By the way, i really don’t enjoy the Comics Critic guy. Ya kno’, in case you all cared.
Ooops. My bad ‘gain.
DFTBA

I’m not looking for attention, and I’m not trolling, but if someone has been wasting my time on a regular basis and seems to bask in the fact that he’s not even trying, then that person is going to hear about it. But like I said, you won’t hear from me any more. I won’t be reading the posts, so I won’t comment on them.

And yes, I realize I’m returning to this thread, but a man deserves the chance to defend himself.

Inside Joke
Real Name: Todd Whittaker, Somerville, MA

I am not arguing that it would be a masterpiece, just better. A move from an “F” to a “C minus” is a big improvement.

Dean, I could totally see an artist better with facial expressions making both those scenes’ dialogue less painful for sure, but making them actually good, even if sold comedically? I’m not so sure…maybe if done as a total satire/spoof of modern comics.

As nearly everyone has mentioned, James Robinson has a distinctive style to his dialogue. In movies, witty dialogue gets sold by the performance of the actor hearing the line. In comics, it is the facial reaction that the artist draws. Well, Mauro Casciol is not very strong with drawing facial expressions.

Look at the two most mocked sequences from CRY FOR JUSTICE. In the “I have something to say” scence from CFJ #1, Hal Jordan barely has his move during the entire sequence. His internal feelings are the key to the entire scene and Casciol is giving us nothing.

It is the same deal with the infamous threesome scene. Not only does the conversation come totally out of left-field, but the reader is given no cues about what Hal thinks about it from the art. Hal has a neutral, placid expression when the dialogue clearly indicates that he is surprised. As a reader, you have no idea whether Jordan is proud, or ashamed. The scene is written like it supposed to be funny, but the art totally disagrees.

Casciol is clearly a talented guy, but his style is a horrific fit with Robinson. That is the fault of the editor, not the writer.

In many ways, Robinson’s a bit like Bendis: when he writes a character-based piece with a character he has carte blanche with, he’s clever and moving despite some writing tics. When he’s writing an action movie, as on Superman, JLA: Gay for Justice, or Batman/Detective, all you get are the tics because the underlying humanity of the story’s not there. In Robinson’s case, this extends to actual action movies, not just big-action superhero comics.

I love you, T.

Which is good for highlighting words that are going to be on a test, but annoying for a narrative you’re reading for fun; at best, it’s breaking story flow to tell you which words are important ( which readers ideally can figure out for themselves ), and at worst, it’s disrupting how you read by emphasizing the wrong words. Aside from moments of extreme emotion ( for example, bold letters to indicate shouting ), I don’t really see emphasized text in comic word balloons as serving much of purpose, regardless of who’s using it and how.

And I’ve found Millar’s emphases especially irritating, given how his dialogue has the tendency to infodump information that should have been shown rather than told ( i.e. various indications that unhappy characters ” cry themselves to sleep every night ” ).

Even Alan Moore had his bad comics (Vodoo, Violator and other Image stuff).

I know nothing whatsoever about James Robinson himself, but until disabused of the notion I will continue to believe that the man cannot — & probably never has been able to — hear & thus has no sense whatsoever of what speech sounds like. (Much the same must’ve been true of Kirby. Too many loud bombs & guns during World War II, maybe.)

(Except you, James Robinson. Stop sucking it up.)

Steve Engelhart seemed to use it the way textbooks use bolding, to point out the narratively important words.

My assumption was that Robinson, and most of the other writers who’s stresses make no sense, where using emphasis in this way. Although then we can complain that most of the emphasised words aren’t actually that important to the narrative.