Maybe An Assembly Line Would Help My Output
Added some more links under the Bloggers section:
Elayne Riggs (How could I
forget her? I've been reading her missives ever since I began
lurking on UseNet years ago);
Johnny Bacardi (who in
addition to doing the comics thing covers a lot of other pop culture as
well);
Jennifer
de Guzman (Editor-in-Chief of SLG Publishing);
Shawn Fumo (of course); and
Eve Tushnet. I think
I'd read Eve's blog once or twice before when other bloggers linked to
her comics commentary (which is very good), but for some reason her
blog didn't really stick in my mind til now. She made an
impression on me when I decided that I should follow up
yesterday's
assertion that Jim Henley had "demolished" all arguments against
same-sex marriage by actually
reading the objections Jim was
addressing. I still don't find any of Eve's arguments forceful,
but at least she writes well and avoids the all-too-common (and,
unfortunately, still all-too-accepted) homophobic gay-bashing.
I'd like to respond to some of her comments in more detail, but I think
I'll wait until she's organized her "tangled comments" (
as
she puts it) before I jump in. (Plus, the more I read her
entries, the more I realize I'm wading into an argument/discussion
that's been going on for quite some time: There are threads
spiraling outward to several other sites from Eve's blog, and they all
look interesting. I might get bogged down in "research paralysis"
and never be able to respond adequately. I wonder how all the
other participants in the ongoing conversation would feel if I just
decided to play the role of the loud, obnoxious party crasher?)
Inadvertent Insult of the Week: Augie
De Blieck Jr., writing about the demise of "CrossGen, The Dream"
(as opposed to the demise of "CrossGen, The Company"):
"The
bullpen concept was a creative dynamo that glued the creative teams
together and allowed for the sort of assembly line interaction
that you don't get anywhere else in comics today." [emphasis mine]
I think I know what Augie was trying to get at—that the studio
environment of CrossGen allowed creators to feed off each other
creatively (
Paul
O'Brien and
MaxLeibman
have both addressed this point as well)—but I don't think referring to
CrossGen's setup as an "assembly line" is going to paint a cheerful
picture for anyone. More likely, it'll feed into CrossGen
critics' complaints that CG's titles were soulless "Comics by
Committee." (A criticism which may have more than a grain of
truth to it, since Mark Alessi and (recently terminated COO) Gina Villa
reportedly came up with broad story guides that all writers are
expected to follow.) I suppose the positive side of the "assembly
line" remark is remembering how (until the recent financial
difficulties) CrossGen had a (as far as I know) perfect shipping
schedule for a little over three years. In an industry where
books repeatedly miss shipping dates (and rescheduled shipping dates,
and
re-rescheduled shipping dates, and so on), CG's long,
unbroken stretch is quite an accomplishment. And I suppose the
bullpen arrangement greatly helped CG in keeping those deadlines.
Just for the record: Right before I was going to post, I
realized that visitors unfamiliar with my reading list might think from
the above comments that I was a "CrossGen basher." Well, maybe I
still am (I don't think I am, but I'll leave that up to the reader to
decide), but I
do read their entire line via
Comics on the
Web. Of course, reading their comics this way means I'm
behind everyone else who gets the floppies (hey, when am I
not behind
everyone else in terms of comics reading?), but it does let me continue
to read all their stuff for very cheap now that the Compendia are no
more.
