Sunday, March 04, 2007

Reviewing the Reviews

A comment on my Manhunter review post has prompted this post. I'm not sure why I feel I should say this, but I will, because it's my blog and I get to post what I want. ;)

This blog is fun. It's probably the one I enjoy the most, even more than Cyber Chocolate. I blog for me and I'm thrilled when people read what I have to say and extra thrilled by how many folks read this blog.

I'm not going to please everyone or agree with everyone and that's fine. I appreciate comments and will allow any opinions, differing or otherwise as long as they aren't nasty, spam, insulting, or... well, you get the point. And as the blogger, I get to decide what's nasty, insulting, etc.

My reviews usually don't include the creators. Sorry, mea culpa and all that, but that's how it is. I don't spend hours writing a post. I sit here and type off the top of my head and sometimes, have to double check the names of characters (I think I got Damon right on the Manhunter review and I don't recall his last name at all.). Sometimes, I'll include the name of the writer and/or the artist if it occurs to me when I'm writing the review. I don't edit. I trust my FF spellcheck extension to catch typos. I might fix typos after the fact if they jump out at me after posting. Same for my non-review posts. I have 12 blogs of various levels of activity and I don't have time to dot every i and cross every t.

If I've neglected to mention something be it the writer, artist, pertinent fact and you want to point it out, do so in a comment. I'll probably thank you. But there's a big difference between:
"In all those paragraphs, you never said who wrote/drew X" and "Just thought I'd mention that Mr. Z and Ms. A. are the creative team."
Comments that are helpful instead of snarky are helpful to everyone. When I get snark, I usually give it back, because I'm a snarky person at heart (well, more on the sarcastic side, but close enough).

The only time I carefully mention creators in a review is when I review books on my book blog, with author and title at the top of the review. Comics, like movies and tv shows, are more collaborative to me and my concentration in comics reviews tends to be on the story, whether or not I liked the art, and the characters. And that's not going to change.

2 comments:

  1. Your blog is fine just the way it is, Shelly, and I'm glad to see you stand up to the snarky naysayers who so obviously have nothing better to do and nothing positive to contribute.

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  2. Thanks, Bill. I'd considered not publishing the comment and therefore, would not have anything to answer, but I didn't think that would be right.

    That said, I'm not publishing her comments to this post, because there's no need to keep the thing going. She seems to think I'm more "riled" than I am. I find the whole thing a bit funny, actually. ;)

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