The Pickytarian

I've seen other people call Seaguy self-indulgent, but I've not seen anybody explain what they mean by that. So I'm going to be a bother and ask if you wouldn't mind explaining what you mean in more detail.

Also, I don't think Brian Wood has ever made me want to beat my head with a hammer, but I'll join you in the Left Out Club when it comes to his appeal.

The trick to enjoying Seaguy is to not think of it as a single story. Or even three stories. Think of it more as what would, these days, be the first six or so issues of a series, compressed into three issues. It's superhero comics as they used to be, before we decided they had to all be "realistic" and stagnant.

I can see your point, Dave. One of the things I love about Grant Morrison is that his ratio of ides per page is about the same as other writers' ratio of ideas to issue, story arc, or even career. In Seaguy I almost felt like the ideas came too fast and furious to be appreciated though. Before I could get comfortable with the direction, or tone, or even plot, the rug would be yanked out and I would have to start over again. Does that make any sense? Unfortunately I don't have the issues any more so I can't give specific examples. I had a similar reaction to The Filth, though in that case there were a couple of recurring elements (ie, the pet cat, the neighbors thinking that the guy was a pedophile, etc.)that attempted to tie the whole thing together.

Steven - When I describe it as self-indulgent, I am implying that the book would have benefitted by a stronger editorial hand. Of course, I have no idea what the actual editorial process was like, but the book read as though nobody stepped in to say, "That's a great idea but you're not communicating it as well as you could." I'm sure that the story resonated to Grant Morrison, but I'm not sure that the reading experience was considered as much as it should have been. It's a fine line, I suppose. I certainly don't want him to "dumb down" his books at all. I just don't want him to indulge in his own excesses and worst tendencies.

Maybe you're right, Dave, and I have been conditioned to expect my stories to be doled out in wallet-draining dribs and drabs. That would be a very sad state of affairs!

But like I said, I think that if I read the series in one sitting, I would have a different reaction to it. As it was, everything was so original and unusual that month-to-month I had trouble keeping track of what was going on.

I don't understand why the comics-blogosphere (is there a better name? please?) is so upset about the upcoming Rann-Thanagarian war. After reading a couple issues of Adam Strange, I found myself thinking "This is really fun. I'd like to see DC use all their spacefaring characters more often." Apparently most bloggers were thinking, "This is really fun. I hope all these characters go on to languish in obscurity."

I'm excited about DC's plans to start using the rest of the universe again. Sure, there's a chance it will suck. But even if it does, the Adam Strange miniseries is still a good standalone story. The existance of a spin-off doesn't cheapen it unless DC acts like you are intended to buy the later stuff in order to appreciate it. (For example, Identity Crisis had no standalone value. It's only purpose was to spin off a bunch of events that you can spend even more money following.)

If the end of Adam Strange is unsatisfying, and the follow-up story is bad, then I'll have to eat my words. But based on the story's track record so far, I don't see any reason to be cynical about it.

I don't understand why the comics-blogosphere (is there a better name? please?) is so upset about the upcoming Rann-Thanagarian war. After reading a couple issues of Adam Strange, I found myself thinking "This is really fun. I'd like to see DC use all their spacefaring characters more often." Apparently most bloggers were thinking, "This is really fun. I hope all these characters go on to languish in obscurity."

No, what I was thinking was that after 8 issues I'd actually get an entire story, rather than just a preview for yet another story, which is no doubt a preview for yet another thing. I felt baited and switched, and voted with my wallet, stopping after issue 4. I'd rather use that money towards the Adam Strange Archive volume 2 than yet more current age foolishness.

Well, I'll admit that there's a possibility that Adam Strange is going to fall apart and just end up being a commercial for the next thing. If that's the case, I'll regret buying it. But there's also the possibility that it will be a good story, that just happens to lead naturally into another one. (I'm sure that it will close by saying "Oh no, there's a war coming...." as well as reuniting Adam with his family. I just want the focus to be on the latter, so it feels like a complete story.) The way I see it, if I'm not even going to be optimistic about a series I'm enjoying, then what's the point of reading anything?

On another note, I want to second the opinion that Seaguy is self-indulgent. The real problem, for me at least, is that it had a really intriguing first issue, with ideas that I wanted to see developed...and then the second issue dealt with those in passing so that it could play around with its own crazy ideas. Same thing with the third one. If the "Seaguy" plot had been stripped out, and issues 2 and 3 turned into unrelated one-shots, they probably would have been more enjoyable.

Even so, the first issue had the best of the ideas. Probably because it established an interesting world and characters instead of just saying "Look! Space Mummies! Isn't that *crazy*??" But if you read the series knowing to expect this, you might find it a lot more enjoyable. I should re-read it and see what I think.

I guess Seaguy always felt like a world to me, although not a coherent one (which I wouldn't have liked). As Marc Singer said (apparently HTML tags are stripped from comments, so the raw URL is
http://www.whiterose.org/howlingcurmudgeons/archives/006600.html,
see Marc's first comment), Seaguy is a tale in the picaresque tradition, "which suspends the narrative causality modern readers have come to expect in favor of an anything-can-happen romp" and "follows a loosely episodic structure that allows for digressions like 'The Secret Origin of the Moon'" (quoting from Marc's comment). Anyway, now I know what you mean by "self-indulgent," yay.

I think your comment about the "fast and furious" ideas is very interesting, because my immediate response is that it's a book, so you have as much time as you want to appreciate things. Or, now that I read your comment again, I see that maybe you mean the ideas should be developed more fully in the text.

"Well, I'll admit that there's a possibility that Adam Strange is going to fall apart and just end up being a commercial for the next thing. If that's the case, I'll regret buying it. But there's also the possibility that it will be a good story, that just happens to lead naturally into another one. (I'm sure that it will close by saying "Oh no, there's a war coming...." as well as reuniting Adam with his family. I just want the focus to be on the latter, so it feels like a complete story.) The way I see it, if I'm not even going to be optimistic about a series I'm enjoying, then what's the point of reading anything?"

Well it's not like the comic is going to vanish once it's done. If it turns out I'm wrong and it was a cracking goo dread, self-contained, and entertaining, I'll buy the trade. I have misgivings, so I'm not running out to buy it immediately. I do the same thing with movies: I can always see a good movie later, but I can't ever un-see a crappy one.

You're awful prudish this week. No Intimate nipples, no slim-waisted Supergirl, no cheesecake Shanna... what's next? You stop buying books featuring women in spandex?

I think you're right, Nevin, I have been a bit swept up in the commentary regarding Adam Strange rather than judging it on its own merits. I have actually been enjoying the Thanagar stuff in the last 2 issues. I think my negativity comes more in reaction to the general "earth-shattering crossover" fever that is sweeping through DC right now. I get insulted by crass sales-boosting stunts like that, even if they turn out to be good stories. I think my expectation was that Adam Strange would be more of a series of fun, self-contained Silver Agey adventure stories, rather than another brick in the wall of DC universe continuity. Once I got a whiff of this book moving in that direction, my excitement for it tumbled. But the proof is in the pudding, and the books themselves have been perfectly enjoyable so far. Except for the frigging paper stock of course.

With regards to my prudishness: I realized when I re-read that post that I came off kind of schoolmarm-like. Honestly, I would have been more likely to buy the Shanna She-Devil book if it hadn't been "PG-ed" at the last minute. What I meant was that the whole "controversy" somehow made it dirtier than it would have been if the nipples had been a-flyin' as was originally planned and drawn. As for The Intimates, F that book. That whole title has been nothing but cheap stunts and gimmicks since Day One, from the Jim Lee-centric promotion, to the text crawls, and now this stupid nipple cover, which I am happy to see is getting them much less attention than they had surely hoped. Of course I wasn't buying the thing anyway because it's the 973rd super-powered teenager book to be released in the last year. And as for Michael Turner's Supergirl... that sh!t is just scary.

Finally, Seaguy: I don't think that "narrative causality" and "anything-can-happen romps" are mutually exclusive. The crazy stuff in that book would have had more impact if it had occurred in context rather than just appearing out of the blue. I thought some more about The Filth last night, and realized that I neglected to mention that, despite its flood of crazy ideas, that book had a thematic cohesion that I did not get from Seaguy. 72 pages was just not enough to tie together all of the stuff that Morrison threw in there. I understand that it was a reaction against "decompressed" comics, and that's a reaction that I wholeheartedly support. But making it as "supercompressed" as it was struck me as ultimately self-defeating. In other words, a story that was too convoluted and rushed to enjoy does not make a very strong argument against drawn-out glacially paced bloat-fests.

For what it's worth, I've been fairly unimpressed with the Brian Wood books I've read, those being Channel Zero and the first two Couriers volumes; they're entirely too pleased with themselves for my taste. Though DEMO looks interesting, and I'm preordering the scottish type book, sucker that I am.

And I'll even backstop you on Seaguy. The fact that it might be a wonderful picaresque don't mean it's a good story by my lights; and, leaving aside it's narrative problems, it wasn't even very interesting in a decode the symbols sort of way.

I just read the new issue of Adam Strange, and it's still very enjoyable. I don't know how issue 8 is going to end, but this makes me confident that it's going to a lot of fun getting there. While reading it, I decided that this is one of those rare series that's fun enough from issue to issue that I won't regret the purchases even if the story fizzles out at the end, and in the meantime, I'll happily recommend it to others. (It should go without saying that just because I feel this way doesn't mean I'm attacking people who think differently. But, with the way the internet can be sometimes, it wouldn't hurt for me to make it clear. I have no problem with other people choosing to wait for the trade, or drop it entirely. Everyone will make the choice that seems best to them.)

And thanks to jdonelson for that last summary of the Seaguy. That was a much better explanation of my thoughts than I could manage