First of all I agree that Transformers was a shitty toy commercial that has nothing to really lose in terms of artistic integrity. That said, sometimes it's just fun to hate on shit, plain and simple. Don't confuse all the 'haters' for arrested development cases who are truly losing sleep over this movie. The redesigns look silly to me (this has more to do with being a designer than being emotionally attached to the cartoons) and from a marketing standpoint I don't completely understand it, but beyond that I really don't care. Anyway...

Here's where I think you lose your footing:

>Another situation in which this might apply...
>
>If you're claiming comics are art, you have to be willing to
>admit that The Watchman isn't representative. That most
>(certainly not all, but most) superhero comics are for
>adolescents and adults who either are remembering adolescence
>or never got past it. That if you go to a comic book
>convention, you'll meet a lot of folks who are in it for
>literature, and a lot who are cases of arrested development.

First of all, we've become such a nation of perpetual adolescents, it seems kind of silly to start drawing lines of distinction here. The average American spends 120 hours a month in front of a TV set. We're spending more and more $ on entertainment every year. Is the 40 year old Trekkie living in his mom's basement any worse than the 40 year old Fellini head living in his Dad's pool house? We're a long way from the days where people got married at 12 and spent the rest of their days working on the farm. You're touching on a very real issue here, but don't make the mistake of limiting it to nostalgic Transformer fans on a message board. 'Grown ups' in general are an endangered species.

And you're right, a lot of arrested development cases are reading comics in a sad attempt to re-enter the womb of pre-adolescence. But maybe it's the stigma attached to the medium attracting these types in the first place. 'Watchmen' is no more representative of comics than 'Citizen Kane' is of film.
And yet, when I say 'film', the first thing that comes to mind probably isn't 'Dunston Checks In' or something.
And when I say 'literature', you don't think of crappy supermarket romance novels.
But when I say 'comics', the first image that pops into everyone's head is grown men in capes and tights jumping around punching things. Why is that, I wonder?