I guess since we're on the topic of reviewing and how blunt/harsh/mean/whatever one should be, I'll throw my two cents in.
Honestly? A critic, when criticizing a piece of work, can be as harsh as he or she wants to be. They can tear that thing to shreds. They can say things about the work that seem just downright mean. They can even go as far to say as "This is a heaping pile of ****." These are all well within their rights. If they say these things about the work that is being criticized, then they're not being mean to anyone. The creative work doesn't have feelings. The author is the one who has the feelings, and how affected they are by the critics words is entirely on them. If the critic says things like "Whoever made this should be shot." Then, they are taking it too far. Then they are attacking a person and not a creative work.
It's also well within the rights of a critic to say these things and offer absolutely no suggestions to make it better. Criticizing and critiquing are two different things. I personally take the critique approach, since MA arcs can be continually updated unless they become Dev's Choice, and thus always have a chance of becoming better. Some people might not take that approach, and are doing more straightforward reviews to try and help people know what and what not to play.
Long story short: everything's fine unless you call each other names. Then you're just being silly.
See you all with a reworded version of this post again in a month or two when this conversation restarts.
There's a stroke of timing, given that LaserJesus is the perfect example of what he just said. He was actually the first person to review my arc. He gave me a 3, which all but crushed me given the fact I was quite sure CoW was a gift to the MA at the time. His critique, however, was mostly spot on, and the changes I made to CoW - Part 1 as a result (he hasn't reviewed part 2, yet...) have been among the most significant.
Not once did he attack me or demean me, unlike the *second* person to review my arc.
Painful as it was (likely the second most painful review I've had), it was still personable and unbelievably helpful. That's the way negative critique should be handled.
The SOLUS Foundation - a Liberty and Pinnacle SG
"The Consequences of War" - Arcs # 227331 and 241496
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His review being well written was just as important as you not taking it personally. That door swings both ways.
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Originally Posted by Dalghryn
Painful as it was (likely the second most painful review I've had), it was still personable and unbelievably helpful. That's the way negative critique should be handled.
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Ummmm... not so much.| Women are overrepresented as victims in comics because comics (Western mainstream superhero ones anyway) are written for adolescent boys. That's because it's adolescent boys who buy them. |
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| Today, we are seeing print runs in the 80,00o range, give or take. But really this doesn’t mean much because we are missing one important point – the average age of the reader. There are several titles and issues that I try to find from my childhood. This is one fun part of the hobby for me and for many others. I do read a couple of new issues for fun, but here is the crux of the matter. The average age of todays comic book reader is around 28 years old. |
In fact, like the author of the article suggests, it's because adolescent boys AREN'T buying comics that the industry is in real danger. We already see comic books dealing heavily with 'real world' issues like terrorism and the politics of the day in crossovers like Marvel's Civil War.
You'll know that comic books have reached their death knell when Spider-Man begins to address issues that are topical to 50-year-old men in order to remain releveant to the reading audience.
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Have you seen your average 28 year old recently?
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Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
I doubt you'll find a single psychologist that would categorize a 28-year-old as 'adolescent.'
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Isn't it a little ridiculous to think that a person who has enjoyed works produced in a medium from young age to adulthood would, as if a light switch was flicked, suddenly stop being interested in that medium? Weren't similar things said about novels and film when they were new?
A lot of people seem to think that we're still in the 1960's when it comes to comics. The audience has gotten progressively older over the last 50 years to the point that you rarely see kids with a comic in their hand nowadays. They've been sold almost exclusively in specialty shops for around 20 years now. How many kids spend a lot of time in non-chain specialty shops of any kind?
To say that sexism in comics is forgivable because it's written for adolescents requires sticking your head in the sand on several counts.
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"Already"?|
Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
We already see comic books dealing heavily with 'real world' issues like terrorism and the politics of the day in crossovers like Marvel's Civil War.
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I don't blame you for blocking out the 90's, but after Watchmen put DC ahead of Marvel for a bit everybody on both sides and in all the third parties were all "oh man, we need to have superheroes addressing real issues! And infighting! And they need to be helpless to stop exploding psychic space squids!" (well, maybe not the space squids exactly)
Alan Moore is very, very sorry about this.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
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Bah! Have you forgotten:|
Originally Posted by GlaziusF
"Already"?
I don't blame you for blocking out the 90's, but after Watchmen put DC ahead of Marvel for a bit .... |
Green Lantern/Green Arrow was doing social relevance in the early 70s!
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
I'll do you one better:
Comics stopped being "for kids" when Gwen Stacy's neck snapped. At that exact moment the Silver Age ended and any perception of comic books being cheap, disposable entertainment for children stopped being valid.
About the same time you also had the underground movement really getting into it's stride, further muddying that vision of the medium.
I'm not comparing the average issue of Green Lantern to War and Peace or anything, but kiddie fare it aint (and hasn't been for longer than the average poster on this forum has been alive).
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The attribution, if it was provided in the first place, for the quote was lost. Google found it here. It is an unattributed statistic with none of the context necessary to tell if it's junk or not, so yes, I'm going to ignore it. If I buy a comic and three 13-year-olds each buy a comic the "average age" is either 21.25 or 13. Thanks to aging Boomers it is easy to show that pretty much any "average age" statistic is going up. That's just not necessarily true or meaningful.| The average age of todays comic book reader is around 28 years old. |
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| I doubt you'll find a single psychologist that would categorize a 28-year-old as 'adolescent.' |
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| In fact, like the author of the article suggests, it's because adolescent boys AREN'T buying comics that the industry is in real danger. |
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| We already see comic books dealing heavily with 'real world' issues like terrorism and the politics of the day in crossovers like Marvel's Civil War. |
Isn't it a little ridiculous to think that a person who has enjoyed works produced in a medium from young age to adulthood would, as if a light switch was flicked, suddenly stop being interested in that medium?
No. Happens all the time. Tastes change as people get older.
They've been sold almost exclusively in specialty shops for around 20 years now. How many kids spend a lot of time in non-chain specialty shops of any kind?
I cannot remember the last time I stuck my head into a "specialty shop" and did not see the place full of tweens and teens. The last time I had occasion to visit one would have been around August.
Comics stopped being "for kids" when Gwen Stacy's neck snapped.
Codswallop. Dialing the sex and violence to 11 didn't make comics "grown-up". It made them more sensational and exploitive. The death of Gwen Stacy is completely meaningless today. So is the death of Alex DeWitt. Neither character's death has any meaningful or even demonstrable effect on the contemporary state of either Spider-Man or Kyle Rayner. The centerpiece of the "WiR" complaint is that characters, disproportionately female, are gratuitously killed for cheap emotional effect and then forgotten when the event is no longer useful or has become inconvenient. Which brings the argument full circle: the complaint is essentially that mainstream comics are a juvenile art form. They will never be anything else as long as Status Quo Is Mandatory.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
In like five years of buying comics weekly from the two major comics stores around where I live, I don't think I've ever seen more than maybe a half-dozen people under the age of 25 in either store, ever. All the kids buy manga and anime these days, not american comic books. Maybe it's different up here in Canada though, but it was generally really really bizarre to see kids in the comic stores, as weird as that may sound. Even on free comic book day it'd be like, the little kids of the adults there, who had come to buy and pick up comics for themselves, not for their kids.
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He's not the one who should be apologizing, but anyway that made me laugh. I think I've heard him apologize for it more than once, too!
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Originally Posted by GlaziusF
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Again I agree!|
Originally Posted by Dalghryn
There's a stroke of timing, given that LaserJesus is the perfect example of what he just said. He was actually the first person to review my arc. He gave me a 3, which all but crushed me given the fact I was quite sure CoW was a gift to the MA at the time. His critique, however, was mostly spot on, and the changes I made to CoW - Part 1 as a result (he hasn't reviewed part 2, yet...) have been among the most significant.
Not once did he attack me or demean me, unlike the *second* person to review my arc. Painful as it was (likely the second most painful review I've had), it was still personable and unbelievably helpful. That's the way negative critique should be handled. |
LaserJesus rated my arc 2 stars (one of only two 2 star ratings I received). I hated the rating of course, but because of the way it was written and what he said, I was not upset at all. Honestly some 3 star reviews upset me more.
He is absolutley right when he said "Criticizing and critiquing are two different things. I personally take the critique approach, since MA arcs can be continually updated unless they become Dev's Choice, and thus always have a chance of becoming better."
His review was insightful. He looked at the whole arc and did not focus on one detail or lack of detail. I really appreciate his approach to reviewing. Despite the low rating, it was clear to me he understood the intent of my arc. His criticism was not "redo my arc to fit his logic". He gave me specifics about what dragged the arc down in his eyes and not once did he threaten to shoot me.
Naturally, I would have liked a better rating, but after all I did submit my arc to a thread entitled "LaserJesus' Crucible of Unforgiving Criticism ".
@Gypsy Rose
In Pursuit of Liberty - 344916
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Suppression - 374481 - Winner of The American Legion's February 2011 AE Author Contest
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You're kind of missing the point here. What I'm expressing is that there's no magical cutoff date linked to age. Yes, people's tastes do change, but it's an organic process based on changing interests. There seems to be this idea that any new medium, genre, etc. (Previous Examples in History: Novels, Film, Rock Music) that a large number of young people are interested in that once sad young people turn 18 they'll instantly stop consuming that material, start dressing conservatively, and suddenly have tastes matching people their parent's age. I'm just pointing out how silly that notion is.
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Originally Posted by Venture
Isn't it a little ridiculous to think that a person who has enjoyed works produced in a medium from young age to adulthood would, as if a light switch was flicked, suddenly stop being interested in that medium?
No. Happens all the time. Tastes change as people get older. |
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You're right.| The attribution, if it was provided in the first place, for the quote was lost. Google found it here. It is an unattributed statistic with none of the context necessary to tell if it's junk or not, so yes, I'm going to ignore it. If I buy a comic and three 13-year-olds each buy a comic the "average age" is either 21.25 or 13. Thanks to aging Boomers it is easy to show that pretty much any "average age" statistic is going up. That's just not necessarily true or meaningful. |
I stand corrected.
The weight of your blanket, anecdotal assertion that the primary audience of comic books in 2009 is adolescent overshadows all evidence to the contrary, even though it appears you are the sole proponent of this view on the board.
I bow to the force of your bloviating.
What's that!? Venture won't listen to fact!? WHAT A SHOCK!!!!!
Here, Venture. Let me give you an entire internet that proves you wrong. Your views on the average comics buyer haven't been right for longer than I've been alive. Since I'm 31, that's really sad.
When you're not being blatantly myopic, you're being purposely obtuse. The Silver Age was the end of the "comics are just for kids" age. I used Gwen Stacy as my ending for the Silver Age because, well, basically everyone says that the Silver Age ended when she died. You want to read that as "someone died, so I think they're more mature" when I never even intimated anything remotely similar to that viewpoint. The subject matter isn't what caused them to start being bought by more adults and fewer children, it was the other way around.
From the Bronze Age on, the demographics for the average comic book reader skewed older and older. This isn't opinion or suspicion or anything but truth. If you think otherwise, then you must have never been to a comic book shop or convention. I mean, other than on the nights when they're running Pokemon tournaments in the back. I know that's the only time I see anyone who isn't thinning a bit on top in there.
The fact that you completely and totally ignored my comments about underground comics is entirely predictable and typical.
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I just read a bunch of those links (no, I am not going to read them all). They don't really bolster your case. Several of them are repeating the first, which doesn't give a cite or any information about the study. One quotes a study from 1995 done by DC that says 80% of the readers are between 18-39 and claims the median is 29 but almost certainly means the mean. It doesn't matter because the study described uses a self-selected sample so it's junk. Two of them approach the issue from the perspective of the advertisers; one (from 2002) notes that comics are favored by advertisers trying to target the 12-24 males range and the other (2008) is from a fan who observes that all the advertising in a random issue of Amazing Spider-Man is targeting 8-24 males (and the 24 is an obvious outlier). Advertisers wouldn't be buying space in comics to sell things to 12-year-olds if they didn't have reason to believe 12-year-olds were reading them.| Here, Venture. Let me give you an entire internet that proves you wrong. Your views on the average comics buyer haven't been right for longer than I've been alive. |
One thing anyone with a number agreed on: comic readership is on the order of 90% male. Considering that adolescence is less a number than an attitude I'm going to stand my ground here.
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| The Silver Age was the end of the "comics are just for kids" age. I used Gwen Stacy as my ending for the Silver Age because, well, basically everyone says that the Silver Age ended when she died. |
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| The subject matter isn't what caused them to start being bought by more adults and fewer children, it was the other way around. |
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| The fact that you completely and totally ignored my comments about underground comics is entirely predictable and typical. |
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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I dear, my monocle just popped off!
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Originally Posted by Geek_Boy
What's that!? Venture won't listen to fact!? WHAT A SHOCK!!!!!
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Actually most marvel comics these days have ads for cars, T and M video games, MMOs, and DVD box sets. I opened a random issue of Nextwave to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, and the ads are, in order (not counting the ads for their own comic books in their own comic books):|
Originally Posted by Venture
They're not being bought by more adults and fewer children in the first place. If they were they'd have more ads for Rogaine and fewer for Hot Wheels. |
Killzone Liberation for XBox
Animaniacs box set (no "kids" today would even know who they are as the series ended 14 years ago, and has been off the air for 10)
Age of Empires III for Xbox
Magic The Gathering Ad
World of Warcraft Ad
Nissan Sentra car Ad
Superman 1-4 box set (with over 20 hours of special interviews!)
Final Fantasy V Advance for DS (remake of a 17 year old game, again nothing any kids now would immediately identify with)
Gears of War for Xbox (rated M for mature!)
Nextwave is arguably one of their sillier, more 'kiddish' titles, so I though it'd be a good example as it's not part of all the 'mature' stuff like Civil War and whatnot.
I grabbed another issue off the shelf at random and did another run, this time for the X-Force remake, a blatantly 'extreme 90s' comic pandering unashamedly to the teenage need for blood, explosions and boobs plastered all over ever page. Ads this time were:
Afro Samurai on Spike TV
Hardcover Edition of Stephen King's "The Stand"
Halo Wars for XBox
Old Spice body wash
(and again, a bunch of ads for their own comics, a circular thing)
...Hotwheels and barbie dolls, indeed.
I could keep doing it if those aren't enough, or even start taking requests =)
And when you pour your heart and soul into something, that's your first mistake, and it's a big one.
The completely separate "if you love something, kill it" that makes the rounds in creative circles goes about like so: if you find yourself enamored of anything you're producing for public consumption - any character, any setting, even any particular line - pull it out and throw it away.
When you love something, it's because you can make it a part of you. It's because it "fits" you. And the more you love it the better and more exactly it fits. That's equivalency, not causality.
But if you toss it out, for anyone to try on, a lot of people are going to find out by proxy that they're not exactly like you. And what was the opposite of love, again?
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I work in software development - business, not gaming - and on a small enough team that we a) take customer complaints and b) know the system they're complaining about. And you would not believe some of the explanations people bring in for what they think is going wrong. Sometimes they're impossible. Sometimes they're demeaning. The fun ones are both! But they're all evidence that something has gone wrong somewhere.
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I told you that story so I could tell you this one: that's where all my complaints come from. I sat down to have myself a good old time, and something went wrong.
When I review, I run "with the debugger on". I try to look at everything. When something strikes me as wrong, I try to turn the inner eye to watch its path. I try and organize all the information I can pick up on what just happened, and I put it out there.
I'm not inventing anything. I don't pace around in my reviewer hate room looking at pictures of [insert objectionable celebrity here] to get my ire up. If something gets me riled up I try my best to find and spell out why, because odds are the mission author wasn't trying to GET me riled up.
And sometimes it's not going to be enough of an explanation the first time, or maybe ever. But I'm not just going to throw it away.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)