TF Views

Dominic wrote:

He comments on the behind the scenes stuff more than the comic itself. Although, I'm right there with you, I'd prefer to know what happens in the comic rather than the editorial stuff.

What behind the scenes stuff are you seeing in my reviews? "Dixon has gotten lazy and predictable over the last 10-15 years" is commonly known.

And the comic's story somehow follows the lazy and predictable exploits of Dixon over the last 10-15 years? No. That's behind the scenes, not in the story.

I guess Dom's reviewing the authors themselves as much as the comic as a self-contained piece of art...

Dominic wrote:[quote="BWprowl] , a review shouldn't have to go over the basic points of a book for people that didn't/won't read it, could just check wikipedia summaries or something for that. A review should just tell you if a book sucks or not.

Exactly, plenty of other places have spoilers and/or "I read it so you do not have to" reviews.

I use letter grades for people who just want a quick and easy metric to go by.[/quote][/quote]
Just for my $.02... A review isn't just whether or not you thought the book sucked. That's just an opinion and it doesn't explain why you thought the book does/doesn't suck. I agree with Shockwave here. For it to be a review, it needs to go a little bit into the content of the book itself, not the author's background.

A review should balance summarising and opining, surely. People want to know roughly what something is about, and roughly what effect it had on the critic (though I'll never understand that second part).

My reviews usually say "the writer handles one thing or another well/badly". By writing about what the writer does and how, I am writing about the content.

Unless somebody is going to pay me for time/annoyance, I ain't writing a point by point or a summary review. Those take time and are usually not fun to do.


Dom
-"Sabertooth: Death Hunt" being an exception.

Well, I for one would happily see you drop the letter grading system in favour of ten words about the story. Just sayin'.

Dominic wrote:By writing about what the writer does and how, I am writing about the content.

I don't see how just calling the writer predictable tells me anything about what or how he does anything, let alone tells me anything about the content. I mean, I'm not familiar with this writer or this plot line having skipped the first "Infestation", so I have no frame of reference to know what makes this predicable, in your view, in the first place. You're just giving me an opinion on the book with out support from the content explaining why you came to that conclusion. What about this particular book makes the writing predicable?

Last year's "Infestation" followed a very simple and redundant structure.

Book end issue 1: Zombies (controlled by the oh so kewl Overmind) go on a dimension hopping rampage to gain power and such. Along the way, they co-opt a character from one of IDW's in-house books before going out in to 4 licensed books.

Each licensed book involves the zombies showing up or being discovered by the main cast. At some point during the first issue, the co-opted IDW character is revealed or manifests. In the second issue, the main characters fend off and destroy the zombies.

Book end issue 2: Zombies return to their starting point in the IDW owned book and are defeated.

So far, "Infestation 2" is following exactly that patter, replacing zombies with Lovecraftian monsters. It is a paint by numbers cross-over.


Dixon has long been known as a paint by numbers writer. What more is there to say? Dixon's plots are really not worth point by point summaries.

Dominic wrote:Dixon's plots are really not worth point by point summaries.

Well we've all just *told* you that they are, what kind of reviewer are you? =p

No they ain't. Seriously, even if I had the time to do point by point reviews, (which are a huge pain in the ass to begin with), I would likely not bother with any of Dixon's output from (at least) the last 5 years. The summary in my post above is about all there is to say about the plot of the issue.