I'm really tired of seeing myself referred to as "bitter". Let's get this really clear and straight in all our minds (no matter how tiny and useless some of those minds may be): I am not bitter. I am ANGRY.

I have seen comics, an entertainment form once intended for the widest possible audiences, and an entertainment form to which I have dedicated a most of my adult life, turned into a niche market exercise in mutual masturbation for aging fanboys and ennui engorged bungee jumpers.

I have seen characters I grew up loving and admiring, and even perhaps trying to emulate, turned into bleak, empty, virtually pornographic caricatures of themselves.

I have seen something which was once done purely for the love of it turned into something that is all about money.

And, ladies and gentlemen, I am PISSED.

Shit hot, chief, maintain the rage. Now what do we do to rectify the situation? At our end of the scale - the buyers and readers - we can't do much more than boycott the crappy products and voice our displeasure. Consider that done, I haven't picked up an ongoing monthly book in about eight or ten years. I can't even look at the majority of trades these days without thinking "what the hell happened here?" It's in the hands of the true professionals - like your good self - to keep making noise that people will listen to and understand that the form can be great again, not this soft-porn parody that simply strip mines and reprocesses the great work done in years past.

Unfortunately, any delivery of opinion on the subject immediately draws cries of "grandpa" and "living in the past, get over it". That's the biggest drawback that I see, the fact that the people who are ruining our favourite artform are the ones who directly influence and direct trends and tastes, promoting technical competency at the cost of good, honest storytelling and solid work ethics.

Cheers, Mal

If only Stan the Man would get good and angry once in a while over what's been done to his creations.  Maybe then, someone would listen.

If only Stan the Man would get good and angry once in a while over what's been done to his creations.  Maybe then, someone would listen.

+++++++++++++++

Speaking from recent experience (I met Stan!!!! Wow!!!!!), I think it it's safe to say that he's simply too gracious and too much of a class act to do something like that.

At the Q & A I attended, a fan asked him something along those lines (something like, "Do you feel bad when a writer does something you don't like with a character you created?"), and he basically dodged the question.

Oh, and just today, I was talking with someone (who's a fan of the genre) about the sorry state of the industry, and I had to carefully tread the line between sounding like someone who's genuinely angry and hurt by the way things are, and sounding like a bitter, jaded fanboy!

And, ladies and gentlemen, I am PISSED.

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And somewhere down the line someone will read that as "pissy" and a new bad Byrne story has begun.

But, seriously, I can totally understand where you're coming from, JB.  I stopped reading Marvel entirely when I saw how things were going to go...  I still miss reading the real FF and Spider-Man.

**

Absolutely spot on JB. As a kid I learned SO much of what has
formed me today from comics. I say that unashamedly and with a
great deal of pride. Spider-Man taught me that with great power
comes great responsibility, and that the right choices aren't always the
easy ones, and y'know what? To this very day that simple thought
*still* forms a big chunk of my own personal moral code.

Superman (and a host of others) helped reinforce the idea of doing
good for good's sake. Have there been times in my life where I've
wondered what a favourite character might do in a given situation and
used that to inform my own actions? You betcha. I could go on and
on about this topic, now you've brought it up.

And what do the kids today get from comics? What lessons do they
learn? What guidance is there to be had from the characters who
helped shape me?

See, I'm not even in the business and the more I think about what's
been done to heroes of my youth, and how they've been stolen from
today's kids, the angrier *I* get, so yeah JB, I guess you've got a bit of
a right to be angry and pissed.

JB is absolutely right to feel upset about the way the characters are being handled these days and I wish there were someone at the comic-publishing arm of MarvelEntertainment that would listen.

He's angry because he CARES about SuperHeroes. We all do. Although I'm not sure the publishers do.