Tempests and teapots: The comics blogeratti are atwitter over Heidi MacDonald's column in the May 14 issue of Comic Buyer's Guide, in which she apparently suggests the abundance of comics blogs is, well, a bad thing. H at The Comic Treadmill provides some excerpts:

I have been reading a lot of blogs lately. And I have to say a lot of them are really dopey. (No names.) Give 1,000 monkeys 1,000 typewriters and eventually they’ll write an issue of Night Nurse or create a blog. And, except for a very few sites, I realized they can pretty much be safely ignored. When you give everyone a voice, no one can hear everything.

(That, by the way, is my first use of the long-rumored "blockquote"; I find coding such a challenge.)

I haven't read the column in question, so I can't really address Heidi's grievances with any depth or authority (I recommend reading H's well-reasoned response). But I can't really get worked up about it, either. Heidi MacDonald, who seems intelligent and nice enough, thinks a lot of comics blogs are "dopey," and that many can be "pretty much ignored"? Eh, I'll survive; her opinion on the subject doesn't affect me.

("When you give everyone a voice, no one can hear everything" does smack of elitism, though. It reminds me of curmudgeonly newspaper editors who used to harrumph about the growth of news and rumor websites. Where are the gatekeepers?!?)

That said, I find it odd that Heidi holds so many comics blogs in such low regard, particularly given that, on its best days, "The Beat" is little more than a blog that repeats nuggets of news and gossip that already appeared on other blogs and websites. And I won't even mention the apparently aborted Seventh World.

Oh, well. Next thing you know, she'll be poo-pooing folks with their own Delphi forums.