I hadn't realized Seaguy might continue, which is great news to me. Is it accurate that Morrison actually has to negotiate with DC to get something like this published? It seem that at this point Vertigo should be happy to put out anything he gives them...

“I don’t get it. Therefore, it must be stupid. Because, I’M certainly not!”

Funny about the "I don't get it part" - I pretty much left room for that in my original quote:

Now, maybe I’m just didn’t get it...

I also couldn't find anyone calling it "stupid". It's interesting the reactions to the word "pretentious" that have occurred on here - that word actually has a specific meaning. (And that meaning is not "stupid", "I don't like it", or "weird".) I wonder if phrasing it differently would have made it easier to actually discuss intelligently. I'm probably too stupid to figure that out, though.

Not all hope is lost, however. Bill Reed obviously doesn't agree with me, but at least he responded to what I actually said.

A large number of Grant Morrison comics work perfectly on both a superficial level and a deeper, symbolic/thematic/whatever level. Seaguy is a ripping good yarn full of wacky stuff, on the surface. Underneath, I think it's something more, but like I said above, every reader interprets every story differently. I just talked about what I thought of the book.

As for "weird for weirdness' sake"... well, maybe. But so what if it was? I love weird stuff. Let it be weird just because it wants to!

That something as light and joyous as Seaguy gets tarred with the "Weirdness for Weirdness' sake" brush makes me a little sad.

My favourite exchange in it is Seaguy buying Xoo for the first time in the shop, which skewers 21st century capitalism perfectly in a handful of panels.

KG

It doesn’t aspire to be anything deep, so how is it pretentious?

So, you probably disagree with Bill's review, as well, since he interprets it as being fairly deep. It's interesting that many of Seaguy's defenders in the comments above aren't trying to argue that the story actually succeeds at all these levels of meaning, but rather that it wasn't trying in the first place.

I don't use the word 'pretentious' to mean 'I don't like it'. There are books I don't like that aren't pretentious, and, honestly, there are books I do like that are pretentious. I didn't like Seaguy, partly because I felt that it was trying way too hard to be clever. Perhaps that was unfair. I'd read several blog posts, similar to the one above, implying that this was a deep, symbolic, meaningful work, and I thought that it failed to deliver on that. Maybe I expected the wrong things from it based on those reviews.

'Seaguy' is a comic I can say that I definitely enjoy reading while I'm reading it, but I absolutely don't understand, even a little bit, so I'm not really sure what to make of it.

That said I'd still be interested in the trilogy being finished so I could work out whether it was going anywhere

However "any work that features talking animal sidekicks is not pretentious" is inarguably one of them.

And, yeah. I often have clarity issues with Morrison's work, but I thought Seaguy was a fairly straightforward heroes journey - type story.

The absolute best thing about it is that there is no complicated philosophy or symbolism for you to be confused by.