The Long Road

10/14/2003 Archived Entry: "My Two Thorns"

1. In addition to always complimenting a comic on its "grounded nature", Don MacPherson can only do so with the same sentence structure everytime: [artist|writer's name] [captures|conveys|reinforces] the [gritty|down-to-earth|human] [elements|atmosphere|quality|tone|nature] [of the story|at play here]. Practically each and every one of his reviews features a variation of that sentence structure. I don't understand how such a repetitive and poor writer could have gotten so high on the "comic book reviewer ladder". Here's a quote from one of his reviews last week where he basically blows his entire load.

Braithewaite captures the epic nature of the story quite well. Inventive panel layouts convey the broad scope of the plot, and Reinhold's reinforce the mature atmosphere at play. Pete Pantazis's colors do so as well while they reinforce the energy and cosmic quality at play in the story.

2. Chuck Austen! Why does this guy keep getting all the BIG name titles? It's quite apparent that his writting talents do not sell and he has no understanding or respect for established characterization. Yet for some reason The Big Two keep throwing all their flagship titles at him. I haven't been this maddeningly perplexed since Ron Zimmerman kept getting work a couple of years ago. I wait until the day it's revealed that Austen has blackmail material for all high ranking execs of the Big Two, how else can such a hack get Uncanny X-Men, Avengers, Actions Comics, JLA and New X-Men!? I don't understand.