The_root_of_all_evil said:
mshcherbatskaya said:
However, if you tell me Neil Gaiman is a better writer than Alan Moore, I will cut you.
Gaiman isn't obsessed with superhero sex and can usually string a coherent sentence together. And if it's
Sandman versus
Watchmen, Morpheus pwns Manhattan.
*flicks out switchblade*
You aren't going to get me to rise in defense of
Watchmen, which I don't actually like. It's one of those things, like the original Star Wars movies, that I thought was cool when I was young but revisited later and just went, "...huh."
And no, Gaiman isn't obsessed with sex. He might be more interesting if he were. He's got this twee domesticity that gets on my nerves, so precious and clever he is. He walks around with a magic wand in one hand and a dishtowel in the other. As far as stringing coherent sentences together, yes they are coherent, bland and coherent. Whenever I read his work, the internal voice always settles into the cadences of a pre-school teacher reading fairy tales aloud in a very clear voice so that the children can understand the big words too.
I actually bought Sandman when it first came out (I wonder how much those issues 1-12 would be worth if I hadn't lost them in a move), really enjoyed the first story arc, then grew bored. If I wanted to read a bunch of quasi-metaphysical wankery, (Oh my god, did I just call Gaiman a wanker? I believe I did.) I'd read David Mack's recent issues of
Kabuki, which would at least spare me the cutesy folklore references and are beautifully painted.
No, if you are going to pit Moore against Gaiman, let's bring out the real stuff. Let's bring out
From Hell and his one-shots
Snakes and Ladders and
The Birth Caul. Or even
V for Vendetta, which is more mainstream.
Vendetta to me is such a product of Thatcher's England, in the alternate universe of my mind, it's sold in a box set with Pink Floyd's "The Wall","Animals", and "The Final Cut," and a copy of Bill Buford's
Among the Thugs.
If you are looking for something a little less artsy fartsy, a bit more of a romp, I offer
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I think
Promethea is brilliant but uneven, sliding regularly into a metaphysical wankery of its own. At least the art is better, though. I love J.H. Williams' work and hate Jill Thompson's sketchy lines and clumsy anatomy in
Sandman and
The Invisibles almost as much as I hate Bill Lee's steroidal, hypertrophic, grimacing superheroes.
I have refrained from discussing John Totleben's art in
Swamp Thing issue #60, which would have lead to a digression to Dave McKean, who did the only really interesting work in
Sandman, namely the covers, on from there to the Frank Miller/Bill Sienkiewicz take on
Elektra, which would inevitably devolve into me frothing at mouth about how much I hate Frank Miller.
It's ironic, that people should repeatedly state in this thread that girls aren't interested in comics on the day I start moving the archival boxes of my comics collection into my new apartment.
