Someone forwarded me this link because, I dunno, having posted once about Your Webcomic Is Bad makes me an authority on it or something, I don’t know.
(Memo to entire world: if you want a ton of unsolicited email from total strangers asking your opinion about practically everything under the sun? Start a blog. It does not fail, I assure you. Not that I’m complaining, because replying to it/acknowledging it is completely optional, because the writers in question understand that you are a very busy person who has a blog.)
Now, most of the link in question is just flaming and “he’s full of shit,” and I don’t care about that, because either you enjoy reading John Solomon and company’s rants or you don’t. It’s a taste. Presumably the people who don’t like reading John Solomon likewise have an intense dislike for the works of Joe Queenan or Ambrose Bierce or Lester Bangs, and this is, I believe, their loss.
(It’s certainly stupid, of course, to suggest, as some have, that John Solomon is a “bad writer.” I recognize the need to claim bullshit as gospel truth out of a sense of spite, but come on – either you recognize simple writerly skill at crafting inflammatory rhetoric, or you don’t. As Penny Arcade once said, paraphrased – which is it, are you stupid or a liar?)
But one thing about it caught my eye – not least because the author took double-plus care to make sure it would catch any reader’s eye by bolding and italicizing it, so I don’t think it’s presumptuous to think this the main idea he wants to communicate with his essay:
The moment you really give a shit what a site like this (or any other) says about your webcomic, you lose.
This is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have read in a very long time, and understand I’ve spent the last month reading bullshit court decisions that nonetheless established binding legal precedents of dubious value in Canada – so when I say “stupidest,” it carries with it some weight. (It is, granted, less stupid than the dialogue of Carpoolers.)