Talk:Matt Baker (artist)

Untitled

How about some info about his death? As he appears to have only been 37 years old when he died, I would think that something other than "natural causes" might be a possibility? -Grammaticus Repairo 21:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

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Unexplained rewrite

The article underwent an unexplained complete rewrite recently, if someone has more knowledge of the artist, he/she could go through the verion of http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Matt_Baker_(artist)&oldid=292275356 to see if it has useful information. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

SPA

A single-purpose account anon-IP, pushing an agenda to burnish Matt Baker's reputation, wants to insist that "many scholars" ( as opposed to a few historians — no one he's cited is in academia) call It Rhymes with Lust one of the first graphic novels ... without mentioning the many more who note it was a newsstand publication, with all the postal and other legal technicalities that entails, and was a proto-graphic novel. Sources for that include Ken Quattro at http://www.comicartville.com/archerstjohn.htm ("...in many ways It Rhymes with Lust was the prototype of the modern graphic novel") and the book reviewer for Portland, Oregon's newspaper The Oregonian at http://blog.oregonlive.com/steveduin/2007/03/it_rhymes_with_lust.html ("...showcases Baker's art even as it celebrates one of the more entertaining chapters in the early history of the graphic novel.").

He has been edit-warring, and I've asked him to bring it here for discussion instead. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:21, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

And historically speaking, calling it one of the first graphic novels, as opposed to an early form of graphic novel, ignores fellow predecessors The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck (1828); Frans Masereel's Passionate Journey (1926), Lynd Ward's Gods' Man ( 1929) and other woodcut books; Milt Gross' He Done Her Wrong (1930); Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonté (1934); and Charlotte Salomon's Life? or Theater? (1941-43). --Tenebrae (talk) 20:34, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Matt Baker edits

I have not attempted to burnish Matt Baker's reputation so much as attempted to have the Wikipedia entry more genuinely reflect the critical consensus on his contributions to the medium.

A simple Google search will show that hundreds of sites assert and debate the idea that "It Rhymes With Lust" may be the first graphic novel. I included a verifiable citation from David Hajdu (a professor at Columbia University) and other published work as citations. I didn't state any of those works necessarily make the claim that it is the first graphic novel, but they assert it is possible and they reaffirm that this particular work is at the center of an ongoing debate on the subject.

You accuse my alterations of not being backed by acdemic writing (when I have just shown they are), while the two citations you cite in your Talk comments are far from academic. I personally don't think the only scholarship worth considering has to come from an academic (where would Wikipedia be with that criteria), but you can't hold my contributions to a different standard than your own.

Finally, the term "graphic novel" doesn't enjoy the kind of concrete consensus definition that you are trying to impose here. Even the Wikipedia definition is very broad. To argue that it was a "periodical" (which it wasn't; it was not serialized or numbered in any way, and it was formatted like a book not a magazine) or "sold on a newstand" as criteria for what qualifies as a graphic novel is highly questionable. And to cite a single (non-academic) source that described it as a "proto-graphic novel" hardly gives you the codgel you've been using to bang away at my highly qualified phrasing of "some SUGGEST...it MAY be" the first graphic novel.

You've behaved like an over-zealous gatekeeper, and despite creating hoop after hoop for me to jump through (which I've done each step of the way), you've allowed some kind of weird pride to get in the way of making an entry as good as it might otherwise be. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.66.78.46 (talk) 20:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Of course I did a Google search. The vast majority of hits are sales venues for the 2007 Dark Horse reissue. Many of the rest are personal blogs, which Wikipedia disallows except in the rare cases of being written by a recognized authority in a given field, such as Mark Evanier. I found only a couple of citations by journalistic sources — so your claim of "hundreds of sites" may be technically true, but virtually none of them qualify as encyclopedic reliable sources under Wikipedia policy.

You were the one who first used the term "scholarly sources", not me. If you are going to make claims of "scholarly" sources, then you have to cite scholars. Guys who write books for TwoMorrows are perfectly acceptable amateur historians in their fields, but not scholars. As for David Hajdu, a professional author / journalist and an adjunct professor (as opposed to a Ph.D. regular professor), even he doesn't say anything other than what the article already said: "Drake and Waller though of the book as a 'picture novel' — a full-length work of fiction in graphic form. (The next time anyone would try anything comparable, [emphasis added] twenty-five years later [sic], it would be called a 'graphic novel.')" (page 164, The Ten-Cent Plague).

He does not call it "one of the first graphic novels" — he calls it something "comparable" to what would be called a graphic novel. In other words, exactly what already the article said: "an early form of graphic novel." (Note: He also gets the timeline wrong, missing Kurtzman's Jungle Book, Kane's Blackmark and others.)

You also haven't responded to my list of other early forms of graphic novel going back to 1828. It Rhymes with Lust is an important early form of graphic novel, but historically, factually, it is not one of the first graphic novels. Not unless a half-dozen examples for a previous 120+ years are ignored.

As for "making an entry as good as it might ... be," I think strict accuracy helps make an entry as good as it might be, rather than partisanship toward a favored artist. --Tenebrae (talk) 21:01, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I didn't address your earlier example of what are generally considered "proto-graphic novels," because I'm not going to invest the time necessary to debate the definition of the GRAPHIC NOVEL with you. You've already asserted criteria (e.g., "sold on a newstand") that demonstrate that our definitions are fundamentally far enough apart that the effort isn't worth it (for what it is worth, nothing in the Wikipedia entry for Graphic Novels that you earlier refered me to contains such criteria).

As for the study of comic books, academia has lagged far enough behind that "scholary sources" are few and far between. Dismissing Hajdu is splitting hairs here and disingenuous. As for "journalistic" sources, I guess Alter Ego doesn't count because you have determined that Roy Thomas and his contributors are all amature historians. For what it is worth, I would have been perfectly fine if you had changed "scholars" to "historians," but that wasn't in the spirit of your self-assigned role of intransigent gatekeeper. You weren't interested in collaborating as much as being an "authority."

You are obviously WAY more invested in this than I am. Feel free to slap me with any more "violations" you want. I can't imagine being inclined to make any further contributions to Wikipedia entries any time soon.