I think I see your point (that accepting the advice and wisdom of purported experts before you try something yourself is often a good thing) but the faux logic you use to arrive at this conclusion (drinking household poison is exactly the same as watching a bad movie!) is so utterly asinine it barely merits a response.

I’m of the mind that although critics ought to be, and usually are, a source of insight and valid commentary, no one critic should allow the Hive-Mind of general consensus to make decisions for him. That’s intellectual laziness and I disagree with it. And for the record, licking a hot stove and seeing a bad movie are apples and oranges. Weird, right?

To clarify: I’m not accusing Greg, Greg, Brian, Bill, or anyone else at this blog of writing a review prematurely or of being lazy (that’s already been established and I apologize for the confusion) but concrete and definitive statements should be backed up by a certain level of experience. Again, this isn’t a problem at CSBG as much as it is all over the web, with bloggers making rash decisions without any knowledge of what they’re talking about.

Likewise, I think we should all rethink our policy on drinking household cleaners. Sure, it says, “Toxic if swallowed,” but why should we accept someone else’s word for it? Why should we accept the evidence of our nose when the scent makes us gag? The only real way to know if that Drano is lethally poisonous is to take a good long swig and see what happens.

And why would anyone just assume that metal is cold, just because it’s been out in cold weather for a long time? Go ahead, french-kiss that sucker, it’s the only way to be sure!

First – well structured intelligent response, unlike a lot of the posts on this thread

I have two points to make in response:
1: In 2008, post War on Terror/ Invasion of Iraq etc, it may seem a little naive or even tasteless. But in the months after 9/11, I would have loved Batman to have been there to kick the shit of the terrorists (importantly terrorists, not muslims, Iraqis, or other uneducated generalization). I’m a Londoner, and and in the week after the 7/7 bombing in 2005 I remember randomly catching a re-run of 24 and almost cheering when Jack Bauer shot some terrorists. Of course, less than a fortnight later the shooting of John Charles de Mendez, which showed the error of my ways, but the feelings I had were valid and shouldn’t be ignored. Instead of bottling them up we should acknowledge them and explore them in works of fiction and the like, hopefully leading to people realizing that such thoughts are ultimately wrong. So yeah, I agree that this book would have been far more relevant in 2002, and Miller has only his laziness to blame for that. Though I’m still interested in it.

2: Comics from the 1940′s and the like from the era are far from innocent. I think I know the Supperman you’re refering to, the two page thing from Time magazine, which is suprisingly well balanced for the time. Have you ever seen the original Batman movie serial? It’s so incredibly racist! The narrator even refers to slanty eyed bastards or something like that. We can’t just forgive that with the old adage that ‘times were different then’. Yeah, the Japanese government wanted to attack America, but did the average Japanese man? In the same way that Bin Laden claims to be fighting for Islam yet there are millions of responsible sensible Muslims who condemn him.Your fear of a character who appears on kids lunch boxes et al appearing in a horribly racist piece of work has unfortunately already happened. I believe Miller at his prime (ie late 80′s) could have produced a powerful satire on those old comics with the concept. And the power of that satire WOULD HAVE COME FROM IT ACTUALLY BEING A BATMAN COMIC ITSELF. Whether or not the book will be that when it finally hits the stands is of course a whole different matter.

I should point out that regardless of whether a strike against Iraq is part of a strike against ‘world islamofascism’ – whatever the hell that is – the US didn’t declare war on Germany until AFTER Germany declared war on the US. The series of events went – Japan declared war on US, US and allies declared war on Japan, Germany and allies declared war on US, US declared war on Germany.

This may seem a fairly small point but it isn’t – if Germany hadn’t declared war on the US then FDR mightn’t have been able to sway public opinion towards war against Germany. Hitler’s declaration of war against the US is often seen as a strategic blunder – even though it was necessary under Germany’s treaty obligations because, you know, the Axis powers weren’t just allied but actually working together.

Maybe I’m just in the Colbert school but it seems that at a minimum people who use history as an argument should actually do some research. If liberals are guilty of misrepresentation, then at least this conservative is guilty of the much worse crime of blatant falsity.

This response is not an example of the “Colbert school” because you actually engaged what Miller was saying without micharacterizing his point first. Like I said before, there are enough valid grounds on which to disagree with him that such mischaracterization is unnecessary.

As for the Batman comic in question, safe to say I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. I’m as big a fan of Miller’s work in the ’80s as anyone else, but it’s clear his glory days are long past him, and I find his worldview on matters like this more than a little skewed. No thanks.

As for The Spirit movie… I might wait for it on DVD.. Or borrow it from a friend who seems to get ALL the movies… But I’m not going to go out of my way to see it… From a comics point of view, The Spirit is not Sin City. And I really lost hope for it when they A) revealed who the Octopus was… and B) didn’t get why he was called “the Octopus”… It’s not because “[he] has eight of everything”… It’s because octopus alludes to murky depths, clouds of ink covering a getaway, and tentacles [in everything criminal]…

Watchmen, on the other hand seems to at least have the essence of the comic correct… I don’t know about the ending, but I’m willing to watch the film to see if any changes make more contemporary sense (assuming it actually gets released now, of course)

(This is me being graceless.)

Okay, NOW I’m embarrassed. Especially since I’ve occasionally busted Brian for forgetting columns I’ve done.

What ISN’T fair is for people to declare a movie before it even comes out or is reviewed, like a lot of people have done for The Spirit prior to release, and an increasing amount seem to be doing the same for Watchmen. The pre-release anti-buzz for Valkyrie seemed to backfire somewhat because it had a decent opening and much, much better reviews than The Spirit. Plus it has General Zod. ZOD!

What also isn’t fair is to make a review of a film that you haven’t actually seen, but nobody here has done that. There’s Maxim magazine and Larry King for that sort of thing. “Most Fun You’ll Have In a Theater This Summer!”

(This is me being graceless.)

And I understand if you don’t review the film, as you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s the declarations made without the basis of seeing the movie that puzzle me. And I don’t want you to think I’m singling you or this blog out, because it’s all over the place.

And by “bigotry” I just meant reaching decisions about something based on trends and prejudice rather than seeing it for what it is. Again, the movie might suck, I’m just shocked at the number of people who have reached that conclusion based only on consensus rather than the movie itself.

Fair enough. However, I’ll point out again that no one on the crew has actually WRITTEN an Official Review of the thing. We’ve mostly been explaining the reasoning behind the fact that we HAVEN’T… that news from all fronts suggests that it’s a stinker. Certainly, that’s why I haven’t run right out to see it. (That and the fact that my wife makes horrible EWWW faces every time one of the TV ads comes on.)

I guess what stuck in my craw was your blithe suggestion that we are somehow being lazy because of this. I assure you that we all work at this, especially Brian. The idea that we don’t, just because we haven’t reviewed Frank Miller’s movie, is absurd on its face, and whether or not that’s what you’re suggesting, that’s how it comes off.

And by “bigotry” I just meant reaching decisions about something based on trends and prejudice rather than seeing it for what it is. Again, the movie might suck, I’m just shocked at the number of people who have reached that conclusion based only on consensus rather than the movie itself.

As for Bill’s statement that he doesn’t need to sit through something to dismiss it, I completely disagree. And I think the operative word in your recent reply is “assume.”

Sure. Creepiness transcends political lines.

Erik strikes me more as silly and weird than creepy, but perhaps that is my own political bias showing.

Bigotry and dogpiling always win on the internet.

Not to keep worrying at this, but it is getting a little offensive. YOU came in here swinging at the CSBG crew. Two of us answered you directly in a reasonable fashion. One more chimed in that he had seen the movie and it was bad. That leaves Apodaca, who is admittedly being graceless as usual… but that’s hardly a DOGPILE, and I am at a loss as to where this ‘bigotry’ exists.

Perhaps if you had initiated your conversation with something other than a condescending sneer at our qualifications to work here, simply because we dared to assume that the majority of the critics panning the movie probably are correct to do so, people here would be more inclined to be nice to you.

Ha! But I guess conservatives can say the same about Erik Larsen and his obsession with the Savage Dragon/Barrack Obama “bromance.”

Get off your high horse, and accept that The Spirit is a shitty movie.”

30 second clips in TV commercials? Are you out of your mind? If you advocate the validity of critics as objective sources of insight and analysis in the arts, you can surely recommend they look at the thing they’re criticizing, otherwise you’re in favor of them making rash statements based on random guesses, bias, and wholly subjective favoritism. You DO care about what critics say, right? Or maybe you just like seeing people agree with you, damn the validity of their argument. I should get off my high horse because I ask accountability for negative statements made about a movie you dislike… had negative statements been made about a movie you like, I suspect you’d take things a bit more seriously.

I haven’t seen the movie yet. It could be a shitty movie. That’s been espoused in dozens of perfectly legitimate reviews by people who watched it.

Gah. Never mind. Bigotry and dogpiling always win on the internet.