It has everything to do with your green skin, boarlike fangs, and your residence under one of Chicago’s most-trafficked bridges, where you gorge upon billy goats, Asian carp, and the occasional hapless WizardWorld conventioneer.

I was; so focused on looking for words which might possibly fit your case that Heer is supposedly saying “the value of criticism is based not on any actual standards or interest or ideas, but simply on its anticipated utility as retrospective nostalgia,” I didn’t notice the quotes you cited weren’t there.

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My point is based on both what Jeet says and what he doesn’t. He says this:

“When we think back to how our critical judgments about comics are formed, we’ll inevitably remember not just prose essays but also what we can call para-criticism: interviews, comics about comics, etc.”

He’s saying paracriticism is worthwhile to him because he anticipates thinking back in the future to how wonderful it is. That’s retrospective nostalgia.
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That’s a really peculiar accusation. “…paracriticism is worthwhile to him because he anticipates thinking back in the future to how wonderful it is”??

That’s like saying, “leaning to read is worthwhile to me because I am looking forward to someday reminiscing about my delightful days back in the classroom.” (Uh??)

I’d bet that for some, thinking back about their fannish days, eagerly devouring the latest “Stan’s Soapbox!” and such, makes them instead shudder with shame recalling the crap they once admired and took oh-so-seriously. And relieved they grew past the “baby’s first steps” stage of comics criticism, when “who’s stronger: Thor or the Hulk?” was a significant point to ponder.

Reading the right essay this time ( http://www.tcj.com/review/best-american-comics-criticism-roundtable-capturing-the-experience/ ), a fuller quotation from Heer…

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When we think back to how our critical judgments about comics are formed, we’ll inevitably remember not just prose essays but also what we can call para-criticism: interviews, comics about comics, etc. For myself, my education in comics was shaped by the many great interviews that The Comics Journal has run, as well as the way cartoonists like Seth and Spiegelman have commented on the history of the medium in their own works.
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…indicates that at least the items cited by him as personally significant were pleasant ones. But in no way, shape or form does it indicate guilt of that strange accusation.

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And since he doesn’t take the time to actually defend or make a case for a single individual piece (and he *still* doesn’t in his second essay), retrospective nostalgia is all there is — he provides no standards and no ideas.
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“Retrospective nostalgia” aside, I’m afraid that – for me, at least – “The Best American Comics Criticism” is ill-served by the praise Heer bestows upon it. Surely unintentionally (and I’ve no idea how accurately), the book comes across as a mushy, meandering muddle, with “panel discussions” cheek-by-jowl with Amazon.com reader reviews (!!).

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Heer says:
Ben was a much braver and innovative editor than I would have dared to be. His great insight was that comics criticism comes in many forms. When we think back to how our critical judgments about comics are formed, we’ll inevitably remember not just prose essays but also what we can call para-criticism: interviews, comics about comics, etc. For myself, my education in comics was shaped by the many great interviews that The Comics Journal has run, as well as the way cartoonists like Seth and Spiegelman have commented on the history of the medium in their own works.

So in assessing The Best American Comics Criticism I think the main quality that has to be singled out is the editorial bravado that Ben displayed. By thinking about comics criticism in such a broad and inclusive way, he’s made a book that actually captures the experience of how we think and talk about comics.
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Is it stretching the bounds of credulity to conjecture that folks getting a book purporting to cover “The Best American Comics Criticism” would be disappointed to instead find they’ve purchased a feat of innovative editorial bravado, “a book that actually captures the experience of how we think and talk about comics”?

Personally, I know how I “think and talk about comics,” and I get to talk about comics for free all the time at the TCJ message board and HU. If I’m laying out some hard-earned bucks, I want to learn from masters of comics criticism; be exposed to powerfully learned, incisive, perceptive thinkers, and thereby have my critical horizons expanded. (And no, that does not automatically mean jargon-spouting, intellectually-inbred academics.)

On his other essay ( http://www.tcj.com/review/best-american-comics-criticism-roundtable-different-forms-and-shapes/ ), Heer wrote:

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What it comes down to, I think, is the fact that criticism comes in all different forms and shapes. What unites Noah Berlatsky, Ng Suat Tong and Caroline Small is that they have a very narrow minded view of criticism. Criticism, they think, is only the type of writing they do. And since the type of writing they do, for better or worse, isn’t in BACC, they aren’t happy with the book.
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Noah jabbed lightly at me on another thread for my frequent, nerdly reliance upon dictionary definitions. But, “the dictionary can be your friend!” Thus, from dictionary.com, we see:

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crit·i·cism
1. the act of passing judgment as to the merits of anything.
2. the act of passing severe judgment; censure; faultfinding.
3. the act or art of analyzing and evaluating or judging the quality of a literary or artistic work, musical performance, art exhibit, dramatic production, etc.
4. a critical comment, article, or essay; critique.
5. any of various methods of studying texts or documents for the purpose of dating or reconstructing them, evaluating their authenticity, analyzing their content or style, etc.: historical criticism; literary criticism.
6. investigation of the text, origin, etc., of literary documents, esp. Biblical ones: textual criticism.
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Could it be that the reason these folks aren’t happy with the book is that (apparently) much of what is in it* isn’t criticism?

Why, imagine a book titled “The Best French Dessert Recipes.” Which instead, in an innovative approach, features chefs chatting about favorite meals, restaurant reviews, celebrity chef profiles, somebody posting online about how yummy one dessert turned out, etc. And gets praised as “a book that actually captures the experience of how we think and talk about food.”

If some gastronomes gripe, “Where are the frickin’ RECIPES???”, is it because “they have a very narrow minded view of cookbooks,” or because the tome fails to live up to its all-too-clear billing?

* All that is in it, Heer says; but surely some actual criticism must’ve sneaked in: “…the type of writing they do, for better or worse, isn’t in BACC…” (Emphasis added)

Jeet, I think HU’s rep for ivory-towerness is rather overblown. Noah’s Wonder Woman posts are written in a fun, accessible style. Vom Marlowe certainly has no whiff of academia in her writings. I’ve only posted six entries, but I believe I’ve written them in a manner open to anyone’s enjoyment..

If the perception of a coterie is out there, I think it’s a false one.

I’m sure there are folks who aren’t that interested in reading HU for any number of reasons. Among other things, it’s very focused on criticism and almost completely uninterested in news, especially for a daily blog. It’s just not an especially market-friendly model.

But you’re tying it to rhetoric and in-groupness. And I’d say that making those charges on an empirical basis (which is what you’re doing) is almost completely useless because of sampling bias of various sorts. If you want to call us insular, you need to explain what about the site you believe is insular; what kinds of discussions it’s excluding, how, and hopefully why. If it were a coterie it should in theory be closed — but given the number of different writers who come through, I don’t really see how you can say that’s the case.

But if it’s not insularity, then you end up with the question, well, what is it? And then you have to move to actual debates about content rather than about personalities. Which, as I said, is a conversation I’d be interested to have with you. So if you’d like to put flesh and bone on that “sense” (which is, after all, a big part of what critics are supposed to do) and explain to yourself, and then to me, what your theoretical problems with HU are, I’ll be more than happy to discuss it.

Why, one might say that FAILING to invade Poland would have been a violation of the Treaty of Versailles!* Alas, the impure racial makeup of today’s media prevents such insights from being more widely known…

*Indeed, Ernst Zunder contributed a deliciously witty strip on this very subject to the latest issue of RACE AND REASON! I shall scan and post tonight if I have time after my scheduled antique-shopping and cross-burning…

wow

I think your “sense” just boils down to the fact that you don’t like me, Jeet. You don’t have any actual critical disagreement, in part because you’re not willing to think through theoretical issues at all. So you’re pretty much left with personalities and shouting “you’re another.” Similarly, in your essays here, you aren’t able to come up with any reason for praising BACC beyond your personal biography and references to lauded critics who don’t have a thing to do with the issue at hand. It’s criticism by name-dropping, and it’s more than a little ridiculous, IMO.

And HU is doing fine on readership, thanks. In fact, we had by far our biggest day ever yesterday — not because of this roundtable, but because Sean Michael Robinson, a new guest-blogger who came to us as a commenter, posted an essay about teaching manga to students which has gone semi-viral through twitter. When Sean asked me about doing the essay, he basically said, well, you’re probably not going to want to do this because it’s not the sort of thing HU does. And I said, poppycock, that sounds awesome, run with it. Hopefully he’ll do more of the same for us in the future, if we’re lucky.

That all seems the opposite of insular to me — or at least, my hope is that it is. I’m happy to hear you explain who else I should be including and how I can do better at it.

Alex — I don’t want to ignore you, but can I take a rain check on this conversation? I’m happy to talk to you about my tone and polemic in general, but I feel like I’m already nattering on somewhat endlessly For the record, I certainly don’t think Mike is a Nazi even a little bit. I quite like him, actually, even if I think he’s an idiot (and he thinks I”m an idiot, I know, so we’re even!)