I feel apologies are in order. It’s so easy to forget that as a critic, your opinion really is just your own opinion. Critics get swept up in the moment, thinking they are important and that their opinions matter. I’m guilty of this.
I unfairly judged Tre?’s strip in the Daily Illini awhile back and as it was pointed out to me, even my criticism used improper terms. I forgot to live by my adopted critic’s motto, which I borrowed from the film Ratatouille:
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.”
I should not have been as hostile as I was and should have remembered that there are people behind the strips I praise or condemn. While my strip, Cape & Cowl is striving for adequacy in a medium that has seen this dynamic before, Tre? tried to do something creative and unique with his strip. New form and gimmicks are needed in the comic medium, strip or book, for it to continue to reach new readers and keep old ones.
I guess what I’m saying is, my bad.
