Getting so Meta That it Hurts

How To Not Write Comics Criticism: http://www.dylanmeconis.com/how-not-to-write-comics-criticism/

Dylan Meconis’ article How Not to Write Comics Criticism is a plea to reviewers to treat comic books with the same respect they would give novels or movies. To do so effectively, he takes an angle that simultaneously welcomes the uneducated and rags on the willfully disdainful; helping the clueless along the road while pointing out everything that they should not become on their journey.

Probably his most striking tactic, Meconis uses imagery and figurative language in one fell swoop, scattering images around his article that bring to mind common and every day sayings. Nothing could be more fitting, considering the fact that his article is a discussion on comics themselves. Often the drawings are captionless, but frequently they draw obvious parallels between what he was just discussing and what is being illustrated. For instance, this image:

 follows up a discussion on people who resent having to read and review comics, and dislike them off the bat simply because of the media they represent. The picture, without saying anything directly, immediately points the reader’s mind towards the saying ‘to stick one’s head in the sand’ Another example of a visual metaphor he uses is this:

  when talking about an artist’s seeming choice to make a comic rather than a more traditional form of art. Again, nothing is directly stated, but the obvious connotation is the phrase ‘like a duck to water.’

His logical leaps aren’t limited to images though. Often, he will take a statement to its logical extreme solely to point out how ridiculous it really is. Under list item 3, explaining why movie successes aren’t related to comic popularity, he asks if a reviewer would start with “’With the box-office success of Twilight, novels have proven their appeal to a wide audience’?” The title for number seven is a jump in itself that doesn’t make sense until you read what follows, saying that “This muffin is so good that it’s actually a bagel” to poke fun at those who are terrified of calling a comic ‘good’ and must elevate it to some type of hybridized novel status.

Regardless of the technique he uses, he is constantly comparing poor reviewers and close-minded people as being unprofessional and illogical in the techniques they use. Without ever having to overtly say ‘you are being an idiot for doing this,’ Meconis manages to convey it. He never says ‘people who do this are stupid,’ he says ‘doing this is stupid, and this is why.’ It is an excellent tactic, when the purpose of his article is considered, because it doesn’t directly make an attack on anyone for doing what they do. Instead, it attacks what has been done, which is something that hopefully, no one will take as a personal criticism. Even with his informal tone and his use of witty comics, Meconis keeps his work at a professional level by refusing to directly attack anyone.

Meconis also addresses this fear of the word ‘comic’ very explicitly, and in doing so puts a great emphasis on diction and its importance. He takes an entire section to define ‘comic’ along with the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel (which he describes as barely relevant) but also takes a moment to ponder the denotations of some terms that cycle the comics world. Going all the way back to novel, which he mentions once connoted “’sordid fad that is corrupting our women and children’” as well as the fact that graphic can also mean violent and adult material. He has fun with ‘graphic memoir’ as well as a non fiction graphic novel, because “novel implies fiction” so a non fiction graphic novel ends up meaning “book length work of non fiction comics fiction.” While Meconis allows for the fact that there is no true set of terms, he expresses a wish “to hear ‘comics’ replace ‘graphic’ and thus hear about a ‘comics novel.’” In another section, he goes out of his way to define terms referring to the construction of comics themselves, like ‘word balloons,’ ‘panels,’ and ‘gutters.’

Also in that section (#6) he expresses the idea that reviewers should assume that readers are “capable of looking up terms they don’t recognize” having already explained terms that we, the readers, weren’t expected to know. While this may seem insulting, when put together, it really only serves to highlight his purpose- to educate comics reviewers and show them how to do things in a way that doesn’t insult the genre they’re reviewing.  Meconis starts out by inviting the uninitiated, teaches them the basics, and then, with his final visual metaphor,

 

he sends them on their way.