Read on Twitter
Maybe the best part of Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, that which isn't talked as much, is that it asks its readership, but esp critics, to put *just* as much critical thought/energy into digging into a zillion other *types* of comics rather than just The Moore Superhero Text of 1987.
Watchmen is a text very clearly begging to be poured over, analyzed and studied as it has been across the decades.
But has such extensive energy been put into a lot of other stuff that isn't so obvious and from that same school of minimalist 'formalist' comics? What got ignored?
But has such extensive energy been put into a lot of other stuff that isn't so obvious and from that same school of minimalist 'formalist' comics? What got ignored?
That's intrinsic to Cannon's perspective as a work.
Which is to say, any critic writing criticism *on* the the book itself, which is Comics-As-Criticism, immediately becomes part of the critique.
You're as much an object of its criticism, by writing extensively on the subject.
Which is to say, any critic writing criticism *on* the the book itself, which is Comics-As-Criticism, immediately becomes part of the critique.
You're as much an object of its criticism, by writing extensively on the subject.
It asks 'Are you putting in this much effort/energy/density/obsession into stuff that is *not* this? Are you *able* to, with stuff that isn't this obvious? And are you able to move on from this stuff completely?'
Which is to say, it actively asks you to be a better critic.
Which is to say, it actively asks you to be a better critic.
To write about Watchmen, especially in a certain critical method, is, in a number of ways, easy (writing 'well' or not on it is a diff subject), it's a comfort zone for many, due to the shorthand, and all that exists around it.
PCT asks ppl to get the hell out of said zone.
PCT asks ppl to get the hell out of said zone.
The 'better' future for comics it envisions by the end isn't just creators not fawning over 'Perfect Comics', ossified in the 1980s, but also one where critics (+readers) learn to move past that narrow school of "Meaningful" comics, embracing all the ignored diverse alternatives.
Basically:
