By all accounts, Phillip Kennedy Johnson is a nice guy; very well-rounded and highly talented. A veteran, an accomplished musician, a popular comic book writer.
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| Poor Oswald. |
But he clearly has no idea what "itinerant" means (something or someone that travels from place to place, from the Latin "iter/itineris", meaning "journey") or cares to make sure he knows the words he has his characters use. If there is anything a brick-and-mortar medical facility is NOT, it is "itinerant".
That is ignorant and lazy writing and I myself don't have patience for that in my comics. Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age writers--well, they BUTCHERED science constantly beyond all recognition. Plotting? Insane; absurd.
But ... words? They were WRITERS. Words were their craft. With few exceptions I can recall, they knew the words they used and used them correctly. It doesn't seem like that high a standard to insist on.
You COULD make up a case that this is intentional; it's to show that the PENGUIN uses words he doesn't know. But we both know that's not the case here. It's particularly insulting that this bungle is forced upon one of DC's characters known best for erudition and eloquence.
I was about to buy this comic. Then I saw that. Honestly, if the writers AND EDITORS at DC don't care about what their characters are saying...
why should I?
5 comments:
Fully agreed; if you don't know what a word means, look it up. Last thing you want to do is use a word with baggage you didn't know about. Second worst thing is to make no sense. The only itinerant building I know of is Baba Yaga's hut, which come to think of it is something the Penguin would have stolen in the Bronze Age.
But anyway, yes. If you're not sure what a word means, look it up in your dictionotomy.
- HJF1
Maybe it's a mobile home?
LOL, maybe, but I don't think so.
I wonder what word the writer was groping for? The best I can come up with is either EXUBERANT (befitting the earlier, brighter time); or RECALCITRANT (befitting the contrast between its origins and its present circumstances) but neither seems to fit well.
There is not "other word" he was groping for. I believe he must have seen "itinerant" used to mean "wandering", which would be used, perhaps to describe someone homeless and therefore poor and he just assumed it was some sort of fancy word for "poor".
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