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Amatures Shouldn't Write Reviews for Comics

A rant directed towards the book reviewing community at large, but especially towards Netgalley leachers. Originally written at the bottom of my White Sand vol. 1 review.


 You want to know one way to get me zero to one hundred, calm to absolutely scalding, in under one second? Be someone with an uneducated opinion. Oh yeah sure, everyone is entitled to an opinion, right? But when someone decides to have an opinion on something that they have absolutely zero knowledge in, it just... It just kills me. I'm trying to sound calm but this actually fucking infuriates me. I'll steer this towards European football for a second since that's a recent example. 

 I was talking with my dad about how using penalty kicks as a way to settle a tied game is bullshit. Team 1 could be outplaying the other team the whole game and Team 2 just barely holds on long enough to draw it, and then even though Team 1 played the better footie they could end up loosing in the end just because Team 2 kicked in a few more balls than them in penalties. Cue my brother piping in: "That doesn't make any sense. Clearly if they're tied it means that Team 1 really wasn't all that better than Team 2 anyway so it's alright." Well clearly he hasn't watched a single football match in his life, but he still decides to put his two uneducated cents in. 

 We proceed to let him know that this does indeed make sense, as lots of times a team can be more skilled and just not be able to get any goals, and how it's just as possible to get accidental goals, or to score from a free kick or penalty kick. The possession will be 70%-30% in favour of Team 1, but they just keep hitting the post. They're dancing around Team 2's defence and delivering crosses right to the boot of their team mates. It is clear they are playing beautiful football. But all that doesn't matter if Team 2 is somehow able to keep it nill-nill (probably by parking one hell of a bus) or to equalize, and then they win in pens. 

 My brother still didn't get it. Truly the mentality of someone who has never witnessed such a football match. Anyway, that whole exchange really riled me up, like any exchange where people try to argue with me about something I know a lot about and they know nothing about. Another (shorter) example would be when my dad tries to argue with me about digital art or sharks. I honestly don't know how people are able to keep calm in these situations, because this exhibit of absolute stupidity literally turns me into the hulk. 

Why did I just write my life story on this review? Because I see this happen all the time on graphic novel/comic reviews, especially from people coming from Netgalley. People who don't know what they're talking about trying to judge the quality of these books. Sure, you can say you didn't like the story, it didn't captivate you, whatever. But don't, holy shit, do NOT come on here saying, "I didn't like the art because it was all grainy and bad quality." Oh my god. Credibility obliterated. Why are you here? Just get out. I don't care that you just wanted to read a free graphic novel. The point of Netgalley is to write helpful reviews on to-be-released books, so don't be some random person who never reads graphic novels and just scoop them up and read and write your shitty reviews on them. If you're a reviewer and don't know what was wrong with the above quote, get out. Don't download any graphic novels from Netgalley. You're not the intended reviewer for these books. 

People who don't read comics/graphic novels shouldn't review them since they don't have the knowledge about the medium to be able to write anything remotely useful or intelligent. This shit just #triggers me so I had to write a whole rant about it. It's not even just the specific example I highlighted above, it's other shit that people write in their reviews too that just comes off as so amateur, and which really rustles my jimmies (if you couldn't tell).
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