A Bestiary of Toxic Comics Fans

As comics consumers, we can criticize with impunity. Professionals who make the mistake of listening to the clamor might describe this as heckling. However we describe it, though, the fan occupies a safe place where criticism seems to flow in a single direction: from comics consumers to comics producers. We note, with alarm, the one month the Latest Comics Virtuoso seems somewhat off his form. We lambaste material that fails to live up to its hype. We grumble, hector, deride, demand, and occasionally slander.

From this vantage, we may note that some professionals want less and less to do with us. We can describe this process as the calcification of surly old pros who don't want to admit they've grown out of touch with their readership and wish to shift the blame to someone besides themselves. But do we ever ask the question: How might we, as fans, go wrong? Can our enthusiasms, habits, and vices, do bad things to comics the same way inept or indifferent talent can do bad things?

Do we, sometimes, become Toxic Comics Fans?

What follows may, perhaps, contain something to offend everyone. However, if I had intended to single any individual out, I would do so by name, or, lacking the courage to write in such a provoking manner, let the matter drop. The following descriptions admonish behavior, not individuals. Furthermore, each of these traits, in moderation, represents a virtue or focus of fandom. Read more carefully and you will encounter, in the description of each rogue, a stalwart.

The Continuity Nazi

The Continuity Nazi has decided that a single aspect of comics defines quality - the internal consistency of a canon of continuity. By his definition, no piece has value if it fails to reflect adequate research into every printed comic since 1938 (or earlier); indeed, no talent displays real merit if he slights the Dubious Central Virtue of Comics.

The Continuity Nazi earns his name by attempting to browbeat the world into doing what he enjoys. He demands that comics pay more attention to other comics than to conceptual, and frequently difficult, elements like pacing, story, and depth; he demands that all talent hold his opinions about continuity as the end-all of the form; and he demands that other comics fans help him impose an iron will as part of a unified front to strike against wayward books, publishers, talent, or fans who fail to pay the proper homage to the Continuity God.

Which brings us to the important, and malign, manner in which the Continuity Nazi interacts with comics. Through heckling, bullying, malicious letters, boycott campaigns, and the propagation of his toxic ethos, the Continuity Nazi puts comics subject to the shared universe / continuity editorial model into a straightjacket. The stories concern themselves less with the question "What would happen if...?" and more and more with "Does existing canon allow this?" And, with the Dubious Central Virtue of Comics propped up as a jealous god, other virtues fall away as emphasis shifts to keeping internal consistency in place. Rather than becoming a beautiful beast, comics mutates into a blob of little more than connective tissue under the whip of the CN.

Furthermore, the all-or-nothing nature of the Continuity Nazi's central dogma does not allow comics publishers to buy themselves a little piece by giving a little continuity. Descriptions in continuity arguments typically do not depict continuity as "perfect" or "imperfect"; instead, they tend to boil down to a very dualistic "has continuity" or "has no continuity," even where the second descriptor does not accurately reflect the truth.

To defend the honor of continuity scholars of good character and good will, let us allow a distinction between the Continuity Nazi and the Librarian of Congress of Comics. The latter type greatly enjoys learning more and more of the lore; finds pleasure in scrutinizing moldy pieces of paper for some detail he might have missed earlier; and revels in the ability to kill the hours acquiring a specialized, although perhaps useless, knowledge, for the beauty of the task of acquiring it. Often he views comics as a study in forensics, or a logic puzzle - he gives himself the task of finding errors, much as a child might find Waldo in a drawing of a crowd. However, without the self-congratulation and moralistic ultimatums that seem to represent the whole of the creative output of the Continuity Nazi, the Librarian of Congress of Comics offers the benefit of real learning. Unlike the CN, he might actually have what it takes to edit.

The Retro-Troglodyte

The Retro-Troglodyte has defined a particular moment as the only moment comics mattered. We fall rather easily into habits, including with our tastes. Many people form and vulcanize their tastes by some time near to their sixteenth birthdays, creating an impenetrable bunker that contains things they like and into which little will ever intrude again.

The Retro-Troglodyte, as his central characteristic, wishes to define some arbitrary historical point at which time the medium (or, for that matter, the world itself) went to pieces, and therefore he erects walls to keep out the flood waters of time. However, all he has had to come in with him when he erected his walls; and, eventually, he may exhaust his enthusiasms by rehashing the same, increasingly-tired material in perpetuity until he decides nothing merits his attention any more.

You can recognize the Retro-Troglodyte by his (or her) refusal to consider things that came beyond the Fabled Golden Age (or Whatever Age) regardless of all considerations, even those used to argue the primacy of the Great Days themselves.

By creating a barricade through which he will permit nothing new to enter, he reinforces the self-referent and unimaginative vices of comics. His buying habits help stop change - good and bad - in its tracks. Sometimes he won't touch a book until it appears, years later, as a reprint. And he often bandies about arbitrary definitions of "real" - naming the Lee-Kirby X-Men as the only "real" X-Men or naming the Avengers lineup of 1971 as the only "real" Avengers. He does this, as well, with creative teams, perhaps refusing to touch Amazing Spider-Man until its "real" artist, Steve Ditko, comes back (34 years, and counting). Though not pro-active in the same fashion as the Continuity Nazi, he nonetheless can preemptively extinguish comics titles in their infancy by refusing to consider them at all.

Let us not confuse the Retro-Troglodyte with similar, but more benign kinds of fans, such as the Comfortable Old Timer and the Retro van Winkle. The former simply knows and likes the old stuff better, and, perhaps, no longer has the time or interest to experiment with the new, but has no great obsession preventing recognition of virtue in comics, regardless of the original publication date. The latter, for whatever reason, took a break of some duration from comics altogether, and may have come back to a Brave New World of Comics, sometimes never really acquiring a new understanding that would allow him to absorb the new virtues of the evolved form.

The Posturing Elitist

We've probably all run into this one at least once. He (or, statistically less often, she) uses his (or her) contempt for anything commonplace as a bludgeon to beat the world, perhaps to death, or perhaps simply onto its knees in a subordinate place.

The Posturing Elitist sees everything as swill or garbage, so long as large numbers of other, merely mortal, consumers, like it. Yet the disdain the P.E. holds for most of comics culture really has less to do with the culture itself than with the Posturing Elitist. Each subsequent condemnation of the popular, the mundane, the commonplace stands as yet another demand for admiration, for pity, for some kind of martyr's robe for standing as the Sole Aesthetic Light against the Great Darkness Beyond.

The PE does his damage to comics primarily by attacking and slandering material he generally has not read and does not read, based on credentials like his contempt for the people he imagines do read it. My own Posturing Elitist traits kept me from even considering Savage Dragon until 2000 AD based on the premise that only comics-goobers who want to read comics with big guns, big epaulets, and no story buy what Image puts out. In the process, I did a grave disservice to the talented Erik Larsen. The full-blown Posturing Elitist does a similar disservice to mainstream material in general.

Let no one misinterpret this as a belief that anyone has an obligation to buy material he or she does not like. Someone who makes that claim deserves to have someone get sick in his car in the middle of summer. No, the point I hope to make here has to do with the pre-emptive dislike, a kind of self-promotion through ignorant condemnation devoid of empirical confirmation. Here we have a case where the Emperor has no pedestal.

When we take the vices of the Posturing Elitist and invert them into virtues, we have the Connoisseur. The Connoisseur recognizes and enjoys the finer things - perhaps, even, the finest things. However, for the Connoisseur, this enjoyment serves as its own reward; the Connoisseur needs neither the admiration of others nor even simple recognition of his ability to discriminate between worst, worse, better, and best.

The Posturing Elitist, on the other hand, wishes to conceal behind the robes of the Connoisseur, using refinement of taste as cover for a general distaste for his fellow man. The Connoisseur cares about the art (form) itself, without necessarily considering his own position in a model of the universe containing the Good, the Bad, and Himself; but his opposite number principally cares about the pedestal he desires to mount, from which to look down at the world. The art form itself serves as window-dressing. If comics vanished altogether, the Posturing Elitist would use something else - politics, religion, haut cuisine, clothing, money, or anything - in an attempt to set himself apart and above. He probably already does.

The Speculator-Predator

The Speculator-Predator might not even care about comics. His ambition centers around playing the comics market, perhaps even manipulating it, in the hopes that the boom-and-bust cycle will leave him with full pockets, regardless of how many comics pros end up out of the business altogether, and regardless of how many comics shops go under in the process.

Fads, gimmickry, and ornamentation over substance drive the speculator. He lives in a world of alternate covers, metallic covers, restricted press runs, created shortages, strategic over-runs, and just about every aspect of comics that ignores what actually matters in the books.

The Speculator-Predator does damage by distorting the market away from (say) consumer satisfaction, or, as we might call it in more aesthetic-theory nomenclature, "quality." He makes fads more important than substance, and a comics with too much weight in gimmickry results. And he exacerbates the boom-and-bust aspect of the comics market, artificially inflating sales figures of the hip title of the day, then letting it plummet when another fad seems more lucrative to follow.

The Speculator-Predator kills sleeper books, and sleeper books (like Hourman) sometimes have much more to offer than vacuous poster-books in six alternate covers. Indeed, some of the most sincere fan loyalty attaches to obscure but interesting pieces, like Secret Society of Super-Villains or Suicide Squad. But the enthusiasms driven by the Speculator-Predator do not outlast the market value that attaches to them. One sees little real loyalty in speculator-land.

We could label, as the S-P's opposite, and benign, number "the Gimmick Curator." Some people do love novelty. Comics in unusual and interesting formats, such as the digest edition never made successful outside of Archie Comics, fascinate the Gimmick Curator. The old tabloid editions from the seventies, with the cut-out dioramas on the back, intrigue him. The Pocket Books editions of Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, and Spider-Man reprints impress him. But he actually likes the books, truly enjoys the variant approaches in format (and other) gimmickry, and does not attempt to inflate and burst the market to make a ten-cent-per-unit profit on the two thousand copies of Bloodstrike #5 he bought as an investment.

The Cyber-Piranha

The Cyber-Piranha lives to crop heads via chat rooms, message boards, email, and the (Ab)Usenet, where he can count coup by relentless campaigns to disgrace and offend fellow comics fans, fellow Cyber-Piranhas, and, sweetest of all, comics pros.

He drives pros from chat rooms with acid abuse. He trolls relentlessly on message boards, waiting, like the voracious fish that gives him his name, for some ill-prepared fan to put a leg into the warm waters where he lays his trap. It doesn't even take a mistake to set him off in his pheremone-crazed trolling jihad against anyone and everyone; the simple fact that someone has yet to hear the advance-copy spoilers provides his excuse to strip the flesh from the bone.

The Cyber-Piranha flourishes in the electronic world for a simple reason: If he acted this way within arm's reach of a real flesh-and-blood human being, rather than masking himself through a network of computers and communications lines, people would beat him until his intestines hemorrhaged. Leave it for others to speculate whether the atmosphere this would induce would smell sweeter or more foul than that cultivated by the Cyber-Piranha in the practice of his everyday malice.

Cyber-Piranhas seem to do more damage to comics fans than to comics professionals, but they do not discriminate. By bullying pros out of chat rooms and off message boards, they increase the alienation between creators and consumers of products - not too many pros have the time, energy, and dedication to endure perpetual campaigns of abuse in the hope that some onlooker might have a more positive interaction to offer. Fans - meaning the kind who actually like comics and, perhaps, also the people who create them, suffer the brunt of the malice that the Cyber-Piranha spews like a fire hose. The young kid who wanted a chance to discuss his favorite book with that book's creator loses out here. The loyalty feedback between fan and creator collapses in the clamor of insults by nasty little idiots with computers who think counting coup on the mildly famous figures that create comics will make them somebody.

In keeping with the stylistic convention of parallelism, I might suggest as the positive opposite of the Cyber-Piranha the Comics Wise Guy, that amusing, if annoying, soul who occasionally engages in the mild prank at other comics' fan's expense; who might occasionally tease his peer, but (hopefully) entertains his fellows somewhat even in the process of rattling someone else's nerves. The CWG has a better understanding of boundaries and when to call it quits; he does not care to drive anyone home in tears; he might like to annoy but not to humiliate.

The Four-Color Horn-Dog

The Four-Color Horn-Dog enjoys erotica. Sometimes he enjoys more refined stuff, sometimes he enjoys anything where someone gets nekkid. Unfortunately, he feels that the subjects of his attention belong everywhere, including comics.

He complains, sometimes at length, at the dearth of full nudity and graphic love scenes in comics. He bemoans the tragic lack of lesbian affairs for Wonder Woman, believing that the pursuit of same-sex love represents the kernel of the character. He wants to see Batman make love with the Catwoman. Or Maybe he wants to see Piper make love with the Flash.

While a few cartoonists do give him what he wants - the excellent Eleutieri Serpieri, for instance - he expects all the others to follow suit. When he continues to note that some mainstream books have failed in their duty to become delivery vehicles for hard-core pornography, he laments the shortsightedness of writers, routinely deeming them as prudish, old-fashioned, censorial, or fascist.

He respects Avatar Comics' editorial model, but probably feels that Avatar does not go far enough. And most certainly he will acknowledge nothing as "adult" which lacks the display of naked human bodies and sex acts in medical detail.

The Four-Color Horn-Dog harms comics by making them inaccessible to all but an erotica-consuming market. Young children don't necessarily benefit by seeing overly graphic displays of human sex acts (and, for this argument, let us pretend that these acts only ever involve a single species). They certainly don't benefit from comics that parents wisely refuse to let them buy. For that matter, many adults would rather skip the blue material. It may have its place, but injected everywhere, it becomes increasingly oppressive. Some folks, with perfect soundness of reason, would prefer to pass on lovingly-delineated close-ups of other people's uh-uhs and nay-nays. We might even go so far as to suggest that the Four-Color Horn-Dog does not respect the rights of others to abstain.

Generically, we can describe the benign counterpart of the Four-Color Horn-Dog as the Adult Consumer. He or she might, or might not, consume material of various degrees of erotic potency. The Adult Consumer does not demand that everything reflect his own obsessions with nudity and sex; he knows where to look for that kind of material when the urge presents itself. Furthermore, the Adult Consumer refrains from narcissistic jeremaiads about the prudishness of the world when some comics talent forgets to center the world around him.

The Antitoxins

Though we, as fans, tend to err in predictable ways, a few simple (but not necessarily easy) things can do much to take the poisonous aspect off our enthusiasms.

Civility, to begin with, can do more to detoxify the plaza of comics debate and commerce. After all, do we really improve the medium by browbeating professionals until they retreat into hermit-like lives to escape the perpetual abuse? Do we improve the medium by claiming a superiority to our fellow man and his entertainments? Does a sneer or a snarl improve anything? Nothing compels us to like things which seem to possess no merit; but burning Ron Marz in effigy for a run of Green Lantern we didn't like seems somewhat excessive and pointless.

As well, a bit of self-respect can dignify comics fans. The desperation of some of our demands - whether for some impossible editorial ideal or simply some obsession which we might do better to keep to ourselves - might do a great deal to divest comics fans of our fearful aspect.

Perspective could work wonders here. No one fan, nor one school of fans, stands at the center of the universe, and therefore no such entity should arrogate to itself the right to impose its standards on an entire medium. Use dollars to vote your preferences, as civilized people will, but expecting the central role in creation for nothing at all represents a sickening and infantile kind of narcissism that we should have shed by the time we began making complete sentences. Furthermore, getting mad about what happens in comics, or, even worse, what happens in a comic, seems a fault in recognizing magnitude. The fate of this world does not hinge on what appears in a comic-book.

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Email the author at [email protected].

Column 215. Completed 07-JAN-2001.