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By Jason Bourgeois
I get a lot of comics. It's a hazard of the job. Lots of comics are required to write lots of columns; but that's just a cop out. Truth is, I like reading, and I like a lot of varied subjects, so many different books appeal to me. It doesn't help that the major companies are putting out a lot of good books these days. Even the little guys are putting out some superb work too, so I get quite a bit in my mailbox every week.
Every so often, I go through a battle in my mind of what, if anything, I can drop, to save money. Right now, this is difficult because of the aforementioned quality of the books. Even the stuff that's not superb is still good enough, and intriguing enough to keep my interest, and makes it difficult to drop even the mediocre stuff. Not even New Avengers has been dropped yet, despite my rarely enjoying the book. It's been so important to the direction of the Marvel Universe, it is tough to divest myself of the title, and it occasionally does have that shining issue that brings me right back fully.
With the New Year, I've dropped one book in particular, and it is for what could be the silliest reason ever. Yet it also seems an eminently sensible one as well.
I have let go from my monthly acquisitions Marvel's Irredeemable Ant-Man.
The question is, why?
It's not the writing, not entirely at least. I'm a big fan of Robert Kirkman, having enjoyed his recent Marvel Team-Up series, and Marvel Zombies was one of my favourite stories of the year for 2006. While the book's main character is exactly what the title describes, and it does make it hard to get into a book with someone who is so difficult to identify with, I love the black humour of the title, and the book has thrown a number of surprises in the three issues which have already seen print.
As for the art, while it's not entirely to my tastes, it fits the story, tells it well, and is full of energy. Phil Hester is a very capable storyteller, and his work is just as good here as I have ever seen it. Both men are telling an intriguing tell of a total bastard of a character who finds himself gifted with the powers of Ant-Man, and uses them in all the scummy ways so many people would, while still fighting crime. He hits on girls, he sneaks into their apartments to spy on them in the shower. All while on the run from SHIELD, who want their prototype Ant-Man suit back.
With pretty much the two components in the book ruled out, what is it that has offended me so? Could the inker have possibly stabbed my best friend in an alley one night? Did the colourist kidnap my puppy?
Not any of those things. No, the simple reason for why I have chosen this book to be culled from my regular reading, is simple. There's too many damned ads.
Marvel tried this stunt last year, and there was a huge outcry. You would open the cover, get an ad on the inside cover, then a recap page, then a two-page spread ad, mostly for the Honda Civic at the time, before you even got to anything resembling story. As if that wasn't bad enough, there were ads packed throughout the book, to the point where they were outnumbering the story pages in growing numbers.
Now, I and many others understand that ads help finance the comics, but when things grow to such a point as this, where there's more ads than story, it's time to start putting a foot down. The books were almost unreadable. I'm not paying for a book of ads with a few pages of story.
Joe Quesada, in a show of good faith, came forward and said that they would cut back on the ads, and if they ever found any reason to do so many again, they would pack them at the back of the book, since story comes first.
Not surprisingly, Joe has shown that his word means very little, and once again has stomped on the faith people have given him.
The overwhelming amount of ads are back, in a big way. In many books this past month, it was common to read a page of comic, get a few page of ads, another page of story, another ad, maybe two pages of story, and so on. Funny, it doesn't look like there's fewer ads these days, and nor are they being fed into the back of the books.
So, why have I picked Ant-Man to bear the brunt of my rage? Most of my Marvel books are very good, or ending soon, so I can bite my tongue and keep shelling out for the really good titles I enjoy a lot, or only have a month or two left to get, and complete that story. However, with Ant-Man, the story is only ok, and I have very little emotional attachment to such a reprehensible lead. The final straw came when I was flipping through the book to try and talk about it with friends, and all I saw were ads. It was becoming harder to find where the story was, and this just frustrated me to the point where I tossed the book to the floor in disgust, and decided that was it. I was tired of this treatment by Marvel, and Joe Quesada, and being unable to even find the story in a comic I'd paid good money for, and so the book was dropped. In more ways than one, it would seem.
Picture sitting down to watch an hour-long program and you get 35 minutes of commercials and only 25 minutes of actual content. While it may seem like that some days, it is far from actually being true, and most people wouldn't put up with that for content they get free, so why should we have to put up with it when we're paying for it?
And before I give the wrong impression, it's not just Marvel. However, DC is far from being as bad. Their new quarterly Superman book, Superman Confidential, was moderately interesting to me, but they had packed the book with a set of 3D glasses for some promotion in the ads, a Teen Titans animated comic that was about a third the size of the entire book, and several stiff inserts that made this book almost impossible to read for all the crap in it that made the pages difficult to turn and stay open where you had it. Needless to say, I only read the first issue, and didn't come back for a second. They did the same in a recent issue of Teen Titans, and I pulled everything out of the book, leaving a very thin comic remaining in the aftermath.
DC is by far a minor offender so far, but this is quickly becoming unbearable across the board, and is likely only going to get worse unless people stand up. Write in to the companies, tell them how you feel, and as they say, 'vote with your wallet' and if you don't like it, just walk away.
Thanks for the holiday gift, Marvel. You've saved me money while trying to make a quick buck.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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