Deconstructing Comics

[quarrel]

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” and provided a link to the criticism in question.

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” but McCloud predicted correctly. Groth hits a number of points in the first half of his article: Reinventing Comics being a rushed, shallow, padded-out cash grab compared to the earlier Understanding Comics; McCloud being a par-at-best cartoonist who did nothing exceptional or innovative as an actual artist; the book’s historical claims being too grandiose on the artistic side and too scantily sourced on the technical side; and its predictions 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”

Half a point, maybe a full point. It’s certainly not radical yet.

“the advent of wearable computing”

One for Gary. It 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 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 wish it true regardless), the ignorant (who don’t know any better), and the communication-controlling megacorps (who push that line of thought because it lets them expand their influence on the market while people in the first two groups think it’s shrinking):

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.

How, exactly, is Groth wrong here?