I’ve been looking at Dr. Seuss’ editorial cartoons for PM and thinking about what it is that makes them so great. Partly, of course, it’s just that Seuss is such an energetic and imaginative artist, capable of generating infinite numbers of goofy monsters and preposterous contraptions (check out this circus tower of Nazi dachshunds for example.)

But a lot of the cartoons’ interest/power/oomph/what-have-you comes from the fact that Seuss is a propagandist; he’s got a set of strong beliefs which inform all of his cartoons. He wants the U.S. to go to war against Hitler and beat him. That’s where he’s coming from, and it gives his opinions urgency and his bile real bite — this cartoon may be goofy, for example, but it’s also ominous; Seuss actually believes the apocalypse is nigh. It’s not like I agree with him all the time (the carton below, for example, is both racist and factually inaccurate) but the passion, however jovially presented, really matters.

In contrast, look at Kevin Kallaugher’s cartoons for the Economist Kallaugher is clearly a very talented artist; his caricatures are fabulous, and he’s got a fantastic visual imagination; that giant, over-muscled simian football player is a delight. But…I don’t know. You kind of look at it and go, so what? The ultimate point of the cartoon (and of a lot of Kallaugher’s stuff) just ends up being…oh, this or that politician is in trouble now! He often seems to deliberately be avoiding partisan identification; last week make fun of Obama, this week make fun of Bush…. Certainly, there’s no coherent message or ideology working here. It’s just well drawn, mildly funny pictures. There’s no heart.

(Of course, you can have the opposite problem too…Ted Rall, for example, has lots to say, but lacks the wherewithal to put it across effectively.)

Maybe that’s why there seem to be so few editorial cartoonists whose work excites me. It’s hard to find the right mix of ideological passion and aesthetic talent. When it happens, as with Seuss or Art Young it’s fabulous…but that’s the exception, not the rule.

Update: Edited; it’s PM, not PN. Duh.

Probably I shouldn’t go into this, but what the hey.

I’d thought I’d found all the blowback from the 100 Bullets brou-ha-ha, but stumbled on one more thread at Dick Hyacinth’s blog. Dick starts out by saying that Mark Waid (who said mean things about me) should grow up; and then he goes on to say that I was wrong to review Waid’s comic negatively

As long as this thread’s still active–I’ve got to say, I’m kind of disappointed that Noah has gone into full-on troll criticism. I would bet good money that he’s absolutely right about that Waid JLA thing he reviewed, but he’s clearly not operating completely in good faith anymore.

I don’t really get this. I mean, I posted my whole exchange with Waid before I did the review. The review was clearly part of our back and forth. That may be trolling (though can you troll your own site?), but it doesn’t seem like it’s in bad faith. I wasn’t pretending to be objective…though, really, I would have been just as happy to have found that I enjoyed the comic, and to have used it as a transparent ploy to demonstrate my generosity of spirit, rather than as a transparent ploy to insult Waid.

Also (and as I mentioned in the comments, I think…) I did actually enjoy the back and forth with Waid. Dick’s hand-wringing — oh, it’s horrible when comics professionals say mean things about critics…really, come on. Who cares? Waid said some harsh things, I responded; it was entertaining (to me, at least), nobody got hurt, and I think we actually ended up more amused by each other than insulted or pissed off (that’s where I ended up, anyway.)

I found Heidi’s comments a little ridiculous as well. First she says I haven’t made as much of a contribution to the comics industry as Mark Waid has (since, after all, aesthetics is a zero-sum contest) and then she fulminates:

For the record no one is a sacred cow, and on the internet everyone can defend themselves. However, taking pot shots at professionals (in any industry) just because they show up to comment is a common internet respone. And yes I’ve seen the opposite of obsequious groveling as well, and guess what — both are childish.

Holding up Noah as some example of grown up behavior is, in my mind, ludicrous. I really don’t care if he doesn’t like Risso, Johnson or Hugo Pratt. But he made a bush league mistake, and instead of just owning up to it did backflips to explain why making a mistake like that didn’t matter. And then he insulted people on top of it. You can not like Mark Waid’s writing — I don’t like most of it — but insults are not criticism.

I didn’t make fun of Waid because he showed up to comment. I made fun of him because he was deliberately and hyperbolically rude in my direction. Does that mean I was mad and offended? No; it just means I was replying in kind. I like a good troll slugfest; I also like having reasonable and respectful discussions with people. I’m less into the righteous indignation, but if that’s where you’re at, so be it. It takes all kinds to make the blogosphere go round.

The Factual Opinion and The Hooded Utilitarian join comics blogs to bring you The Cowardly and the Castrated — hot critic-on-critic action like you’ve never seen it before! The venomous Tucker Stone and the spleen-dripping Noah Berlatsky join forces to feast on the defenseless and foetid carcass of Showcase Presents: The Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups 2. Bob Haney, Denny O’Neill, Neal Adams, Jim Aparo — all shall be marinated in our sour and profligate bile!

It all starts this Tuesday, November 18, as Tucker reviews The Brave and the Bold #88, #89 and #90 at The Factual Opinion. Then on the 19th, Noah reviews #91-#93 at The Hooded Utilitarian. They’ll keep going back and forth, pausing only for gentile and Semitic Sabbaths, until they reach the end — or die trying!

Pulse-pounding team-up action or pointless exploitative cross-over event? The Cowardly and the Castrated blogging extravaganza is both — and more!

Update: Tucker’s first post is here

Update 2: My first post is here.

The new Comics Journal is now out. I don’t have anything in this one, but Tom Crippen has another installment of his post-human review column, this one about several books about the comic-book industry. This paragraph leapt out at me:

I mentioned creepiness. Reading these books you start feeling like the only person at a party, like a stranded explorer in a lost city. No one else has read this text: You’ve zigged where the rest of the world has zagged. Your mind starts to fret. How did the text get here — why? The words, look how their formations resemble paragraphs. And each sentence begins with a capital letter, ends directly against a question mark, an exclamation point, two exclamation points, sometimes a period. It’s as if some sort of shaping intelligence… “With Weisinger’s retirement, the Silver Age Superman was given a sendoff in ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?’ — a two-part story written by Alan Moore and drawn by Curt Swan.” Or maybe not — considering that it was Julius Schwartz who retired at that time and the story was called “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow.”

Bill Randall has some short reviews as well…plus non-Hooded people have written things in it too. So check it out!