"A window on the more encompassing horizons of our age"

It's not the business of a qualified and valid critic to gush about what he "likes" or cavil about what "displeases" him; people's arthritic perspectives and petty appetites are the whole reason why criticism (and religion, and philosophy, and culture and politics) is needed in the first place, to dilate and enrich prevailing concepts of what the cosmos of humanity and culture is capable of, lest it shrivel down to a microcosm of masturbatory trivia ("virtualia"). It's definitely not part of a critic's function to flog commodities and serve as an adjunct to a book's promotional apparatus; above all else, as corporatist methods and techniques of marketing grow more and more coordinated and perfected, it is more imperative than ever to discriminate between commodities that have no higher reason for existing than serving as a trigger for the release of cash, and bona fide organisms of culture, conscience, and the concentration of value-intelligence. If at all possible, intelligent criticism should act as a window on the more encompassing horizons of our age, whether much of anyone cares for such dilation or Olympian vistas or not.

-Kenneth R. Smith, Comics Journal 301, p. 179