MEG 321 - American Reaper , sexy ostriches?

[Gonk]

Er, engage humour detectors please
(I thought calling it an issue of "American Reaper" was an obvious humour giveaway. Though perhaps we need a "Joke Alert" icon like as used in The Register.)

seems a lot of MEG readers missed the irony in AR and thought they were having the piss ripped out of them.

nope you're wrong, there is no irony in AR, standard Pat, dare I say striaght faced story, piss has been ripped by the length, page count and bogus adverts

My friend, it's a comic strip, a form of cheap popular entertainment, not Picasso or Ezra Pound. I am not in any way trying to patronise you proudhuff, you obviously know what you like and don't like, but comics are ten a penny, you only have to go into a newsagent to see this. For me AR is a reflection of this throwaway commodity culture we are unfortunate to be living in. That's how I read it. If the strip seems bankrupt of ideas and artistic merit that's because we live in a society that is totally bankrupt financially, emotionally, morally and spiritually. AR is attempting to portray the contemporary attitudes to life which seems to visualise the realisation of happiness through the material possessions of a young body and owning a car.

[mygrimmbrother]

Maybe, but it's still terrible.

[TordelBack]

...but comics are ten a penny, you only have to go into a newsagent to see this...

Brother, you have got to tell me where this newsagent is.

I have never bought the idea of comics as 'cheap popular' entertainment.  By any measure they'd be neither.

[mygrimmbrother]

Yeah, and there's me thinking the medium had been striving for years now to get away from that perception. Obviously not hard enough. Now I know there are still way too many daft and inconsequential costumed hero comics, and there's still a ways to go yet before the most popular images on the covers and on Deviant Art  don't show lycra-clad females with big buns and bigger guns, but there are also numerous attempts to make comics 'art'. I've just this morning finished 'Luna Park' by Kevin Baker and Danijel Zezelj, and was hugely moved by it several times.

[BPP]

Boy, you may not like AR but you sure like saying how much you don't like AR.

(btw - the comics/page count in the Meg went up with AR, the other 3 strips getting the same page count as before so to gripe that its taking up a lot of your comics pages is a bit off as I'd imagine there is a fair chance to total number of comics-pages will go back down with the replacement strip. Clearly AR is designed to be read in larger chunks than the tradition prog/meg 5-6 page batches (or 12-13 pages for Meg Dredd) and so the  comics page count with its presence was hugely increased to facilitate).

Personally I thought it was great, not 10-star Pat Mills but good stuff. Can't complain about Clint's future-cheesecake either. Hopefully Rebellion are in on the reprint rights too as collected Mills and Langley clearly shifts units. There is a reason for Slaine and ABC Warriors being the only things getting the hardback treatment and I doubt its 'be nice to Pat'. 

But what do I know? I LOVED Death Planet.

[Proudhuff]

Different stokes etc, i haven't counted the pages, lifes too short, if the page number has been upped to accomodate AR then fine. I don't hate it, don't even dislike it, it just seems to take sooo long to get from A to B never mind back again. oh and the gurning I dislike but then again I can remember the Jackie comic from the 70's.




Wonky I'm begining to believe the rumours...

[Gonk]

Brother, you have got to tell me where this newsagent is.

I have never bought the idea of comics as 'cheap popular' entertainment.  By any measure they'd be neither.

It's called WHSmith Tordell. Every time I go in there to find 2000ad I'm faced with row upon row of magazines, too numerous to count. Well, Tordel, buying a magazine costs a few quid, there's millions of them produced every day, there are only one of Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon" which if you wanted to buy would cost you millions upon millions of filthy lucre. This is how I discriminate between cheap and expensive art. However, Picasso and magazines though not equal when it comes to buying it are more or less equal when it comes to to being popular. In fact more people have probably heard of Picasso than they have 2000ad, which might be why his paintings are more expensive to buy than a comic.

[James Stacey]

Bollocks. A quick google reveals Picasso's "Les Demoisellesd' Avignon" postcards, prints and all sorts. I'd bet it's even appeared in those same magazines in WHS more than once. You can't compare the original art by one person with a copy of someones else and say .. look this copy is cheap and mass produced. (Yes I know the original Picasso will cost more than a Langley original, but the fact remains  - your argument is flawed)

[Spaceghost]

Brother, you have got to tell me where this newsagent is.

I have never bought the idea of comics as 'cheap popular' entertainment.  By any measure they'd be neither.

It's called WHSmith Tordell. Every time I go in there to find 2000ad I'm faced with row upon row of magazines, too numerous to count. Well, Tordel, buying a magazine costs a few quid, there's millions of them produced every day, there are only one of Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon" which if you wanted to buy would cost you millions upon millions of filthy lucre. This is how I discriminate between cheap and expensive art. However, Picasso and magazines though not equal when it comes to buying it are more or less equal when it comes to to being popular. In fact more people have probably heard of Picasso than they have 2000ad, which might be why his paintings are more expensive to buy than a comic.

This is completely meaningless waffle which has nothing to do with the quality of a comic strip.

You seem to be suggesting that Pat Mills and Clint Langley have purposefully created a tacky, cheap, gaudy comic with no substance as a cheeky nod to our culture's obsession with shallowness and materialism and that you're the only one perceptive enough to have noticed. Absolute hogwash.

Even if that was the case (which it is not) the fact that most of the readers, intelligent readers at that, have not picked up on this suggests that the creators have failed to pull this off.

By your rationale, if the Meg printed 15 pages of a poorly drawn stickman saying the words 'modern society is rubbish' over and over again, you would back that as a valid endevour as "it's only stupid comics anyway".

[BPP]

By your rationale, if the Meg printed 15 pages of a poorly drawn stickman saying the words 'modern society is rubbish' over and over again, you would back that as a valid endevour as "it's only stupid comics anyway".

To be fair, it would be cheaper for Rebellion just to license that sorta thing off Fantagraphics circa 1990.

[Gonk]

If you take the time to read my comments on AR you will see that I have been defending the quality of the comic strip, not attacking it.

Tacky, cheap, gaudy, you've got it, that's what you've been accusing AR of being, not me. My point is mass produced comics are deemed to be this as a whole, and I read AR as a reflection of this.

My argument isn't flawed at all. Magazines are produced by, on the whole, people on low wages and in shit jobs. I do not refer to artistic creators or geniuses, but the mass of people who are needed for a magazine to be printed, bound and distributed. Picasso made single work of arts. The magazine industry reproduced them by cheap labour for a cheap market.

[Grey M@a]

I think Rebellion really do need to pay the Denise Droid a lot more money for her job. No matter what issue's I have with subs, within seconds its sorted Hopefully this Meg copy will get to me

[Spaceghost]

If you take the time to read my comments on AR you will see that I have been defending the quality of the comic strip, not attacking it.

I did read your comments. You appear to be saying that it's meant to be vacuous and low brow. I don't think it is.

Tacky, cheap, gaudy, you've got it, that's what you've been accusing AR of being, not me. My point is mass produced comics are deemed to be this as a whole, and I read AR as a reflection of this.

'Deemed' by who? Not me. "It's supposed to be terrible" isn't a very good argument in defense of this story.

My argument isn't flawed at all. Magazines are produced by, on the whole, people on low wages and in shit jobs. I do not refer to artistic creators or geniuses, but the mass of people who are needed for a magazine to be printed, bound and distributed. Picasso made single work of arts. The magazine industry reproduced them by cheap labour for a cheap market.

This has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the perceived quality of this story. And surely a comic strip, whilst needing a large company to print and distribute it, is a very intimate dialogue between the writer, artist (and Editor I suppose) and reader. It doesn't matter if it's mass produced or not, the creators are communicating directly with their readership.

[TordelBack]

Nah Fonky, I wasn't talking about art - I was responding to your observation that comics are "cheap popular entertainment".  They're not, they're bloody expensive (imagine trying to sell a novel that costs over 10c a page - an average fantasy paperback would cost €50+, and you could still read 100+ comics in the time it'd take to read it), take ages to create, and they really aren't that popular.  Comics can be art, serious art (whatever that is), and they can also be the printed equivalent of Home and Away without the wit. 

As to the wages of those who create them:  care to tell me how much money Van Gogh made off his art?

[Gonk]

No Lee Bates you keep missing my point, I do not think AR is vacuous and low brow, I think it reflects the vacuous and low brow elements of our society/culture (exactly what they are is a different debate), this is what the strip wants to portray, and I think it does this successfully by the way it is presented to us in the MEG.

The creators are communicating with their readership, true enough. My point is the guy who is stacking 1000's of magazines in a warehouse on a minimum wage is not going to be bothered whether it's 2000ad or Which? Magazine he's stacking because he is not getting paid to worry over it. To him it's a wage and not art. The guy stacking magazines is essential because without him the publication won't get out of the warehouse and to the customer. 2000ad is produced for a mass market, "Les Demoiselles de Avignon" is a unique object created by Picasso. The fact that it's been reproduced millions of time in the mass media just increases it uniqueness and value.

Tell me about it Tordell. Remeber I paid 50 quid for Nemesis Book 3! I never said comics couldn't be art. No one can agree what is really art and what isn't. When you hold a Stars Wars figure in your hand do you see a work of art or a product?