As I frantically try to escape, I realize that there are no doors or windows, and the room seems to be shrinking! I usually wake up screaming, covered in sweat.

I had the dream again last night–when I awoke, there was a quarter under my pillow.

It’s so sad that when comics continue to become less important in the eyes of the general public and with fewer people reading comics, we continue to sling mud at each other. But, I’ve said this about a billion times already.

I do have to say, that whether you agree with him or not on any of a number of issues, I believe Scott McCloud remains a comics innovator. He’s helped fight for creator’s rights and he’s gotten folks to think about the possibilities (and the importance) of comics. Plus, he’s a nice guy, too.

Scott McCloud is a pussy, Tycho is a bully…sometimes I wish they would both just shut the Eff up.

That doesn’t keep me from enjoying Penny Arcade though.

Thank you Yirmumah for being the best web comic, and the only one that doesn’t piss me off.

“Making Comics is not going to be a traditional how-to book,” McCloud said. “It’s not going to be a manual on how to draw, for example, something that I don’t really necessarily have a lot of authority on anyway (laughs). I wouldn’t really trust myself on how to teach people to draw anatomy, for example.

“But this is the book that, in a lot of ways, precedes a lot of the other books on the shelves – those that are telling you how to draw big robots or manga babes. There are more fundamental issues of storytelling, like the art of just putting one picture after another, that I think haven’t really been addressed. That’s the sort of thing that I’m going to be taking about – what goes on in that really fundamental level of storytelling in comics. That’s the stuff that interests me.”

In the same way that Scott’s perhaps not the best person to teach anatomy, I don’t think he’s the best person to teach online business, or using the web for comics. I know he’s not the best person to instruct others on blogging ethics. So I’m glad to see he’s going back to what he is really good at, teaching others about making comics!

Scott McCloud never said you HAD to use an infinite canvas, he said you COULD. I’m sure there are online comics out there McCloud reads that are of the usual sort…in fact, I KNOW he reads at least PvP. Is Scott McCloud the authority on comics or online comics? No! But he doesn’t pretend to be.

Both of McClouds books were meant to inspire, NOT to define. That’s how I took it and I’ve done okay by it.

b

“Do what tastes right”

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Scott Mccloud’s was sort of an okay guy, until he got all romantic on us. You know about all those artists and poets of the romantic era who tried to paint life as some wonderful adventure where there was good and evil and knights and chivalry, and sticking up for the little people. All a bunch of fantasy.

Scott Mccloud’s first comic-guide comic-book was good. It actually worked on comic technique.

His second book is just him spewing a bunch of bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, I think he actually believes this stuff. I think his sense of perspective on the comics world is warped by what he would like it to be; what would fit his image of the “comics revolution”. The truth is, I’m glad that this issue was finally confronted in the comics world, at least slightly, with reality. Scott and his followers like to pretend that there’s some mental box which cartoonists need to be unleashed from, because they’re still doing panel strips. The truth is, there have never been any limitations on comics, it’s just that cartoonists don’t feel like making a fucking mural every time they sit down to make a comic. Nor do they feel like acting weird just for the sake of being “new” and “different” and “challenging”. If anything, this focus on the esthetics of structure takes away from the content of comics. There’s a balance there, a balance which Scott McCloud wrote about in his first book, but completely forgot about in his second. Now they’re all back into the world of romanticism, and I’m glad they’re finally hitting reality again.

We win!

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.

Pussies try to erase life’s little mistakes.

Dare I I compare the trait to that of wealthy people exploiting courts to erase their mistakes?

Oh yes, I dare!