Yes, Virginia, you've roused the comic geeks

Dear Virginia --

It's okay not to like Alias. You don't have to like every show you watch, and you can certainly dislike Alias for the reasons to which you allude: a plot that threatens to collapse under its own baroque complexities, a lack of clear narrative purpose beyond "Guess who betrays whom next?" or the fact that Jennifer Garner may not be the Meryl Streep of the small screen.

However, Virginia, by comparing Alias to comic books -- and bitterly at that -- you betray some serious, woeful ignorance of the comic book medium. Let's look at how you describe comics in two separate paragraphs:

static, allegorical, a pleasure only to addicts, but also headache-inducingly difficult to criticize

and

jumpy bif-bam fighting scenes and the way they redeem loser guys

What's somewhat amusing about all this is how you manage to dismiss an entire medium on the same day that your paper also ran an obituary for noted comics titan Wil Eisner, whose work was never stale, translated well to all audiences, and provided a look at the human condition beyond the redemption of the loser.

It's also pretty odd that you manage to ignore the existence of comics like In The Shadow of No Towers and Persepolis. Then again, being forced to concede that comics can produce powerful, profound narratives also blows a hole in the funnybooks-are-for-losers premise you're using to make the argument that Alias is for obsessive loser geeks too.

Finally, given how at least three of television's strongest storytellers -- Joss Whedon, J. Michael Stracynzki and Harlan Ellison -- are also extremely active comic book writers, it's fairly odd to make such bald assertions about the narrative incompetence of that medium is wrecking television without examining how these men managed to duck that curse.

Virginia, it's my hope that someone drops Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics on your desk some time over the next few days. And that they maybe introduce you to life beyond the Marvelverse (the X-Men references are the tip-off).

Until then, Virginia, I'm afraid I'm going to have to cast a skeptical eye on all your reviews. You see, I expect my media critics to have a firm grasp on the unique story-telling properties of different media, and to be able to look at a work and see where the traits unique to a medium leave off and the elements universal to good storytelling pick up. I'm not convinced you're up to the job.

Back to reading Ex Machina for me,
Lisa

Comments

[ginger]

If I knew as little about epic poetry as she does about graphic novels, I could write a similarly pretentious and incorrect critique. Heck, I know almost nothing about epic poetry, so let's give it a shot:

Alias is nothing more than a epic poem: oblique, allegorical, a pleasure only to addicts, but also headache-inducingly difficult to criticize in these times when the work of Homer and his boring manly-man ilk have become, through white European male dominance of the canon, sacrosanct.
Many of us don't like poems and have feigned interest in their repetitive descriptions, stilted meter, and the way they redeem loser guys, only to impress and minister to those same guys. And now we can admit that while the redemption dynamic - little Achilleus boys finding in their eccentricity and loneliness a superpower - is touching, there's nothing duller than listening to someone explain, in all seriousness, the catalogue of ships, the singing of the muses, the endless boring bif-bam battles. And the characters: lame. One is good and the other is evil, and then one is evil pretending to be good, and then one is good pretending to be evil.

YO, Virginia: Clearly your college boyfriend ignored you when the latest issue of "Swamp Thing" came in, and you never got over it. You're a TV critic, for crying out loud - you of all people should remember not to damn an entire medium just because its most popular genres are graceless.

[JohnConstantine]

Bless you, Lisa, for putting the smackdown on another pretentious twit who still writes off all comics as nothing more than a refuge for geeks and losers.

I'd also note that Neil Gaiman has moved between tv and comics just fine as well. (See "Neverwhere", for instance)

Sad thing to hear about Will Eisner's death; I keep thinking it'd be nice if he were the most famous man named Eisner...

[Divaah46]

Why couldn't the OTHER famous Eisner die? Just saying.

[Girl Detective]

On the other hand, the fact that some people make their ignorance known by stating that "I don't like comic books" as if comics is this one, simple thing is an easy way to figure out that I don't want to be talking or listening to them.

My personal pet peeve is when reviewers use the term "comic-book" as a derogatory adjectival phrase. Grr.