Deconstructing Comics
Scott McCloud retweeted one of his followers, who’d written, “Someone should revisit Gary Groth's attack on Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics and count the times he got it wrong.”
Here’s the thing. I read that criticism (which was not easy - Groth is abstruse, and his disquisition prolix). I don’t see a whole lot that Groth “got wrong”. Groth hits on a number of points in the first half of his 2002 article, alleging that Reinventing Comics was a rushed, shallow, padded-out cash grab compared to the earlier Understanding Comics; that McCloud was an average cartoonist at best who did nothing exceptional or innovative as an artist; that the book’s historical claims were too grandiose on the artistic side and too scantily sourced on the technical side; and that the book’s predictions were mere technophilic daydreams. That latter bit is the only section where Groth visibly whiffs in the batter’s box to me. Here are the things he calls out McCloud for predicting:
“the growth of a new generation utterly at home with digital media” Sorry, Gary. The beginnings of that generation are alive right now. “a radical realignment of industrialized economies” Groth gets at least half a point here. It’s certainly not radical yet. “the advent of wearable computing” Another point for Gary. This still looks like a novelty, though it is creeping closer. “the first stirrings of genuine artificial intelligence” Still 20 years away, like it’s been for decades. Another for Gary. “the maturing of virtual reality as more than just a headache-inducing novelty” VR did not take the immersive 3D path popularized a decade ago, but we are spending tons of time in cyberspace nonetheless “the first imperfect prototypes for the ultimate ‘killer-app’ - a universal translator” Word Lens? Check. Google Translate? Check. Sorry, Gary.
So despite starting with a clear miss, Mr. Groth batted almost .500 here (though the way things are going, he’ll soon lose the point for mocking wearable computing).
The entire second half takes McCloud to task for buying into the mystical, magical “technical advancement is always beneficial and will eventually solve all our problems” hogwash that’s only professed by the naïve (who will believe it regardless of fact), the ignorant (who don’t know any better), and the communication-controlling megacorps (who push that line of thought intentionally because it lets them expand their influence on the market while people in the first two groups think the opposite is happening): Convergence is now the name of the game: the corporations that now dominate global media … are all maneuvering themselves into impregnable positions whereby they have complete control over every aspect of media transmission - from content creation to digital delivery directly into the homes of every consumer.
Groth was spot-on in 2002 predicting things like RIAA activities and SOPA/PIPA. I don't know how to call that “getting it wrong”.