“I found Barry Ween a bit too sophomoric for my tastes, and Pedro and Me didn’t need to be a comic — it didn’t have a good integration of image and text.”

I have to admit, I freaking love Barry Ween. I have read that over and over again and still laugh. I looked at Pedro for my paper on graphic memoir. One interesting thing about it is very meta – it’s a memoir largely documenting a (purported) documentary experience. And unlike the others of the formal, there’s a reasonable expectation that readers of the work actually saw the TV show. Doesn’t make it good story-telling, though.

I liked Road Trip too! It’s such a quiet little story, though — no high concept, no brand hook — that it’s no wonder it got overlooked.

As for David, well, there are always people who mistake criticism of the work for criticism of the person. I don’t pretend to know the details of what really happened behind-the-scenes … all I know is that the early issues felt like the Giffen work I enjoyed back on Justice League, and these recent ones have none of the same appeal to me.

David–you probably know this and just got confused, but Giffen would be scripting from Winick’s plots, not the other way around. :) While I don’t have JL Generation Lost’s credits memorized, I know Giffen is well known for doing the plotting and breakdowns and having someone else script . I’m not necessarily saying he was doing that with JL:GL, but if it was the more traditional Giffen set up with his plotting and Winick scripting, then it would make sense that the tone of the book changed when he left and Winick took over the plotting as well. Just saying…

OK, the world must be about to end, because you and I have agreed on something from the world of comics–superhero comics no less. It was almost as if I wrote this post–except it was better written and more interesting than if I had done it–to be fair, I don’t read Zatanna–never have found the character interesting, but I appreciate Dini’s skill and how he is portraying a female lead in the male dominated world of the DC Universe (makes me feel like I should read it and support the effort)–but I am loving the new Batgirl series and the Giffen / DeMatteis Booster Gold run while JL Generation Lost has been a major disappointment to me–and I am actually a Judd Winick fan–OK, maybe fan is too strong a word, but I do defend him when he gets badmouthed–some of his mainstream stuff is better than he gets credit for and I have loved his indy stuff–I need more Barry Ween!!!!

As for why Giffen broke off from JL: Generation Lost, I thought that was partly explained by the new LSH Annual he’s been working on with Paul Levitz.