“The Club”
December 9th, 2007 by Jason
As a comic book reader and enthusiast, one of the things I think about a lot is how to get other people interested in my love of the hobby. I think the main hurdle is getting people to dismiss or overlook the so-called “stigma” of comics. I think everyone is familiar with this stigma in one form or another, it is the “Fanboy”. A lot of people look at comics as something that only geeks read or something that is only for that guy that lives in his parents’ basement and plays D&D with a stack of Mt. Dew cans next to him. . . not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. Well, I am here to say that yes, a portion of comic book readers are indeed like Comic Book Guy but a lot of them are nothing like him. In fact, I think you will find that the common comic book reader today will run the spectrum. I have seen quite a few suits perusing the aisles of my favorite local comic book stores come Wednesdays when the new books come out. In fact there is a whole group of comic book readers who don’t even “collect” comics, in that they don’t bag and board them and put them into boxes and the speculators have greatly disappeared. In addition to the demographic being different from what most people think, there are all kinds of new readers and a new slant on comics that they are “cool” due to all of the successful comic-based movies that have been released over the past several years. I would go so far as to say that a teenager today wouldn’t even think that they needed an excuse for reading a comic book but would embrace it instead.
So let’s say that comics are “cool” again and people are perfectly willing to accept them and give them a try. The problem then is that even though most readers are friendly and inviting to new readers there is still a bit of a clique element to comics and comic enthusiasts, sometimes without anyone even realizing it. I talk to my wife often about comics and only when I start to explain something to her do I realize how convoluted some characters and stories can become. While that is the sort of thing that most comic readers embrace, people looking in from the outside can see it as confusing and impenetrable. So we as comic hardcore readers have to let down the walls and begin to forgive creators and editors for changing things in continuity that help new readers understand what is going on in some of the more established books. So if that means that Spider-Man has to wear his black costume for a year so that people that just watched Spider-Man 3 understand better what’s going on, then I can live with that. I am even willing to listen to Joe Quesada’s arguments for Peter Parker to be single again (even though I really disagree with him).
If we, as a group, want to see comics grow and become a mainstream form of entertainment again then we have to make it okay for people to join the club, and the requirements for joining have to be lessened. Instead of shunning someone who hasn’t read Watchmen, why not let them borrow your copy of the trade? Instead of making fun of someone for not knowing Sin City or Hellboy was a comic book first, how about showing them a copy and telling them “the books are better than the movie”? It’s those little things that can really make a difference in how people look at our little hobby and, maybe, just maybe, they might like to join the club too.
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