Not Comics: Chris Suellentrop On GamerGate, Etc.

There's a pretty blunt and not-flattering to comics comparison between the world of gaming and the world of comic books in Chris Suellentrop's NYT piece on the cesspool of criminal-level dysfunction, anger and idiocy that's bubbled to the surface in the world of gaming over the last several weeks. That might make it worth reading for some of you folks, even if it's just to raise an eyebrow at that appraisal.

I think the essay's primary value is its measured confessional as to why the wider context of backwards-thinking ownership at the heart of that nonsense must seem crushingly disheartening for those invested in gaming as an art form. Comics doesn't seem to have that same futurist self-conception, or at least it's more moderately expressed as reformist rather than utopian (almost everything in comics has a little 1938 in it). Still, it's easy to sympathize. I have to imagine that if you see the flowering of your art form as socially transformative, the mobilization of an army of fevered, emotionally-stunted dimwits has to feel debilitating. It's also interesting to me how much the way profit must be maximally pursued colors how these issues play out in both forms.
 
posted 12:05 am PST | Permalink
 

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