'Those were, however – with the exception of pointing out the occasional objective mistake – simply my opinions, and I don’t consider them to be privileged. Once you’ve written something it’s not yours any longer: it belongs to other people, and they all have opinions about it, and every single one of those opinions is as correct as that of the author – more so, perhaps. Because those people have read the work as something perfectly new, and, barring amnesia, an author is never going to be able to do that. There will be too many ghost-versions of the story in the way, and besides, the author cannot read it for the first time, wondering what happens next, comparing it to other things that he or she has read.

So while I may, opinionated myself, disagree with some of the conclusions presented here, I am quite content for the opinions to exist; after all, the people who came to them read the work for the first time, which is more than I’ve ever managed... I’ve always enjoyed it, perhaps because I’ve always had a healthy respect for academia. Even when I'm puzzled by it, it treats art like it matters. And for those of us who make art, that’s a fine thing to experience.

I’m always particularly delighted by academic attention to comics – partly because I think we need the best critical minds to point to what we do and explain it to ourselves, and partly, even mostly, because it shows how much things are changing. (A decade ago I was invited to speak at one major American university by the art department, and was informed, apologetically, that the English department were, ah, boycotting my talk, because, after all, I did comics. These days the invitations come from the English departments...)'


the branagh, in one of his moments of obtuse honesty, said he thought actors were nice people. well, i think academics are nice people. and i think the department of english is a marvellous thing.

the cite is from the journal. the man can write.
but then, it is the sort of writing i would like, because of how much reading there is in it.