Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Looking To The Stars: Wither Looking To The Stars?

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends!

Okay. Would you believe the show that is mildly delayed but continues on a semi-weekly basis?

I still have a steadier schedule than Warren Ellis.

Regular readers of this feature will probably remember that my writing time was somewhat limited over the summer due to my balancing a full time job with a full-time volunteer gig, full-time classes and having to do my final thesis work. Still, it’s all over and done now and I have a nice new Masters of Science degree to flaunt around at all the job interviews.

To those of you who are new readers or forgetful, that’s probably why we haven’t met yet. In the digital sense, that is. You are owed a quick explanation.

This is my personal soapbox upon which to rant upon all things related to graphic literature. This is, I say in all modesty, home to some of the more insightful commentary and biting satire the Comics Nexus has to offer. (To say nothing of the most pompous, self-serving diatribes this side of Stan Lee. – Tim Stevens)

This is Looking To The Stars.

All settled? All introduced? Good. Now, to new business.

A few weeks back… I wrote a list of people who keep me coming back to comics despite my occasional annoyance with the hobby, some of the writers, the artists, the trends and some of our fellow hobbyists. And I got very little in the responses from you all. This marks a rather disturbing trend I noticed concerning the amount of mail I receive and the correlation to the subject matter discussed.

Simply put, whenever I talk about something nice and wonderful which I think everyone should be reading I rarely get much in the way of mail back. No “thanks for pointing me toward this” or “I agree this is great”. But whenever I go off on something… oh boy, do you let me hear about it.

Now I don’t rant and rave about the evils of various people all that often. I think venting is healthy for the spirit but it makes for pretty dull text to hear someone ranting about the same stupidities over and over again. Just as sure as the same sugary prose gets pretty dull to read. It gets pretty dull to write, too. That’s why I asked to stop being given Lucifer to review. I can only think of so many ways to say “This book is brilliant and everyone should read it.”

The thing of it is… while I prefer not to be the angry young man of Comics Nexus, (Ha! He’s the oldest one on staff and Jesse Baker has him beat on sheer anger – Tim Stevens)I do believe that some of my best work does come out of negative commentary. So before I publish something I wrote last night in a bit of catharsis… a list of everything in the comics world that is annoying me to the point of making me ready to quit the hobby complete with some observations that the friends I’ve showed it to find quite humorous… I want some honest answers from all of you.

So go. Read my old work. Tell me what you’d prefer. Should I publish the list or shouldn’t I? Do you think I’m at my best and funniest as a destructive force? Or would I be better off writing about that which I think is worth reading and ignoring the bad stuff?

Send your responses to starmanmatt@yahoo.com I await your e-mail.

Tune in next week. Same Matt time. Same Matt website.