Tannishblog

I’ve been getting into online comix lately. (I spelled that intentionally.) While most showcase artists and/or writers with much talent to share, they are just a lineal extension of the old paperback comic books and , as such, nothing new. That doesn’t deter their entertainment value, not does it demean the art form. But the Internet is used only as a new form of distribution. The paper version of the art, from Superman to Snoopy, has run its gamut whether it is online or not.

Sometime there are visionaries able to merge an existing art form via technological advances. One such site, Electric Sheep, does just that. The creators have taken the linear story board and married it with wen design tenets to great effect. to morph the art in order to fulfill the possibilities of digital media. In a real sense the results are a New Media, as communication of a story line is enhanced through a fresh vision. Check out the online comic the Spiders, as my favorite example of a powerful story enhanced by the medium, instead of being distracted by it. Check it out.

Have you ever noticed how our media attends to war coverage in disproportion to other news? War and Terrorism, it’s all the same thing.

It’s only some wars. If Israel or America is involved, sometimes the UK, the news is unavoidable. News outlets squeeze the story for all its worth. But in the rest of the world all we hear is the sound of crickets. Wars happen everywhere, all the time. IN Sri Lanka a civil war has been going on for two generations. In Africa, war is endemic. American news outlets care little.

Have you ever noticed how the way wars and terrorism is covered resembles the style used for sports coverage? The late Howard Cosell would be proud; every grunt and curse is broadcast in the news equivalent of high-definition, propagated through news wire services in cyclic regurgitation.

It must help to feed the Money God. Newspapers and television stations are businesses, and businesses have only one purpose - to make money. They wouldn’t be the way they are if it didn’t sell. That brings up the question of who is responsible for the outlandish sensationalism in today’s media. The answer seems obvious - the consumers are. If we didn’t continue to buy it, watch it, read it or listen to it, these same businesses would have to find another way to turn a profit. If we weren’t so perverse as to suck up all the bad news in lieu of the good, things would be different.

Kind of gives a new spin to the phrase "You get what you pay for."