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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 6.01 - APRIL 2001
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Ooh! Dat Pimp! Please read this thread discussing the subject, and you will find comments from REAL animation artists.
I didn't whore my culture off on Canadians. The Canadian music artists you mentioned stayed for a time in America and had some success, but I believe they are Canadian through and through and are proud of their culture and country. I've no control over who chooses to come to my country to further their artistic ambitions. PBS is totally out of control. They've sent US$40 million to a Canadian company. This is American tax dollars and donations supporting foreign interests! It's wrong -- dead wrong -- in my humble opinion. Thanks for your time, Peter Chung on Comics Sincerely,
Charles, Yes, most of the comics titles you mention are deliberate omissions because they fail, in my opinion, to use the medium to best advantage. I understand that others may use differing criteria to judge, so I have no quarrel with readers who find value in the works you mention. Miller's Dark Knight, to me, falls into the trap of relying too much on the running interior monologue of the character, which comments on the action as it occurs. This is a prime example of the tendency, which I find so antithetical to good visual narrative. I wish Miller would simply allow the action to proceed without having to interject how we should be feeling about it. Especially annoying to me is his habit of scattering countless small text balloons, some containing a single word, all over his layouts. It's as if he wants to control the pace at which his words are read. This was equally a problem in his Elektra Assassin series. Also, it suffers too much from being a comic about other comics. I doubt that any reader who has not read a lot of Batman comics would find much of interest in it, since it's mostly a deconstruction of the Batman myth. Since I never bought into that myth, personally, I found Dark Knight unreadable. However, I did enjoy the first volumes of Sin City quite a bit more because of their self-sufficiency. Hard Boiled, to me, is brilliantly realized precisely due to the absence of commentary. With images so rich in information and atmosphere, the reader is free to feel the story's intent for himself, which remains ambiguously open to interpretation. Also, Miller's witty and precise dialogue gains in power for being used so sparingly. Maus was a big disappointment for someone who used to enjoy Art Spiegelman's underground work, such as I remember from Arcade magazine. The central symbolism was pretty simplistic, really on the level of Don Bluth's An American Tail. I found the lack of character definition and expressiveness to make it a frustrating read. Way too many scenes of talking heads. I'm sure it was a genuinely heartfelt effort on Spiegelman's part, but good intentions do not make good art. Mignola is certainly a brilliant designer and technician, but I find his storytelling (Hellboy included) does not involve me emotionally. It seems he keeps a constant distance between his characters and the reader. He renders his people as if they were props, or elements of the background. They never seem to be breathing, living flesh. I'm somehow too aware of his need to show off his technique, which, granted, deserves showing off. But I've bought his books mostly to look at the nice pictures. They're actually better left not read; there's less there than meets the eye. Looking at his adaptation of Dracula (the Coppola film) revealed a great deal to me about the shortcomings of his work, and of comics in general. I haven't read Hernandez or Scott Morse, but I've only so much time and money to spend on comics. The last good comic I've read is the first two volumes of Jodorowsky and Janjetov's Les Technoperes (I read French). Currently it is not available in English, much to the shame of the U.S. publishers. For a truly amazing comics experience, try The Tower by the Schuiten Brothers, which was put out by Dark Horse some years ago. And for plain good old comics storytelling by a true master craftsman, read some of the Lieutenant Blueberry albums by Jean "Moebius" Giraud. Doesn't matter if you don't care for Westerns -- personally, I hate cowboy stories. But once you start looking at the pictures, you'll be sucked into wanting to know what's going on. And that's as good a test of a comic's quality as any. Peter Chung
Peter, I will look for more of your commentaries in the future. Good luck and thanks! Thanks for Voice Over Info Much appreciated,
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