvenile teeny types who live in their mother's basements. There is a consistent, anti-intellectual, theme coming out of many elements of American society, mostly Republicans.

Explaining the difference between graphic novels and comic books is lost to people who think that all "real" art is portrayed in museums, on Broadway, or in the symphony hall. Comic books is the comics page, and we all know the New York Times doesn't have a comics page...

Doesn't matter, though. Hearing some guy say these things about comic book readers, when it's his job to watch Norbit or Saw XXI and then write about it, is ironic.

Movie reviews in the New Yorker are all like this. They're usually negative and snobbish and don't seem to be aimed at the movie's target audience. I enjoy reading them after I see the movie. (Did you notice it gave away the ending, too?)

After the last 8 years I'm supposed to instinctively scoff at the notion that 'the military-industrial complex' runs everything?

When we've just seen the memos for the Bush Jr. administration saying the Constitution just doesn't f***ing apply when King President Bush Jr. decides it doesn't?

There are plenty of reasons people could find to not like comic books or comic book movies.

A stupid insider dismissal of fringe weirdos who, you know, actually remember the past 8 years, shouldn't be among them.

"300" was one of the most seriously unappealing-looking movies I've ever glimpsed,

I loved the way it looked. It was everything else that went on in the movie that was mediocre.

This fools isn't a band geek making fun of the chess club. He's a band geek making fun of the homecoming committee. Almost every boy grew up reading comics, and so did a fair amount of girls. How many grew up reading Siskel and Ebert reviews?

Freaking fagbashing homophobe.

Comics are the only true American Art Form. (Jazz is a musical genre, not an art form)

Comics are the only true American Art Form. (Jazz is a musical genre, not an art form)

And here we see why my fellow comic readers are mocked.

I do think Lane is complaining about the type of 19-year-old who would like this movie, as opposed to all who read comic books.

And while I don't intend to see Watchman, that's because I didn't like the comic book. Alan Moore can do great work - his work on the Wildcats "Homecoming" I think is great, especially the opening sequence. But Watchman is not just dated; the whole idea that a war can end war is a bad one -- and no I don't think the comic book Watchman spoofs the superhero idea at all. (And after reading Lane's review, I'm sure the movie doesn't!)

there are good comic books and bad comic books, great comic books and pretentious comic books, just like any other medium. Nonetheless, it's always interesting when fans of any genre seem to get real touchy about admitting they like it, no?

but that's just my two cents.

I don't think the comic book Watchman spoofs the superhero idea at all.

Yea or nay the audience for superhero spoofs is pretty much superhero fans to start with. You're not really drawing too many new fans by claiming superiority over the genre by embodying it in a smarter way.

Alls I know is that Anthony Lane's takedown of the execrable Phantom Menace remains one of the best pieces of film criticism I have ever read. Because while he was being funny, he also pointed out the very real strengths and weaknesses of George Lucas's work.

He also liked Speed. The man does not hate all escapist movies.

But hey, you are allowed to like what you like. So what if a critic disagrees?

Well, then, here's another thing.

Although the original comic's problems are not the movie's (which Lane does conflate, stubbornly), let's grant that it has artistic problems. Every work of art does, but that's another conversation.

Even with flaws as a story, it was technically groundbreaking. This is the aspect of Watchmen that no movie could adapt, by definition. Moore and Gibbons did things with the grammar of comics that were beautiful and inventive, and helped set the stage for the Chris Wares of the world to come along and stretch the medium further.

Of course, Spiegelman's Maus and his & Mouly's RAW magazine's contributors and the Hernandez brothers were also stretching the medium. My point is that technical innovation can be as great a contribution as artistic storytelling. Maus may or may not be the "best written" or "most artistic" Holocaust memoir, but it's the one that uses unique capabilities of the comics medium to add meaning to its narrative.

When Watchmen first appeared, we couldn't know if the story would go anywhere good, but many of us were hooked from the first issue because we had never seen any comic that looked like this, that worked in these ways. So my generation of geeks had a reaction that I think must be similar to that of the generations who witnessed French New Wave cinema or the first movies of De Mille, Eisenstein, Griffith (talk about a gap between technical innovation and artistic worth). Possibilities for the future opened up, and now comics are in The New Yorker.

So it's not only that Lane confuses the lousy movie with the source material, or that he takes a cheap shot at geeks -- it's that he doesn't see that this flawed genre piece made a contribution that could be compared with that of Maus, in its formal innovations. And that his takedown of the movie would have been so much better if he had known this, but he'd rather display contempt, 'cause that's funnier.

"but I'm not so sure that "film critic" is much higher than "comic book geek" on the social spectrum."
And you're just like Eric Rohmer and Jay Leyda.

Comic books/Dante. Proust/Jacqueline Susanne. Same thing more or less. "Whatever floats your boat." "Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one." "I don't know shit, but I know what I like."
And this is The American Prospect "Liberal Intelligence"

If you want to make an argument go through a thousand years of visual history from the Bayeux Tapestry to Ukiyo-e and Louis Feuillade.
You could try to make it work if you wanted to, but you're lazy. You like to talk and you're talking about what you like because you like it. That's good enough for geeks but not for adults.
Comic books are a pop hybrid. And no, the comic book version of Proust is not just like the novel, only with pictures and fewer words.
"Hey isn't it cool all those American movie stars are going to Iran? We can show them how to make movies"
"But they made one already. It's a cartoon!"
Is there any country on earth as stupid as this one?

"Movie reviews in the New Yorker are all like this. They're usually negative and snobbish and don't seem to be aimed at the movie's target audience"

"It's kinda fascist but that's what people want so it's cool"
Is that better?

You don't quite have the Rorschach voice down yet, Sue. Try for more raspiness, and don't forget to stay in monotone.

He's criticizing Moore's work based on the FILM adaptations of V and LXG?

That's like complaining about Shakespeare because you didn't care for "Ten Things I Hate About You."

rm,
if you paid more attention to details you'd hear the cadence and the humor. But you don't.
The flatness is all yours kiddo, in tone and imagination. You're the angry follower, not me.
I'm the annoyed parent.

I read comic books, collect comic books, and have for years written about comic books. Some of my best friends are cartoonists. And Lane hit the nail on the head.

There has never been a more overrated "creator" than that hairy Englishman (who can't even draw) and there has never been a more indignant and hypocritical bunch than his fans, and fans of the brainier superhero comics in general. Don't get me wrong. Superheroes are fine. They are what they are, entertainment that sometimes aims, and succeeds, like most science fiction, to be thought-provoking. I loved the stuff too. When I was eleven years old.

Especially laughable is the claim that writers who poke fun at superheroes and their fans are somehow elitist. C'mon. Superheroes account for 95% of the industry and have for decades. Masked men are no longer scrappy underdogs, urban folktales, or authentic pop mythos. They're big business. And have been since before World War Two. They are corporate giants. As an earlier poster pointed out, Marvel has three times more market capitalization than the New York Times. And that's just Marvel. That's not even counting Superman and Batman. Superheroes rule the world.

So go on and enjoy them--and the self-congratulatory 'critiques' of them which, nota bene, invariably originate from within that same industry-- just as you enjoy Hollywood movies. With popcorn, and the knowledge that what you're consuming is a kind of popcorn. It tastes good and it's not bad for you. Maybe it's even good for you. But don't concoct intellectual or populist reasons for your taste. Don't act indignant or somehow oppressed just because somebody makes fun of grown men and women in unitards.

Since this is a forum for politics and policy, let me remind you of the political party who never failed to claim, when criticized by some possibly foreign book louse writing from the beltway, that their party--despite controlling the executive, legislative, and executive branches of government--were in fact the outcast, downtrodden, and therfore authentic voice of the common man. That they were being besieged, as always, by luciferean elitists. In a word, victims.

Remind you of anyone?

PS--comic books are not an American art form. The first modern comic books were written, drawn and published more than a century and a half ago in Europe. Horrors. The elitists strike again.

the whole idea that a war can end war is a bad one

And the otherwise-insane character is willing to die in opposition to this idea, which is promulgated by a sanctimonious self-promoter with an inflated view of his own abilities. Meanwhile, the guy with the godlike powers explicitly notes that it won't really solve anything.

and no I don't think the comic book Watchman spoofs the superhero idea at all.

Well, authorial intent is not always relevant, but it's awfully pomo to suggest that it's to be completely discarded. Though "spoof" might be part of the misunderstanding; does Brazil really "spoof" government bureacracy and authoritarianism?

And conflating Rorschach's views with Moore's views ("urban jeremaiad"?) seems to be something of an Interwebs tradition. I recall a recent comment thread on the comic where someone held up Rorschach's psycho John Bircher journal excerpts as an example of the comic's bad writing style. Seriously, Moore didn't intend for Rorschach to be a good guy. Did Zack "Nice Jackboots!" Snyder somehow manage to miss this point in a film that apparently has the costumed crowd referring to themselves as Watchmen? Yes, but as usual, that's not Alan Moore's fault. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

That's like complaining about Shakespeare because you didn't care for "Ten Things I Hate About You."

Important to remember here that Shakespeare is the greatest writer in English and Moore's work at issue is a superhero comic book.

I recall a recent comment thread on the comic where someone held up Rorschach's psycho John Bircher journal excerpts as an example of the comic's bad writing style.

Hey, I think that was me! I think I made a poor argument, but, um, you still had to read Rorschach's bad writing. And I never had anyone point out where the really marvellous turns of phrase were.

I think I made a poor argument, but, um, you still had to read Rorschach's bad writing.

Well, for some of us it was a backhandedly entertaining send-up of the way our relatives sound to this very day. But, hey, different strokes for different folks. YMMV. RTFM. ROTFLMAO. QCIC?

And I never had anyone point out where the really marvellous turns of phrase were.

In the Dr. Manhattan origin sequence, there's an extremely well-placed conjunction. I think it was "or."

Aren't we touchy? The reason comic book geeks are mocked is that comic books are thought of as adolescent reading material. Reading them into adulthood is considered sad. Not by me, mind you. I don't read comic books, but it's a lot better for your mind than watching reality television. What movie critics should remember is there was a time when movies weren't considered serious art.

Patrick Leahy?

Wow, that defines cool. Sign me up.

the whole idea that a war can end war is a bad one

And the otherwise-insane character is willing to die in opposition to this idea, which is promulgated by a sanctimonious self-promoter with an inflated view of his own abilities.

Who's auperhero name is Ozymandius for Christ's sake! Holy cow, talk about a lot of commenters, Lane, and Snyder missing the huge enormous unsubtle point.
Thanks you, mds, for recapturing a moment of sanity.

Meanwhile, the guy with the godlike powers explicitly notes that it won't really solve anything.

Ding, ding, ding.

Indeed, nobody but people who really like superhero comics understand that Ozymandias isn't just some cool made-up name.

Hey, Righteous, there is indeed a lot of bad writing in W, but there is brilliant page composition. Some of the pages with pirate comic narration superimposed over the street scenes are really ground-breaking stuff. Which is why I compared the eighties in comics to the French New Wave in cinema -- the moment when a medium starts to get taken seriously and when its vocabulary expands. Maus is still 100 times more literary, but we don't need to draw exclusive canonical boundaries.

Fershlugginer (wonderful name, btw), some folks find even the products of big corporate entertainment worthy of critical attention. Not all interesting stuff is hand-crafted by authentic artistes.

Hey, Righteous, there is indeed a lot of bad writing in W, but there is brilliant page composition.

You're quite right and I do really enjoy it along with a lot of other far worse superhero stories. I've owned it - dunno where it went - and given it as a gift. It's a fun and absorbing read.