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Katamari Take Me Away
June 7, 2005
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This is not supposed to be a dig on any professors - merely a paean of adoration to the singular Prince of the Cosmos, and a general statement of how I've felt in the waning hours of a semester, learning the final niblets of information in a course before finals. This makes me want to make a wallpaper with Blue hugging the Prince blissfully (with the Prince in far less bliss, more startled panic), but eh - we'll see. I'm a daring little ninja like that.
You may or may not know about the whole post thingy that Penny Arcade did a short while back on the "Adventures into Digital Comics" documentary that Comixpedia put up a very short while back (I would link to it, but the site has been well and thoroughly wanged - that's the term - by the hordes of people rushing there from PA, is down for the count). Lo, Websnark ran in with HIS view on PA's rant, and is promptly tsk-ed at by Jon Rosenberg of Goats.
See, you're probably not following me on this one. I don't mean to diss you if you are, and have been: it's just, I know not all my readers are as voracious for news of the webcomics variety and webcomic criticism variety as I am. So yeah. For those of you who are, I'll sum up, and weigh in my lone gunman's opinion, for what it's worth:
So there's this documentary, right? On webcomics. Supposedly its footage is from THREE YEARS AGO, which is a comment in and of itself. Words like "digital revolution" were being tossed around, lots of very postmodernist terms. And - word to the wise on how I'm probably going to take the rest of this - I don't particularly like postmodernism. It's neo-Scott McCloud, extensions of Reinventing Comics. And although I have this tendency to get hyped when stuff I love - like videogames - gets documentary attention (just ASK me how much I love G4's Icons. I hate everything else they have - Cinematech aside - but I LOOOOOOOVE Icons), I hesitate here.
I have long had this sort of disappointment when it comes to webcomics and criticism. It's kind of a perverse longing to be reviewed on my part, to look at how I draw and write and pick at all my flaws and pluses because dammit sometimes we NEED that, an outside perspective and then? It never happens. Reviews are usually focused on the "arty" webcomics, the infinite canvas ones, the "new voice of storytelling" ones. And that's good - but does that mean that all the ones who are not trying very hard to be groundbreaking, to "reinvent the medium," get left out in the cold?
A guy named William G. put out a review of Penny Arcade and PVP (that I thought, in addition to being less than fair, was also crap) under the assumption that "if they came out today, they wouldn't be as popular as they are." I called shenanigans on this simply because webcomics today would not be nearly the same as they are without those two strips. They've done so much to bring people into webcomics, to make them aware of their power, of their uniqueness, that I literally cannot imagine the current webcomics environment without them. I wouldn't be here, I can tell you that: PA inspired me to start I'm Blue, and Tycho himself (who, along with Gabe, are really stupendously humble and nice guys) encouraged me (thank you again, Tycho).
With that in mind, focus on the fact that nowhere in that documentary are Penny Arcade or PVP mentioned. At all. Not once. Instead it's all the "arty" comics, the infinite canvas crew, preaching that their way will change the face of the medium. This is where I say - hang on a minute. You don't own this medium. Not all the sides are being discovered here. Why should your comics be more important than mine - just because you scroll to the side or have an embedded .gif, that makes it better? I don't understand. Me, I can sulk and have my pity party all I want - honestly speaking, I don't matter. But not mentioning people like Scott Kurtz or Tycho & Gabe or Pete Abrams... I have issues with that.
Anyhow. So? Basically Penny Arcade mocks the hell out of it, which is what they DO, I mean, nobody should be surprised. They don't make up fake quotes in that strip there, they use the real stuff. And really, if you're surprised that Tycho & Gabe make fun of something... what can I say, give up reading PA. Seriously. Have you been there? They even mock that which they love. I know they have some affection for Will Wright (at least Tycho does), and yet, look what they do to him. Peter Molyneux, too. I have heard it said that you could kick Tycho's dog in the head, and he'd still link you in his rant. And they may be mocking you, but in all things, they're humble. How much do they mock THEMSELVES, for crying out loud? And look at it this way: you just got linked by Penny Arcade. Whether or not one agrees with the documentary or with them, that's still traffic. That's still people seeing it. A nave outlook on my part? Perhaps. But merely consider it.
I enjoy Scott McCloud. Understanding Comics is a tremendous book, and I heartily suggest you all buy it and read it ASAP. But McCloud is an idealist. He needs to KEEP being an idealist, because we need some of them in this world, and he happens to be an exceptional one. However: I think he's a man who talks in big, beautiful, amazing dreams, and instead of taking the oracle's words while they're still strung out on peyote (so to speak) we should consider them and try to make sense of their mechanics before worshipping them and parroting them back. We make sense of their apparent nonsense, we do what McCloud himself did so brilliantly in Understanding Comics: we take the disorganized and nonsensical and form a workable, cohesive whole, and make it function. I've run into plenty of people who have worshipped and spewed both sense and nonsense to know which is gold and which is bullshit, even if the speaker themselves doesn't know.
In short, I feel like the documentary lays claim to a medium that it does not own the whole of, and gives no credit to those who helped START the webcomics "revolution" (if you would call it that), as well has helping itself to its own share of pretension; I think Tycho and Gabe jumped on it as they jump on many things; I think Eric Burns (of Websnark) yelped about it and misunderstood them entirely; I think Jon Rosenberg (Goats) done tol' him what-for; and overall, I think that Kristopher Straub (Checkerboard Nightmare) did a hilarious comic on it. With all that... nah. Don't matter so much what I think, it's been said... in one form or another.
Anyhow. That's it for me for tonight. Next time... um. More stuff? Yes. Stuff.
Be good.
All the Doo-Dah-Day,
Annie "Blue" C
How should I react
- They Might Be Giants
"She's An Angel"
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