darkemeralds. (Reply)

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The ones that get huge numbers of comments always come from poking the bear that is internet comics fandom. Our private running joke on the blog-- that is, between myself and my colleagues Kelly, Sonia, (other) Greg, and me-- is that we each take turns writing the same column about fans, and the publishers that cater to them. It's called "What the Hell Is WRONG With You?" You saw mine. Kelly's usually looks like this. Sonia's most recent one was this. And here's Greg The Other's version.

In every case, one of us is making a point so obvious that we feel foolish for even having to point it out.... boiled down, it basically is "this joyous thing that we all loved as children has actually been slowly poisoned for NEW children by your complete inability to let go of it, and now our once-beloved hobby has morphed into a key club for frankly creepy arrested-adolescents." And in every case, we are shouted down by a mob who is screaming bloody murder about having their toys taken away. We're censors. We don't get it. We're prudes. Superheroes aren't for kids any more. And so on.

I even understand this to a certain extent. I used to get beaten up for liking superhero comics. It can make you really defensive. It took me years to realize that the Adam West Batman and the Christian Bale Batman can co-exist, there's not a MORAL component to preferring one over the other.

There's always going to be factions in fandom-- whatever it might be, comics, rock music, jazz music, the Baker Street Irregulars, whoever-- and usually there's at least one feud going on. (Someone sent me a story a few years ago about a woman who dared to tell the scrapbooking/crafting community they had behaved badly and that mob summoned the internet hate to a degree that was genuinely criminal harassment.) But comics is this weird place where the whole thing is so microscopically tiny that when fans have a tantrum, it actually warps the work the professionals are doing.

It's unhealthy. My feeling has always been that artists are over HERE, doing the work, and then the audience is over THERE, talking about it and voting on it with their cash. If some of that audience is inspired to the point where they do their own stuff, great. But it should be segregated. You cater to the fans too much, put in too many Easter Eggs or fanservice moments, and you usually kill the golden goose.

In the specific case of my own little subset of pop culture, the major publishers' fanservice obsession has taken the actual work being done in a direction that is really creepy, and it's even getting into the more mainstream iterations of the genre-- the people in charge of the DC characters, especially, seem to be hellbent on removing all the humor and joyousness that made costumed superheroes fun in the first place. (All the trailers I've seen for MAN OF STEEL suggest to me that this movie was made by people that thought SUPERMAN RETURNS was too frivolous and upbeat.) You know, not EVERYTHING needs to be DARK KNIGHT.

...sorry, press the button and the lecture comes out. But there's a vicious, unhealthy side to fandom-- the entitlement syndrome, coupled with people that only feel truly empowered in their little online community-- and in comics you can't just dismiss them as 'the fringe weirdos.' For Marvel and especially DC, they're driving the bus.