Okay. That’s not contradictory to what I’m saying.

Spider-Man comics are, honestly, dumb. Not bad, per se, but straightforward and obvious. They’re never going to be highbrow art, and that’s fine. They’re not trying to be. But in terms of equivalents in TV, I would name soap operas and reality TV.

How can Bush be as smug as you can get when the guy right after him, Obama, is easily about 10 times smugger?

Obama isn’t smug like Bush is smug – Bush was smug because he was in charge and didn’t give a hoot about popular opinion, hard research data or doing anything well.
Obama is smug in the sense that he knows he won’t be as bad as the guy before him, and will seem great by just undoing everything the other guy did.

I mean, what does she want? A genre in which bad writers can turn out good work? Good luck with that.

Anti-smugness is still smugness, just without reasons that typical logic would justify as reasons to be smug. Bush came across as amiable and down-to-earth, which unfortunately was more important to many people than the fact that he was a C-Student sheltered by a wealthy background.

As this applies to comics fans, the repercussions are far less grave for a person who touts, say, MC2 over Ultimate Marvel than they are for a world leader oblivious to the differences between various Muslim sects, but it’s still annoying.

Can someone explain the joke to me though. I don’t want to come off totally oblivious, but is the punchline is unclear to me. Did he scare Marissa off or something?

The joke is that when Marissa’s around, Josh is a staunch defender of superheroes, but when she’s off-panel, he bemoans their shortcomings to Rick. The “punchline” is really in panels 5 and 6, where we see Josh break from his conversation to keep up the front of “Superheroes rule!” to Marissa, but then resumes commiseration as soon as she leaves. I think that’s what it is, which is why I think the last two panels are unnecessary.

The joke is that he is agreeing with Marissa when she is out of earshot but as soon as she comes by he flips his argument around.

How can Bush be as smug as you can get when the guy right after him, Obama, is easily about 10 times smugger?

Because the only thing worse than someone who’s a smug know-it-all is a smug dumbass?

Can someone explain the joke to me though. I don’t want to come off totally oblivious, but is the punchline is unclear to me. Did he scare Marissa off or something?

(By the way, just so I don’t create anymore O.T political back-and-forth I want to assure all that I don’t consider Obama a know-it-all, and don’t think Bush is a dumbass. And I’ll hold my tongue and leave it at that.)

Have a good day.
John Cage

Third, People are going to remember the Real World, because it’s been on for over a decade and it’s a cultural icon. It doesn’t matter that it’s dumb. Kind of like Spider-Man.

Spider-Man is the pinnacle of superhero comic achievement, barring Superman mostly because he was the first. Grant Morrison could write every day for 100 years and never create a concept anywhere near as brilliant or ingenious as Spider-Man.

ouch that is harsh, of course Bush is about as smug as you can get,

How can Bush be as smug as you can get when the guy right after him, Obama, is easily about 10 times smugger?

You reckon? I’d have thought most people under say 25 will have mostly forgotten about it now, if they knew about it in the first place. I doubt that it will have much cultural currency in 50 years, other than in its effects on TV in general, in which case something like Survivor will be just as memorable, as it had as much (if not more) of an effect on TV.

ouch that is harsh, of course Bush is about as smug as you can get, I mean it takes a lot of smugness to treat the Constitution, which gave you power, as toilet paper.

being indie (pro or against isn’t anti-intellectual of any type) things don’t need to be plain or mainstream, or anti-mainstream, but just to be good. If you write a good story, it doesn’t matter who publishes, what genre it takes place in, for it to be good. There are plenty of small books out there that are equally as crappy as a mainstream Bendis book.

More irritating is anti-smugness, where people assert superiority based on how plain, mainstream, and ” down-to-earth ” their tastes are; people who use intellectual laziness as a badge of pride. The stereotypical smug indie fan may not be pleasant to get along with, but they have put work into trying new things and looking at things in a different way, and it is understandably frustrating when that isn’t appreciated. The stereotypical anti-smug person is….well, George W. Bush.

Mainstream comics: Green Arrow (goatee), Iron Man (goatee), General Zod (goatee).

Jim Lee – goatee
Geoff Johns – goatee
Dan Didio – goatee

Adrian Tomine – no goatee
Chris Ware – no goatee
Michael Kupperman – no goatee

It’s not a matter of opinion. The goatee is a mainstream style. The indie crowd ditched it last decade.

just tweaking the indies. I don’t even know what an indie comic book is vs any other. The only two I would guess for sure is something called Scott Pilgrim is an indie and Captain America is not. Beyond that I would have no clue what the difference is, except when dealing with people that are smug about their taste in comics, (just like music-) that I’m usually dealing with someone that would consider themselves an indie.

Beyond that I like superhero comics, hate violent meaningless comics(in which the protaganist is an actual villain but because he is ‘better’ than the other villains he’s not classified as a villain—see every iteration of the Punisher) can’t stand books that spend more time talking than furthering the plot, I find books which attempt to deal with the real world to be pathetically boring, again why waste time with paper medium when tv could do just as good of a job (I understand cost)