KyleMoyer

This might make me a dick but this made me laugh out loud. This whole comment is out of pocket. None of us know anything but what has been said in here. That mean you can 't pass judgement on a decision by people about there thing.

Not entirely true.

We also know what Mike has said on Facebook, which is that he was booted because anonymous people complained to "John" the mysterious backer of CGS who nobody knew existed before this, but somehow these anonymous people knew to complain to him.

We've also seen the way certain other grown children have acted toward Mike on other forums like Twitter and Facebook.

Putting those together, as well as just general vibes I've picked up that I can't put into words, I've done a very different "reading between the lines" then it seems others have.

Someone let me know when Drunk Cap is on CGS because I doubt I'll be listening to very many more episodes (I can look at the descriptions to find out when Uncle Sal is on).

We, being comic geeks, hate change and crave it at the same time. And we love drama (otherwise X-Men, LoSH, heck its the foundation of this very medium we love to share and partake in) and it is a change in the show that we have to adjust to.

I know we all feel bit part of the community of CGS, and being on and in the forums adds to that. But it stops there. The forum is not the show. The show is the show. Draw the line in our heads and leave it at that. Let those who have handled the matter handle it. It is not our place to involve ourselves in other peoples' private affairs. The matter has been addressed. Lets move on, please...


and if you "dislike" or "disagree", cool.

But the show is based off of the illusion that it's just a bunch of friends sitting around talking about comics. If Mike got booted because he wasn't getting along with the rest of the geeks (no matter whose fault it was, if anyone's), then that illusion would not be shattered because that kind of thing happens with friends. If Mike is getting booted because the anonymous financial backer of CGS said to boot him, the illusion is shattered.

In the interest of honesty, I have to ask if I'm the only one who found those two official statements to be very "PC" and sound like they were written by a PR firm?

No argument there. My main point though was that it's not impossible to make money off of literature, it just needs to be available. And comic books aren't. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, etc. are all a part of the popular collective consciousness every bit as much as Harry Potter is and I think that if their literary adventures were available as readily as Harry Potter is, that they would sell considerably more copies than a lot of people think they would. If a reasonably priced stack of Amazing Spider-Man books were available in the checkout line at Wal-Mart next to People magazine, it would sell in numbers that would cause the bean counters who are used to the current numbers faint, I have no doubt of that.

Over-rated comics? First, thanks for using the hyphen. It's wonderful when people use their educations!

Second, I really believe that there is no such thing. Why? Because art is entirely subjective, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And thus, one should never label a piece of art as "receiving more respect than it deserves" (AKA is over rated) because that would suggest that a particular piece of art has an unequivocally exact and intrinsic value... but no piece of art does... because it's all entirely subjective.

Hence, Random73's confusion about other works of art that:

"...other geeks seem to think are phenomenal that I just don't get..."

is PERFECTLY reasonable and ENTIRELY predictable. Why? Because Random73 has the ability to generate an independent thought. And thus, the "reputation" of a particular piece of art should be, and seems to be, completely irrelevant to Random73. Good! That's the way that it should be! Anyone who "tries to like something" because all the cool kids like it is hopelessly insecure (at best).

But the FUN part in all of this is EXACTLY what SolitaireRose wrote to start this thread: "...to discuss WHY we feel they aren't as good as people believe" or, to put a positive spin of things, to describe why we like something as much as we do. Let's emphasize the positive in art! Isn't it more fun to describe why we love something instead of listing why we dislike something?

Although I disagree strongly with SolyRose in that it is possible to "convince us that we are wrong." There is no such thing as being "wrong" about art. My opinion about my individual likes and dislikes will NEVER be wrong, ever. Nobody will ever "convince" me that the Mona Lisa is priceless. I think it's ugly and boring... and I will always reserve my right to judge art for myself, thanks.

So, no, I have no interest in changing SolyRose's mind about Spider-Man: Reign (which I also disliked immensely), but I would like to suggest that the assumption of the post (i.e., that each piece of art has an undeniable intrinsic value) is in error. Simply stated, Soly and I both dislike "Reign," whereas the folks at "Comics Should Be Good" seem to love it, and nobody is correct, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and no amount of discussion will ever change that reality.

I think a thread like this should have the disagree button turned off. If you're saying that a book is over-rated, it means you think it's not as good as the majority thinks it is. Obviously, people are going to disagree with you. What's the point of stating it?

It's also worth pointing out that the words "over-rated" and "bad" are two very different words. I think Alan Moore is over-rated. Does that mean I think he's a bad writer? Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think he's a great writer and a very intelligent person with a lot of integrity (even if I don't always agree with him, I have a huge amount of respect for his ability to take a stance that can often cost him money and stick to it). I just don't think he's AS good as the majority think he is.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. I don't agree that there is no such thing. Mostly because I don't think "over-rated" is an objective term. If I read something and state that it's "great" and "fun," other people might read the same thing and think it's garbage. Does that mean that the concept of a book that's great and fun doesn't exist? No, it means that I think it's great and fun, but somebody else thinks it's toilet paper. Over-rated is a subjective term and as such has the same amount of meaning as any other subjective terms like good, bad, great, horrible, attractive, ugly, too hot, too cold, too big, too small, etc. The only real problem comes from people who don't realize that things like this are subjective and get offended when someone criticizes something that means a lot to them or look down on someone for liking something that they consider to be garbage. Yes, there are objectives. Objectively speaking, Rob Liefeld has significant anatomy problems (not to pick on him, but he's the best example of something that you can objectively consider to have deficiencies). Does that mean there's nothing appealing about his art? To most of us, the answer is yes, judging by the posts on here, but he has his fans. And if there was a thread on here for most under-rated comics, somebody could mention him and they wouldn't be wrong. That person would be making a subjective statement, which by definition can't be wrong. If one was to argue that Liefeld has great anatomy or that Moore does not know how to structure a story, you could objectively argue against them, but if someone says that Youngblood #1 is more entertaining than all of Watchmen, you can't. You can think they're crazy, but you can't think they're wrong.

That may have gotten way off from the point that I was trying to make. I'm not sure, but I hope it at least made sense anyway.