James's Weblog

I finally got around to watching the Watchmen movie. (Yeah, I know I’m late to the party. I meant to watch it in theaters, but my plans fell through, and by then everyone else had seen it already.) I have to agree with Ben’s remarks: I liked it, but I didn’t love it.

Even in the director’s cut, a lot of things from the comics were omitted, but that’s to be expected. I was a bit disappointed that some things were left out (mostly involving Rorschach’s origin). I was skeptical that Watchmen would work as a film—a lot of what makes Watchmen great is how it takes advantage of the comics medium. The movie adapts it as well as probably can be expected; it does an admirable job, but by itself I think it falls a bit flat. It’s too late to be groundbreaking, and I think familiarity with the comics is necessary to appreciate the movie.

(Spoilers below.)

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I admit that I hate Comic Sans partially as an attempt to be an elitist snob. Being on the bandwagon is amusing. But mostly I hate it because I think it’s an ugly font. It feels strange; it looks too mechanical to be mistaken for handwriting, but it’s not as neat, clean, and formal as a normal typewritten font. It’s in the uncanny valley of typefaces.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, its creator, Vincent Connare, said:

If you love it, you don’t know much about typography… if you hate it, you really don’t know much about typography, either, and you should get another hobby.

I’m only a wanna-be typographer and typophile, but I think Comic Sans doesn’t offend me as much as a typeface enthusiast as it does as a comic book reader. Connare designed it to mimic comic book lettering, but it doesn’t look like real lettering from comic books. Let’s look at some samples from some prolific comic book letterers:

• Artie Simek (from The Amazing Spider-Man, volume 1, issue 121 (1973)):
  
• Tom Orzechowski (from The Uncanny X-Men, volume 1, issue 137 (1980)):
  
• Janice Chiang (from Conan the Barbarian, volume 1, issue 155 (1984)):
  
• Rick Parker (from The Amazing Spider-Man, volume 1, issue 300 (1988)):
  

And now compare to Comic Sans:

Even Dave Gibbons, the artist whose work from Watchmen partially inspired Comic Sans, calls it “a real mess”. An obvious difference is that normal comic book lettering uses only uppercase characters, making Comic Sans’s lowercase characters feel even more unnatural. Even uppercase Comic Sans doesn’t look much better, however.

The weight is wrong; comic book lettering traditionally uses a heavier weight for legibility. Comic Sans’s bold variant looks a bit better, although I think it still looks a bit too mechanical.

Comic book lettering often is slightly tilted (Tom Orzechowski’s work is a notable exception). I will concede that Comic Sans in all uppercase, bold, italics is not completely horrible. (Blasphemy, I know.)

If only that were the default look.

For the third year in a row, Mitch and I lost track of time and missed the APE comics convention. Argh!

That reminds me: I’m not exactly sure why, I don’t like most modern comic books. I’ve flipped through a number of issues of various titles, but none of the mainstream superhero stuff looks interesting to me.

Have I merely outgrown them? Perhaps, but I still like watching shows like Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League. I have no problems buying trade paperback collections of 1970s and 1980s superhero comic books.

Is it nostalgia? Am I merely out-of-the-loop on current storylines? Am I totally confused because they’ve turned the worlds I knew upside-down and inside-out? Are my expectations simply higher because comic books are now at least three times as expensive as they were when I fell in love with them? Probably all of the above.

Nonetheless, when I look at the pages of modern superhero offerings, I can’t help but think: “Wow, yet another Jim Lee or Todd McFarlane wanna-be.” Comic books certainly look a lot better than they used to; the artwork is crisp, detailed, and stylish. Colors are no longer limited to flat sections of uniformity; better paper and better printing technology now allow spectacular, rich gradients and subtle shading.

But somehow it all feels so soul-less. Comic books have gone the way of MTV with flashy art, extreme closeups, and gratuitously skimpy outfits on abnormally buoyant women.

Get rid of the expensive, glossy paper and the flashy CG coloring. Bring back the cheap newsprint and flat colors. Sometimes less is more. Airbrushed colors don’t belong with iconic art. And stop aping Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane.

And bring back the Charles Atlas and x-ray specs ads too. Those kicked ass.

I’ve been reading a lot of Calvin and Hobbes books recently. I thought that this strip was relevant to the current weblog craze. (Used without permission.)

And yes, I’m a hypocrite.