Choose your opinion (all from posts 234-235 of this comic strip thread):
(Various minor typos fixed.)
A. Woody Allen is lost. Has been for 20 years. He’s a terrible analogy for Lynn Johnston. He sucks because he’s lost his moral center.
B. Woody never had a moral center - his early work was always about the amoral man. His best serious work (Crimes and Misedemeanors) is about getting away Scot free. I mean, did a Woody Allen character ever learn a lesson or become a better person? Even in a comedy, a genre in which the hero always goes through the cliche of becoming a better person at the end?
Woody sucks now because he’s totally unconnected to his time and place. He always was, but what’s charming and endearing in a younger man is bizarre, off-putting and repellent in an old man. You want a comics equivalent to Woody Allen? Look no further than Johnny Hart.
C. Really? I think he had a moral world. It was an existentialist morality pinned in intellect and philosophy, rather than metaphysics, but Woody Allen heroes used to get away with shit and neurotically tear themselves up. Since C&M, it’s been like “I’m too old to worry about anything catching up with me in this lifetime and I don’t sweat any possibility of any other, so what’s the point?”
Which is a valid view, but life is too short to watch films full of douchebags.
Posted by Matt Bruce at January 31, 2007 05:43 PMI think a combination of B and C, but really the comics-age equivalent of Woody Allen is Woody Allen himself.
Posted by: Greg at February 1, 2007 05:03 AM