But there was one interesting factoid that followed from Mr. Zimmern's Renfeld impersonation: for the most part, insects taste like what they eat. If they eat oranges, you've got an orange-flavored bug. If they eat garlic, you've got a new (albeit disgusting) way to season your marinara sauce.
Okay, gastronomy aside, I think the analogy is obvious - they taste like what they eat. And so will you!
I remember a forward to a book on classic advertising that mentioned how, whenever you go into the offices and even the homes of advertising people, all the books are on advertising. That's not good. It's the antithesis of a liberal arts education. They've got nothing else to draw on, just other advertising. A fair number of comics people strike me the same way. There is no liberal arts base, for lack of a better word. Just this thin, tainted gene pool where far too many first cousins have been getting chummy for far too long.
I absolutely do not mean that comics should go on bringing in television writers that have no understanding of or respect for the medium or its characters. I mean that the comics writers themselves need to stop eating that same turkey on rye three meals a day, every day.
You taste like what you eat. So give a little thought to what you're taking into yourself.
That goes for more than just writers. Your imagination is a sacred thing. And if you're reading a crap comic that degrades the character, it doesn't really matter if you work in a comic store and read it for free. It's not DC getting your $2.95 that's the problem in this instance, it's you taking one more dose of poisonously unhealthy carcinogens into your imagination. It's not good for you, and if you do it too much, it will catch up with you just like nicotine and transfat.
Back to my favorite director at the moment, Akira Kurisawa. He understood everything about the samurai world, but he also read Russian literature and Shakespeare. So when he brought one of those stories into his storyverse, he did it right. He didn't give us a Bushido Elseworld: King Lear in a Samurai suit - he gave us a true adaptation. You taste like what you eat.
