All PostsNick Mullins writes about David Carrier’s The Aesthetics of Comics. I have to say, I was excited by the prospect (aesthetics! comics!) of Carrier’s book until I started reading it. The whole aspect of word balloons being a defining aspect of comics discredited Carrier with me. I never did finish the book.
August 6th, 2008
Read more about: Theory and Practice, comics theory
Shouldn’t this be “Nick Mullin DOESN’T write about …”? A critic who can’t even bother to finish reading a book is “discredited” with me. The book deserves a serious response: “I couldn’t be bothered to finish a short book” is not a serious response. This is a diary entry, not criticism.
Are you criticizing me or Mullins? He does write about the book, not perhaps up to certain critical standards.
Also, I don’t claim this post is criticism. It’s a brief comment. Sure the book deserves a serious response (maybe more than one), but I am not the one who will be doing it. That’s why I didn’t write about it previously. I wasn’t going to write a critical response to a book I didn’t finish.
In this case, I thought my readers might be interested in Mullins response to the book. So I linked to it.
Oops — I misunderstood: I thought your comments were what Mullins had to say about the book. I thought not finishing it was his critical summary. I need to take the time to pay attention to what’s a link and what’s a comment on a link more carefully …
Ah, your comments make more sense to me in that light. Generally if I’m quoting someone else you’ll see the grey line next to the text indicating it is a “blockquote”.
Just in case your inteested in a completely DIFFERENT view of Carrier’s book, I had two reviews of it published one is on my website here:
http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/by_brandl/carrier.html
Thanks for sharing Mark. Your review seems to focus much more on debates about art history than about comics. Perhaps I was looking for the wrong thing in the book.
And I’m still against the idea of defining comics by word balloons.