Whatever, dude.

I'm just trying to say that if you're going to try to find examples of comics that someone could hold up and say, "Now aren't the subtle pleasures of this work so much more rewarding than the crap you like?"... it would help if they had any appeal at all to people who don't come across like smug, pipe smoking elitists with elbow patches on their jackets.

How often does somebody sit you down and say this to you? This is maybe the fifteen millionth thread where I've seen you say something like this, so it sounds like every hour or so, somebody's jumping in your window and telling you Marvel Team-Up is stupid.

That's just how most discussions of people like Ware and Clowes sound to me.

I can barely even lurk at TCJ.com because of the pretentious coffee house vibe I get off of most of the threads I've read.

Come D, I don't come off that way, if you think I do, you crazy.
Chuckie does most times, but not all of us do, I don't think Ken does either.

Yet somehow you manage, apparently.

K

Looking at the comic news section of TCJ, I don't really see anything like that in the top ten threads. Although I admit, I haven't really done a thorough scouring of TCJ.

Either way though... this doesn't seem so much like anyone's jumping in your window, or even politely sitting you down. It seems like you're annoyed that, upon having entered the coffee house, you find that it's full of coffee house types who don't want to talk about Marvel Team-Up.

That's... I dunno. Rough? I guess?

I hereby declare my independence from whatever "us" snoid has in mind that includes me with him. Give me people who can think past one sentence or give me death, or a new category!

It would help whom? PUNCHDRUNK LOVE had Adam Sandler in it doing a version of his manchild shtick and it didn't do well at the box-office.

I just saw this documentary, HECKLER, about Jamie Kennedy's encounters with hecklers and his internet critics. He constantly whines about his critics attacking him in such a personal way (he's stupid, an idiot, yadda yadda). The one thing he doesn't consider (nor does the documentary) is that he largely gets the critics he deserves. An insightful, well-reasoned and intelligent critic isn't going to see any of his shit to begin with. How much thought does such a comedian deserve to determine how shitty he really is? Only a certain audience would feel the need to see SON OF THE MASK to determine whether it's any good. Of that audience, some will laugh and others will call Kennedy a douchebag. There's a lesson there, which makes the film sort of worth seeing.

Do you feel better now?

There are certainly artists who can manage to ask both questions and make them appeal to both sets of readers, as I noted earlier with respect to Shakespeare using both "blood and thunder" for the relatively-educated and subtle philosophical problems for the highly-educated. I also said, in a statement refuting your invocation of the tired "lowest common denominator" bushwah:

"There are writers who can create for both audiences as well as whatever middleground exists between the two, but to do so those writers have to be able to understand the aesthetic preferences of each group"

One or two of your other examples, such as Highsmith (whom I've not read in the original) may share that talent, but it certainly isn't true of Camus or Borges. My impression is that Lem is nowhere near the top of the charts in SF reader-popularity, and so I'd think it likely that he's no Shakespeare.

What you would like to believe is that the high-toned genre-examples are the best all-around blendings of general storytelling talents. I would say that the LeGuins and the Lems are fine for what they are, but they don't represent the SF genre any better than straightforward storytellers like Asimov and Heinlein. They do all represent it better than Gardner Fox, however.