|
Wow . . . as a month comes and goes so much goes on. I attended Emerald City Comic-Con, more on that elsewhere on the site. Blackest Night #8 came out . . . and had quite an ending. Since my illustrious fellow fan and friend Wally Flores may comment on that this month I will get in my two cents and say that it was a wow ending. Great solid stuff, that did at least introduce some new elements. It brought quite a few elements back into play, old characters brought back to life, new relationships, but some of these could have been explored if not killed off earlier for sensationalism. Plus the death of other characters and then returning their original incarnations (Captain Boomerang, Aquaman) makes the new versions seem temporary and adds even more to the feeling that older fans have: "events change nothing, they just rearrange old stories".
However, both of the events of Emerald City and Blackest Night brought me to my topic of the month, a one that causes huge controversy, and pushes fans to complete polar opposites: new fans.
First, I have been a comic book fan since 1985, a collector since 1988 with my first Spider-Man issue (Spectacular Spider-Man #137 for those who are curious), a comic book store / direct market customer since 1994, and a comic book store / direct market worker / retailer since 2001. I mention this to give perspective on my "fandom". I'm not a new fan, I'm not even really an "old" fan (I know a few who've been collecting since the '70's and some who've been collecting since the '60's and two who've been collecting since the 50's), but I've been around. I know and have seen the cycles, death and rebirth of characters, cycles of publishing . . . this is not my first rodeo.
However, in the last month I've watched a few new fans come into the rodeo. I've gotten to hang out with them, see their purchases, took them to their first con and what is expected of new fans is both present . . . and not. These new fans, there are five of them, each having stared reading in the past year to six months, each having their own spending habits, their own likes, but a lot of them overlap and there is some of what you'd expect new fans to be like. They don't know everything. They only know that the X-Men have always been really popular. They remember that Spider-Man has pretty much always been married. They have not read the Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen. They can't recite the Green Lantern oath by heart. They do not know what Pre-Crisis is. They only know TMNT as a cartoon . . . on Fox Kids. Anime and manga are normal things to them. And above all they don't know all the "big creators". I mentioned Jack Kirby and got a blank look. Mentioned Frank Miller, got a blank look . . . and so on. However, Greg Rucka was at Emerald City and they were stoked, they love Stumptown. They were beyond excited to meet Nick Spencer, but had no idea who Kurt Busiek was, and I had no idea who Nick Spencer was . . . There are a lot of differences, a generation gap if you will, but not one they are not willing to overcome.
They want to know about all the things I've mentioned. One of them is going to buy some of Frank Miller's run on Daredevil, and is also reading "Days Of Future Past" as I'm typing this, and I'm sure this will lead to them reading more great stories like the Dark Knight returns. One wants to buy a copy of Watchmen. And each of them had five or six questions they wanted answered about past books, and I tried to answer them all. Two of this group have become huge X-Men fans, they are beyond excited about Second Coming and for the ending of X-Necrosha (many older fans see these arcs, the return of Bastion, Cameron Hodge, etc. as "been there, done that"), but their excitement is nice, and I love seeing it.
Much of the industry, many of the fans spend a lot of their time lamenting and decrying the death of the "direct market" industry or comics in print. Most see the need for new blood to be the main way to save comics. How most fans treat that new blood though . . . that is the polarizing part.
Older fans treat the newer fans like parasites, feeding off "their" corpse, their prized possession and daring to inject their standards and ideas into "their" medium. Fan is short for "fanatic" after all, and our (and I am fine saying "our") devotion to our hobby, passion, medium, is often so total that any change and those who feel different about it drives us insane. New fans are bad, is often the motto of older fans. We want their money, not their opinions, interests, or impact. And we all need to grow up about this approach, because new fans are pretty awesome.
I don't like all new fans, but I respect their right to be fans. I'm glad they are fans. I don't like the way many flame others on message boards, but that is only some, not all, and even those fans I like, new or old, still flame from time to time. Writing off newer fans as being the only ones who do this, or insulting new fans really seems like a horrible practice, though not all older fans do this.
However, few older fans are willing to hang out with newer fans and try to sheppard them toward what's good and what isn't it, or be influenced the other way. The ones I'm hanging with have learned a lot about past comic stuff while with me, and they turned me on to some new titles: Chew and Stumptown for starters. (I took Marvel Zombies / Army of Darkness HC to get signed by Layman and the guys with me had copies of Chew . . . to each their own.) They want to learn and I'm encouraged that they want to learn and realize that just because a story is over two years old, that doesn't mean it is bad.
What I find interesting is that all of these fans have really shown that two long standing stereotypes held by the market overall may be false. While I've talked with these guys about their tendency to think about stories in arcs ("What is a great Daredevil arc? Is this arc any good? Etc.) instead of asking me if a story or issue is good, they aren't just into buying trades. They want issues more, because trades leave so much out. They also don't want to wait. In addition they want to read older stuff, some of which is available, a lot of which isn't. Also they want a physical book in their hands, not an iPad or iPhone version. Common thinking has it that all newer fans want to get rid of the periodical and just go digital and that just doesn't seem true . . .
Particularly as we look at how much creators and industry people cry out for new blood, and fans decry the new people brought in, we may all need to take a step back. Easy access points are good for comics to bring in new fans, but giant crossovers do not scare off all fans, in fact some love them. The current "Second Coming" crossover has a lot of X-Men history to it. Cameron Hodge, Bastion, Trask, these are all names that have come and gone in X-Men lore, some over a decade ago . . . Cameron Hodge hasn't been regularly seen or been a major villain since the the X-Tinction Agenda back in the 1990's. Yet he is back and a simple Google search, Wikipedia entry, or wow, buying back issues yields a quick way to find out who he is.
Everyone in the comic book industry has their ideas and concepts of who "new" fans are. Retailers see them as dollar signs, so do the companies, and most "older" fans view them as pariahs trying to invade their space. Perhaps we should all view them as people . . . who want to enjoy a great medium of entertainment.
Naw! That's way too radical a notion . . .
Ian Melton
And if you have any comments of questions e-mail me at vdf1@hotmail.com
|