Jason Preu

The Possibility for Cultural Criticism, Jun 21 2004

Cultural relativists as far back as Sextus Empiricus or Michel Montaigne, or as recent as William Graham Sumner or Gilbert Harman, often make compelling arguments that there are no objective standards for judging other societies/beliefs. Yet Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis achieves in 153 pages what cultural relativists deny as possible and what most political pundits can never fully articulate: an informed and justifiable criticism of an existing cultural paradigm. Satrapi's method is deceptively simple: by using her own life stories as the premise, Satrapi builds an argument for criticizing culture.

Satrapi's autobiographicalized[1] self and society act both with wisdom and foolishness… Read more

Cheated, indeed, Jun 21 2004

"Tempted by the fruit of another
Tempted but the truth is discovered
What's been going on
Now that you have gone
There's no other
Tempted by the fruit of another
Tempted but the truth is discovered"
- Squeeze

[Author's Note: All panel references assume that page one is the first page past the title that contains artwork. Therefore, I will label references as "1.1," "2.3," etc. These notations should be read as "page one, panel one," "page 2, panel 3" and so on.]

[Note to comix artists and their publishers: please remember to number your pages. Doing so gives critics a common foundation from which to reference, thank you.]

The artwork that comprises… Read more

Beautiful art, lacking story, Jun 18 2004

Alex Ross does a phenomenal job here. I'm not much a fan of his work, but do recognize his talent. Steve Darnall's writing leaves something to be desired. Perhaps 7 years ago this story would seem a radical piece of literature but it's very uninteresting in today's political climate, where both pro and con arguments about the spirit of the U.S. choke airwaves and bandwidth. One measure of an artwork's quality is the ability to remain relevant. This book doesn't meet that measure.