What I found most buoying at C2E2 was the number of young fans in attendance. Babies in strollers, sure, but there were also quite a few youngsters who were genuine comic book enthusiasts. At a time when young readers seem in short supply–when kids wear Spider-Man shoes and shirts and backpacks but would never come near the comic book–that was great to see. And the fan enthusiasm overall was high. I didn’t see as many people as I would have liked to, but it was a first-time convention, and not every city is capable of turning a first-time convention into a death trap that gets shut down by the fire marshal (New York is Number One!)
But I admit I find stark contrast between what I see in person and then what I read on the Internet. Panels that are well-attended and enthusiastically received in person are then dissed and dismissed by people who weren’t even there. Perhaps you get out of something what you put into it. To attend a convention requires time and effort, and you wear a badge with your name on it, and you’re spending money on it. So basically you’re invested in it, and you go into it looking to have a good time and thus seek out positives. By contrast on the Internet little time and no effort is involved, you’re cloaked in anonymity and it’s pretty much free of charge. With nothing invested, the default reaction is negativity.
And I just find myself wondering how many of those same young fans, so enthused in person, discover comic boards and think they’re going to encounter like-minded enthusiasts and instead find themselves sucked into a morass of negativity. How many of them have the joy and interest in comics sucked right out of them?
Indeed, it often seems that there are people who are not fans of books, but instead are fans of hating the books. What floats their boat isn’t anticipation of upcoming stories, but hating the upcoming stories. Hate fans dissing stories before they read them and slamming others who dare to have differing opinions.
Am I saying that such negativity is crippling the next generation of readers? No. Am I saying older fans need to muzzle themselves? No.
But I’m saying that when I was a young fan I existed in a bubble, judging stories on how they made me feel when I was reading them and oblivious of other fan opinions beyond what I read in the letters pages. In my ignorance, my enthusiasm for comics was blissful. And undiminished by adult negativity.
There’s something to be said for that.
PAD
• 
“And I just find myself wondering how many of those same young fans, so enthused in person, discover comic boards and think they’re going to encounter like-minded enthusiasts and instead find themselves sucked into a morass of negativity. How many of them have the joy and interest in comics sucked right out of them?”
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I don’t think they’ll be turned off comics, but I have seen the young getting sucked into the negativity firsthand. My cousin has grown up with message boards, and it’s disappointing to see him repeating the latest snark with glee rather than critically thinking for himself whether something is good or bad.
To that extent, I think the Internet becomes an echo chamber to the young, who are easily influenced by strong, unqualified opinions of the sort we see on the Internet all the time, the kind that say “XYZ sucks!”, and offer no rationale, yet are accepted by their message board peers. I think the young are absorbing the wrong lessons from that sort of thing.
I’m the father of a 10-year-old girl who used to love the Teen Titans cartoon, and I was surprised when she requested an issue of “Tiny Titans” last year (long after the animated series ended). I’ve been buying her the title for months now, and she’s been happily reading them. So when she saw me browsing the C2E2 site for guests last month, I shouldn’t have been surprised when she said, “Hey, Art Baltazar is gonna be there!” I hadn’t even realized she was paying attention to the credits. So we waited in line for an Art Baltazar sketch at C2E2, and she was tickled pink and I bought her two issues she didn’t have. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of your child laughing in the back seat of your car as she reads a comic book.
What I don’t want to do, though, is expose her to message boards yet. I enjoy her innocent laughter too much.
(It was cool meeting you, Peter. I told you I’d comment more.)
When is the last time a comic book story simply made you happy to have read it? I read quite a few, and I honestly can’t remember the last DC/Marvel comic that made me happy to have read it. Way too many portentous serious ever build-ups, and no real resolution.
Outside the big 2, I think right now Supergod, Irredeemable and Indestructible are making me happy every issue.
Oh, and I am deliberately not including X-Factor in there. Not because I don’t love the comic (I do) but because X-Factor frequently doesn’t make me happy. The reason I don’t see that as a criticism, is that I don’t think Peter is TRYING to make people happy with the stories he tells. He’s just trying to tell good stories. And sometimes those are sad stories.
But events like Siege, or Blackest Night… they’re trying to make the readers, what? Happy? Excited? Thrilled? None, I think. They’re just looking for your 4 bucks.
They’re failing on virtually all counts, and for those, I kind of do blame the writers. (And the editorial staff who come up with the ideas that the writers are forced to implement as best they can.)
I’ve been reading Archie lately, pretty happy about it, recently read Star Trek Leonard McCoy and the Pet Avengers, real nice reading and Bat-girl is way better than I thought it would be, but in general I agree that there is not much to get happy about in most comics.
See, whereas I read the Archie gets married saga, and was somewhat annoyed that for a story about the future, they were each mired in the recession of today, which was depressing and non-Archieesque, to me.
“When is the last time a comic book story simply made you happy to have read it?”
Honestly?
Whenever I pick up my pulls, there is always at least one–and usually more than one–moment where I sit back and laugh out loud. At a comic book. It’s not always the same book, and it’s not always a moment that was probably intended to be funny (I had a huge laugh when I turned a page and saw grown-up Layla Miller talking to her younger self). But it always happens. If I come to realize that I haven’t had that reaction to a specific series in a noticeable amount of time, I begin to consider removing that book from my list. If you’re not having fun with at least some part of your hobby, why bother?
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Chuck
This could easily be rewritten to talk about any subject and it would apply just the same. In the end, the Internet simply tends to bring out the worst in people. See: Greater Internet Dickwad Theory.
Maybe so, but I find myself not visiting the super negative sites, unless this one counts
This is another great topic, PAD. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I know of no other profession/ form of entertainment in which so many fans and retailers – and sometimes even the creators themselves constantly badmouth their own hobby/product.
“The heroes are too dark.”, “Ihe heroes are too corny”, “There’s not enough new characters being promoted”; “They’re not promoting Classic Character X enough”; “there’s not enough compelling new talent”; “They’re promoting the flavor of the month at the expense of the 15-year-fan-favorite”. And on and on and on…
But the worst is retailers and talent saying their product is overpriced! if they don’t think it holds the value they’re charging for it, why should a reader pick it up?
Back in the ’90s, I can recall very numerous animated discussions on CompuServe about what was happening in ASTRO CITY (specifically, the Confessor storyline); reading them, you’d think the comic was the hottest thing out there. Then I’d see the sales numbers for the month and AC didn’t even crack the top 100. There can be a pretty big disconnect between what’s posted about online and what happens in reality.
Don’t recall if you were active on RAC.*, but if you went by that, books like Static, Quantum & Woody, Scare Tactics, and Chase, were the biggest books in the industry.
Well, I’m doing my part – we have a family staying with us for a while, and their four-year-old loves the Spider-Man movies – has the backpack, and the doll with the oversized feet so it can stand up, and the shoes, and I don’t know what-all – so I’ve been letting her look over the TPBs I have, as well as the issues of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man that I picked up back when I could afford such things. I’ll even read parts to her, when they seem age-appropriate… 🙂 She loves the idea of stories told with words and pictures, and she seems to like the idea of Peter Parker as genius biochemist better than the hapless loser who developed his own spinnerets, as outlined in the movie.
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If they stay with us much longer, I may have to introduce her to X-Factor… ;>
John,
“But events like Siege, or Blackest Night… they’re trying to make the readers, what? Happy? Excited? Thrilled? None, I think. They’re just looking for your 4 bucks.”
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To each his own, John. But this negativity/jadedness is exactly the topicof the thread. However, I feel “The Siege” has been extremely enjoyable. I feel it’s one of those books that will be remembered as one of the great ones down the road.
Yes, the darker corners of the internet can be full of bile and elitism, but I wonder how many people happily consume their product of choice without ever going near an internet forum?
I know from playing MMOs that roughly 80-90% of a game’s player base never read the game’s official forums (okay, in the case of some games like WoW, that’s entirely understandable). I suspect the same may well be true in the comics world.
Well said, sir. I avoid comic book message boards for exact reason: they’re havens of hatred. I’ve had plenty of “negative” things to say about comics and their creators over the years, but the level of vitriol found on many boards just goes beyond the pale.
Over at Brooke McEldowney’s Pibgorn, there’s an infestation (perhaps only one, but one is sufficient to count as an infestation) of clowns who put tags on the strips like “McEldowneysucks” and the like.
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On, who was tracked down and had his goComics account shut down, immediately re-registered under a slightly different name and bragged about his actions.
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Somne people just like to go out of their way to offend others.
Speaking of things that appeal to young comics fans, Warner Brothers has officially announced the Young Justice Cartoon.
http://tinyurl.com/22qn8ap
PAD, thoughts? Do you have any involvement? Anything more to say that you didn’t say last time this came up?
Cool, thanks for the link, wish it was impulse though
It looks excellent judging from the pic, but the inevitable backlash will come from making Aqualad black when there’s a stack of other characters they could have used.
I do hope PAD has some input on the series though, that would make it all kinds of awesome 😀
“It looks excellent judging from the pic”
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The pic is a cover from the comic. The only thing I remember seeing from the cartoon was a picture of “Artemis” that was leaked a while ago.
I look forward to watching it.
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PAD
Peter David: when I was a young fan I existed in a bubble, judging stories on how they made me feel when I was reading them and oblivious of other fan opinions beyond what I read in the letters pages. In my ignorance, my enthusiasm for comics was blissful. And undiminished by adult negativity.
Luigi Novi: I miss those days.
And speaking about negativity in comics, the ComicMix ad on the righthand side of the site gives us the latest chapter in the saga of They Canceled Young Justice In Order to Have a Tie-In Book for a TV Show that was canceled after Two and a Half Years, Even Though Young Justice Had Been Going On For FIVE, and Would’ve Continued Had It Been Left Alone: Apparently there’s going to be a Young Justice TV series. I don’t know how involved in it Peter’s going to be (any word, Peter?), or how much they’ll use his stories and compensate him for them, but hey, WHAT AN IDEA! Imagine, making a TV show out of Young Justice! Too bad they didn’t think of that seven years ago. They might’ve been able to avoid canceling a book that people were reading, just to create a book to tie-in to a TV show that itself was canceled after a shorter run!
Say on, M-1633! Say on!
Ahem, but seriously, I miss the fact that comics is not endemic of childhood any longer. If only because it was so satisfying for me, I want it to be similarly satisfying for my Son and Daughters.
I don’t think the current line of “all-ages” comics are the gateway for kids getting into comics any longer. It’s the Marvel *VIDEO GAMES* that are the gateway to Marvel comics. Unfortunatley, they’re a little light on plot.
You are so right, PAD.
All the Internet negativity gets to me. And it’s not only about comics. Movies, TVs, books, it’s all the same. One may naively think the Internet should stimulate diversity and cross-polination of ideas, right? Ha!
The Internet fandoms are more like churches. You receive a small list of pre-approved writers, characters, stories you are “allowed” to like, and all the rest should be destroyed, like heresies or something.
Peer pressure at their worst. You gotta go with the flow, and when you realize, 99% of the Internet fandom of a certain media has the same oppinions, bash the same writers, idolize the same time periods, it’s like some creepy hive-mind.
And that is why I take long breaks when I force myself to stay away from the computer and just enjoy the stuff I like, no matter whether it’s on the short approved list of texts of the Church of the Internet.
Speaking of C2E2, it was a pleasure to talk with you there Peter. It with nice seeing Kathleen, and Caroline is a real cutie!
If you all are interested in really GOOD comic book etc. discussion without complete negativity, I recommend the Captain Comics forum (http://captaincomics.ning.com/forum.) I was the moderator for several years, and the policies I enforced are the ones still in place today; negative is okay. Flaming and bashing is right out, and will get one warned, and then banned. There’s a lot of exciting discussion and controversial opinions – but it’s always playing nice, as it were. I cannot recommend it enough.
Oh, and quoting PAD:
“…perhaps you get out of something what you put into it.”
And that’s why life is like a sewer. (Thank you Mr. Lehrer!)
I remain,
Sincerely,
Eric L. Sofer
The Silver Age Fogey
x<]:o){
Sadly, even old fans can get turned off cuz of forums.
I keep wanting to go on a forum, and just geek out about, say the X-Men, but as soon as you try to start a thread, it’s populated by trolls and haters 🙁
I think the convention vs Internet boards is generally true, though at a Marvel Q&A at Emerald City, the Marvel creators were put on the defensive a fair bit (in fairness the session did have the misfortunate of coinciding with a particularly arduous Stan Lee autograph signing procedure that people in line had already spent $40 on, so some of that mood might have tickled down to the Q&A).
Conversely I do find that there are some boards online that are moe upbeat (I spend a lot of time in the Who Watches the Watchers section of Comixfan and what criticism there is is usually constructive). Probably the best way to have fun on Internet boards is to vsit boards you’re not that familiar with and read the rules. If the rules play up a friendly and “no snarking” angle chances are the conversation will be more civilized there.
My dear friend who was in attendance commissioned a drawing, for me, from your daughter.
It is a cat.
It is epic in its awesomeness.
The next time she’s taking commissions, I’m asking for a cat riding a dragon. Because my friend got a dragon and it, too, was awesome.
That is all.
The timing of this discussion is actually pretty interesting. On Newsarama this is a discussion of the new gay character in Archie comics. While there’s still a bit of arguing, it’s actually one of the most civilized discussion of a button pushing topic that I’ve seen on that particular forum.