benlehman

This is about webcomics, to start with, but it makes a larger point.

So Scott Kurtz has a big rant on his webpage in which he hates on fellow cartoonists. For those of you familiar with his comic (or at least, those that read his essay writing), this will not come as a big surprise. Like many people, he's pretty much incapable of restraint online.

Anywhere, here's his site: http://www.pvponline.com/ Go read it now -- Kurtz's rants have a tendency to come down once his foot-in-mouth disease kicks in.

Most of the blathering is just blathering, but there's a particular line I want to draw attention to:

Rather than try to make a name for himself by actually CREATING something, Mr. T. has to piggy-back himself on the webcomics creators out there giving it their all.

T Campbell (site: http://www.tcampbell/ ) (and Kurtz knows this, he's linked to the man before) is a writer. He wrote a very long webcomic series (Fans!) which took a shitty premise and developed it enormously deeply. He writes a couple of other comics right now, as well (Penny and Aggie, which is great, and Rip and Teri, which I don't read.) He also done tons of guest-writing stints and so on.

Kurtz's claim is basically that T isn't really a creator, because he's a writer, rather than an artist. This is actually a pretty odd claim, as Kurtz's writing is a much bigger part of his job than his art (he uses clips) and both of these men are talented writers.

This is essentially recapitulating the culture stereotypes around writing -- that it is easy, that anyone can do it, that writers are really just people with connections so they can get their stuff published, and skill has nothing to do with it. It's basically a crock of shit.

Writing is hard. Writing is a skill. Anyone can't do it. In my little corner of the publishing world (RPGs), I've seen game after game suffer from good designers who are shitty writers (and I'm not going to name names, no thanks. If you want my opinion of your writing, pay me.) To trivialize the writing portion of comics is basically to ignore half the artform, if not more. (A lot of people will read well-written comics with shitty art. Almost no one reads pretty comics with crappy writing.)

It's really upsetting to see this being replicated by someone who is a writer himself.