The New York Times Arts page (well, the virtual one, at least) is a study in contradictions today.
In her review of the new season of Alias, Virginia Heffernan offers the following:
“In the second view, “Alias,” whose fourth season has its two-hour premiere on ABC tonight, is nothing more than a pretentious comic strip: static, allegorical, a pleasure only to addicts, but also headache-inducingly difficult to criticize in these times when American comics have become, through male nostalgia and the canonization of the graphic novel, sacrosanct.”
Using a definition of comics narrow enough to suit her argument (“Many of us don’t like comic books and have feigned interest in their jumpy bif-bam fighting scenes and the way they redeem loser guys, only to impress and minister to those loser guys.”), Heffernan goes on to deride one entertainment by likening it to another. (I’m not defending either; I don’t watch Alias, and super-hero comics are losing their glow by the day.)
She couldn’t have possibly known, of course, that her piece would be listed two doors down from the obituary for comics legend Will Eisner. It’s got to be purely coincidence that she’s rolling her eyes at the “canonization of the graphic novel” right below a tribute to the man who gave the graphic novel its name.
Bad timing, though.