Well then, you could reserve the second review only for works that you felt the quality shifted dramatically when read as a complete story. Then again, I think most reviewers wind up reviewing the whole arc whenever the review the last issue of it, anyway. I know I have often wound up doing that.

I don’t think it’s fair to talk about “all her commenters” – she moderates them, after all.

Well books aren’t serialized a chapter at a time, but comics are (Well, in the olden days they were; Ed mentions Dickens. Most books today aren’t serialized chapter at a time, if any). A gallery art show is a little in between, isn’t it? The paintings are done one at a time over a period of (often) years, but the audience sees them all one at a time. An art critic might review the show as a whole, but the audience is generally viewing it piece by piece and as a whole simultaneously. Like, I’ve been to shows where I hated one piece and loved another, but loving the one doesn’t make me like the one I hated.

Not every media matches up to comics for these purposes. D’Orazio mentions the Iron Man movie, for example, but audience members so it all at once. They didn’t pay for every twenty minutes of it once a month.

I think your trying to have your cake and eat it too. You can’t argue for the integrity of the finished product and how much improv is used in constructing it.

If the story is evolving issue to issue, then reviews of each issue become more necessary and bring constructive feedback to the artist. Since the artist is still finalizing the story as he/she is publishing it, the reviewer can let them know if a given story direction is connecting with the audience of leaving them behind. Also, if the current plot is meant to be a misdirection, then the artist can find out if the ruse is working or if everyone is seeing through the slight of hand.

If I remember my history of serialized fiction correctly, the audience has always been a factor in shaping the story. Didn’t Dickens make changes to his novels based on reader’s reaction in their letters to the editor? In manga, most weekly and monthly magazines carry a reader’s survey and based on those survey results an artist may be asked to change the direction of a series.

If an artist doesn’t want their work judged on a chapter by chapter basis, then they shouldn’t publish it in that format. When you present something to the public for consumption, then you should be prepared for the public to react to what’s presented to them.

I think it’s disingenuous to ask me to purchase a book and then say I can’t comment on my purchase because it’s still a work in progress. I have to wait for the artist to tell me when a work is ready for critique before I’m allowed to voice an opinion. A smart artist would simply claim none of their works are every really complete and so avoid criticism indefinitely.

It also implies feelings of democracy towards the complete creative process — too often, fans (and this includes, say, television) act like they are collaborators or editors and should be able to actually change the course of a story mid-stream because they are currently dissatisfied with it.

I wouldn’t review art shows one painting at a time, nor would I review a book one chapter at a time. Serialized works are still parts of a whole, they just aren’t released all at once and I think that part of the job of a critic is to actually meet the creator half-way by at the very least considering his work as a whole before passing judgment. It seems unprofessional to do otherwise.

Anyhow, it can strike me as so much navel-gazing unless a reviewer is really exceptional — and reviewers of any medium who are a pleasure to read beyond the point of what they are reviewing aren’t the norm.

But if we’re just talking people posting their opinion on their blog, whatever. There are no professional standards, really, it’s just conversation.

It depends on the institution doing the reviewing, of course; I assume most print or mainstream media wouldn’t review any serial comic book beyond the first one anyway, so I don’t know why onew ould need tell THEM not to.

But comic book websites and blogs should be reviewing comic books as they come out. That doesn’t mean you can’t review the trade or whatever, but if a single issue doesn’t give you enough to review, then either you probably shouldn’t be reviewing them anyway, or the book itself isn’t meeting the minium standard of something, anything at all happening (And hell, even if NOTHING happens, a review can point that out, and still discuss the art).

And to say you shouldn’t review the story because its not over until its in a trade just opens you up to the next step; if it isn’t fair to review, say, Y The Last Man #1 because the story’s not over, then should you be able to review the first trade collection? Because it’s still not over. Should critics wait till the series wraps, and then review it?

Feh.

In another unit of measure, that’s one CD. Did four comics equal one album back then?

That’s a neat callback to history, though.

I guess I’m saying you can’t have it both ways. Publishers can’t complain about people judging comics before they have all the pieces AND complain about people waiting for the trade.

(Paradoxically, the more interesting the writer the more time I need to figure out whether the book is going to work or be a flop. A bad writer will telegraph his “badness” within a single issue – a good writer can often keep it hidden for 3 or more issues.)

I remember John Byrne complaining about this when he did that OMAC miniseries. Can anyone name a mini that had a big enough payoff that you really needed to stick with it? I can’t, although I can think of series that radically changed direction (e.g., Bone, which was excellent all the way through).