Bought/Thought January 28th *spoilers*

[Themanofbat]

I know its all a matter of opinion but c'mon its Darkseid we're talking about. This guy is pure, unfiltered evil, he's almost as bad as the Joker. This guy was threatening the entire universe, i think he needed to be put down permanently for everybody's sake. That's just my two cents though.

Yet the Joker is not pure, unfiltered evil?

 

[kguillou]

Are you kidding, if ANYBODY deserves a bullet in the head its the Joker, Batman should've did him in a loong time ago. I'm just sayin that people like the Joker and Darkseid are pure evil and are a constant threat to everybody as long as they're alive. I admire Batman for breaking his rule in order to save all of humanity.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I don't admire him, but if you're gonna break a vow, the survival of all reality is a pretty good reason.

 

[Aristotle]

I wish those of us who feel that this is a total misrepresentation of Batman were as smart as you and Aristotle. If only we were a little brighter maybe we could successfully interpret the themes in this piece.


Must feel great being right all the time.

The anti-intellectualism in your posts gets more and more astounding every time. At this point you're literally just doing that redneck thing where you make fun of smart people for liking all their high-falutin' mumbo-jumbo.

 

[Franklin Richards]

The pomposity and arrogance in your posts get more and more astounding as well. At this point you're just doing that pretentious **** where you make fun of people who you perceive to be less intelligent than you because they disagree with your opinions.

 

[Aristotle]

The pomposity and arrogance in your posts get more and more astounding as well. At this point you're just doing that pretentious **** where you make fun of people who you perceive to be less intelligent than you because they disagree with your opinions.

You're making fun of me for trying to apply critical methodologies and referring to the piece as a work of art and saying that many of the criticisms of it come from people who seem ignorant of where art has gotten to at this point in the development of our culture, and that's not anti-intellectual?

 

[Franklin Richards]

No. I'm making fun of your audacity to accept only your opinion on the aesthetics. I applied critical methodologies and came up with a conclusion that according to your arrogance is wrong. That's pretentious and self important.

You seem to want to question the validity of the ones arguing instead of their argument. Apparantly my opinion makes me stupid.


Got that? Or do you want to call me ignorant and moronic because of my opinion again?

 

[Manic]

I'd like to point out that Aristotle isn't above insulting someone (me) for expressing reservations prior to reading Final Crisis. You know he's just going to insult you again.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

The personal insults need to stop. Debating is what the message boards are built for, so by all means, continue. Just keep it civil.

 

[Franklin Richards]

I do know that. I'm just tired of him scaring people away. His arrogance pisses me off to no end.

I see him with no friends or people who are forced to be his friend because they take classes with him or work with him. He then assumes a role of leadership and then proceeds to insult them and dictate to them what their opinions should be.

I'm not leaving unless I'm banned. So keep responding Aristotle. I plan on being here a long time.


Just so you know what my argument is because you may have forgotten it in all your attempts to misdirect the conversation.


I feel that Batman's character was misrepresented because at his moment of glory he compromised his values and his solemn vow never to use a gun.


Simple. To the point. And a valid opinion.




Now I'm gonna go watch the Super Bowl with my friends.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Personal feelings are fine as well, just keep them personal. We're all fans, we all get passionate about the comics, but civility is what keeps this board running without descending into chaos. So just respect each other and keep the complaints from becoming personal and all will be well.

 

[Aristotle]

Just so you know what my argument is because you may have forgotten it in all your attempts to misdirect the conversation.

I feel that Batman's character was misrepresented because at his moment of glory he compromised his values and his solemn vow never to use a gun.

Simple. To the point. And a valid opinion.

OK, let's go back and trace through this conversation and see who veered off the path of rational discussion first.

The point to having him captured was to remove him from the story, and then to have him rise above that to act as the paragon of humanity, not to show how he escaped. I'm willing to acknowledge that Morrison could have made a concession to this idea, because it seems to be a relatively small thing that's driven a lot of people up the wall, but I still don't see what it had to happen.

This is the source of the discussion between Frank and I. It was a response to someone else, but Frank chose to respond, because he had something to say.

How can he be a paragon when he's already morally bankrupt from compromising his "solemn vow"?

I responded to it, in what is, to my mind, an innocuous fashion.

That particular complaint has completely bewildered me. It was Darkseid.

Now for a few posts back and forth, the conversation is almost whimsical and lighthearted. Frank seems to have forgotten his irrational hatred of me that goes back to one time, in the ancient eons gone by, when I said I didn't like the Fantastic Four or something.

So the ends justify the means?

This one does.

Cool. Dr. Doom is my hero then.

He wasn't already?

Besides, when has Dr. Doom killed Darkseid? Never, that's when. He kills nice people.

He's defeated Mephisto with some assistance. So he's a good guy. The ends justify the means when you die killing the Devil. Oh wait. Doom didn't die. So I guess he's still evil. Well morals in comics aren't black and white so he could still be off-good.

At this point, the conversation diverges, and Brian and Frank start talking. I am no longer a part of the conversation. I have completely left. It is clear that Frank and I do not agree, and we are leaving it at that. Notice that I have not, in the course of this particular line of discussion, said anything about intellect, interpretation, art, literature, criticism, methodologies, Frank's intelligence, my intelligence, Brian's intelligence, Grant Morrison's intelligence, symbolism, education, ignorance, or anything like that. We've been arguing over our interpretations to an event that occurred in a comic book, and neither of us has impugned the other. So of course it made total sense that Frank said this:

I wish those of us who feel that this is a total misrepresentation of Batman were as smart as you and Aristotle. If only we were a little brighter maybe we could successfully interpret the themes in this piece.

Wow. What a brilliant argumentative tactician! Wait until a guy has respectfully bowed out of the discussion, and then sucker-punch him in the face with an ad hominem attack that has nothing to do with what he was arguing! Yeah, that'll ****in' show 'im! And you know what the best part is? You can blame the whole thing on him! He happens to have been a very ardent defender of Final Crisis and Batman RIP, and has often been very harsh in his judgments of criticisms of those stories, so you can just pretend that he did the same thing in this argument, and people will believe you, because you always play the part of the innocent victim, who never meant to verbally abuse others, but were always viciously attacked yourself, and had no choice but to lash out in self-defense! Wow. Is that low and manipulative and unjustifiable, or what?

So naturally, I responded with some anger. You can probably see why I would interpret what he said as "You smart egghead people and your high-falutin' words like 'methodology' and 'modern critical theory' and 'abstract' and 'narrative pointillism.' What a bunch of art ***s!" I interpreted it that way, because that's usually what the kind of language that he used means. It has a very specific cultural coding. He may not even know what it means, but that is what it means. That is the cultural coding. (This is where Frank comes in and bashes me for telling me what he thinks. He will conveniently ignore the fact that I told him what his language means, not what his mind believes.) So I responded to the coding of his language by calling a spade a spade:

The anti-intellectualism in your posts gets more and more astounding every time. At this point you're literally just doing that redneck thing where you make fun of smart people for liking all their high-falutin' mumbo-jumbo.

At this point, it's nothing but a verbal brawl. What was once a quiet, calm, finished discussion, is now an ongoing, vicious back-and-forth, and all because Franklin Richards can't keep a lid on his self-righteous, faux-populist rage.

The pomposity and arrogance in your posts get more and more astounding as well. At this point you're just doing that pretentious **** where you make fun of people who you perceive to be less intelligent than you because they disagree with your opinions.

You're making fun of me for trying to apply critical methodologies and referring to the piece as a work of art and saying that many of the criticisms of it come from people who seem ignorant of where art has gotten to at this point in the development of our culture, and that's not anti-intellectual?

No. I'm making fun of your audacity to accept only your opinion on the aesthetics. I applied critical methodologies and came up with a conclusion that according to your arrogance is wrong. That's pretentious and self important.

You seem to want to question the validity of the ones arguing instead of their argument. Apparantly my opinion makes me stupid.

Got that? Or do you want to call me ignorant and moronic because of my opinion again?

Of course, he finishes with that tired old trope of the message board, "you have a ****** life and no one likes you and you're depressed and a bad person even though I don't know you at all, and I only have experience with you via an anonymous internet message board, an environment which is well-known, thanks to conclusive documentation and study, to magnify and increase anger and conflict due to its anonymity."

I see him with no friends or people who are forced to be his friend because they take classes with him or work with him. He then assumes a role of leadership and then proceeds to insult them and dictate to them what their opinions should be.

I picture Frank sitting at a computer trying to formulate the perfect "****-you" to Corp's post that asked for more civility. And finally, he hit upon it: I know!, he thought. I'll make an unwarranted opinion about his personal life, about which I know nothing at all! Nothing could be more antithetical to what Corp just said than that!

I'm not leaving unless I'm banned. So keep responding Aristotle. I plan on being here a long time.

Such vainglorious language from a dude posting on a message board, talking about the message board. Calm down. You act like you're defending a holy city from an advancing vanguard of the Ogre Army or something.

 

[Franklin Richards]

Did you notice that I posted exactly one minute after Corp? Have you thought that possibly I might have been posting at the same time? No. I'm sure that that never crossed your mind.


And thanks for rehashing the argument via quotes because when you look at it all minus your DVD commentary it shows how "righteous" I really am.


Thanks.

 

[Aristotle]

Did you notice that I posted exactly one minute after Corp? Have you thought that possibly I might have been posting at the same time? No. I'm sure that that never crossed your mind.


And thanks for rehashing the argument via quotes because when you look at it all minus your DVD commentary it shows how "righteous" I really am.

I love it. One of the few times we're having a civil conversation and you turn it into a hatefest and I'm the bad guy.

 

[Manic]

*tries to change the subject*

So... one thing I barely touched in my Doctor Who #6 review was the 2-page spread of the main character in all of his incarnations during the final showdown. Figure I might as well post up the official picture of those pages from IDW's site.

Spoiler

 

[Franklin Richards]

You know what really grinds my gears?



That you can't be nice. That you patronize people when you argue. That's it.



If you would just use a little respect when you argue none of this would be happening.



"You are passionate - but you do not persuade"

Amadeus




I'm gonna get another beer and try to turn into a nice human being. How bout we bury this?

 

[RockSP]

Nice try, Manic.

 

[Manic]

Well, I gave it a shot.

 

[Franklin Richards]

I'm trying to wrap it up!!!


I was offering my hand!

Yeesh.

 

[Aristotle]

*tries to change the subject*

So... one thing I barely touched in my Doctor Who #6 review was the 2-page spread of the main character in all of his incarnations during the final showdown. Figure I might as well post up the official picture of those pages from IDW's site.

Spoiler

Should I get into that show? I'm daunted by the long hours of watching I'd have to do.

 

[Franklin Richards]

Do you like British Comedies? If the answer is yes... then I think you'd like Dr. Who. You already like Sci Fi so I figure you'll like this. It's a little dry like most BC's are but if that's your cup of tea then this is top notch work in that field.



I'd start with the old school ones first though. Mix in a few Red Dwarf's and Hitchhiker's Guides though.

 

[Manic]

It's actually kind of a goofy show. To sum it up, it's about an alien dude (who looks human and can change his appearance after near-death experiences) who meets ordinary people and takes them on adventures through time and space.

It's mainly a family show, and makes for a silly distraction. It's also notoriously unbalanced, since it has a mixture of serious writers who pump out good science fiction stories, and comedic writers who like kiddy adventures. The writer who currently writes Captain Britain & MI-13 wrote an episode where the Doctor took his sidekick back to the 1980s to see the day her father died, while the guy who created Queer As Folk (who is in charge of the show until 2010) wrote an episode where farting slimy aliens literally zip themselves inside of human skins (complete with coat zippers on their foreheads).

So really, I can only recommend seeing certain episodes of the show.

 

[Aristotle]

I'm not trying to continue a fight, I'm trying to understand something.

You know what really grinds my gears?



That you can't be nice. That you patronize people when you argue. That's it.

What grinds my gears is that you take everything personally. I'll bet you really think I was attacking you somehow in this Batman discussion, don't you? Before you came at me with the smart-guy ********, I mean. I think you manufacture conflicts with me when they don't exist. I think you've had something against me for a very long time.

Yes, sometimes I patronize people. Because some people are stupid. There's a tide of anti-intellectualism ruining this country, and it makes me physically sick. And a lot of the complaints I see against Final Crisis are directly related to that.

But you know who I wasn't patronizing? You. Go back through those quoted posts, ignore my "DVD commentary" if you have to, but show me where I said anything to you that was in any way ******, and I'll apologize.

 

[Aristotle]

It's actually kind of a goofy show. To sum it up, it's about an alien dude (who looks human and can change his appearance after near-death experiences) who meets ordinary people and takes them on adventures through time and space.

It's mainly a family show, and makes for a silly distraction. It's also notoriously unbalanced, since it has a mixture of serious writers who pump out good science fiction stories, and comedic writers who like kiddy adventures. The writer who currently writes Captain Britain & MI-13 wrote an episode where the Doctor took his sidekick back to the 1980s to see the day her father died, while the guy who created Queer As Folk (who is in charge of the show until 2010) wrote an episode where farting slimy aliens literally zip themselves inside of human skins (complete with coat zippers on their foreheads).

So really, I can only recommend seeing certain episodes of the show.

I was familiar with the premise, but I just don't know if I can commit to it. I'm a completist, so I'd feel like I had to watch the entire history of the show.

 

[Franklin Richards]

It's a collection of posts. Plus other posts I've read where you attack these anti-intellectuals as you call them. I'm not going to play the "show me your posts and I'll show you mine" game.


I understand that you get sick when stupid people exist. But it's not a crime. Don't be so harsh, dude.


I'm giving a blanket apology because I just don't want to rehash who did what. I think we can both agree that we both are a bit rude. Let's just agree to show some respect in the future. Even if we're talking to stupid people.