Check out the end for free books and special offers from indie authors.
Join the newsletter to get a free short story, news, and updates on my work and releases.
San Diego Comic Con was this past week, so we got a lot of announcements out of it. I’m particularly interested in the Venom relaunch for obvious reasons. I liked the combo of Ewing and Gomez in the current run. I’ve been genuine enjoying VenoMJ. I think it’s a great direction for both of the characters. I also really like Soule’s work (read Eight Billion Genies if you haven’t already), and I’m stoked on Eddie being Venom again in what the solicits paint as a more street-level approach.
Within hours, though, there’s a post on my preferred Venom subreddit shitting on Soule’s work on Eddie Brock: Carnage. If it was a well thought out critique, then sure whatever, but it wasn’t. It never is. It was a super reductionist take on one scene that ignores the other things the story was setting up and, more importantly, probably lost the opportunity to fully explore due to the book getting cut at ten issues.
But I also feel like I’ve been living that for a year with this current run of Venom. For every ten negative opinions, one or two are thought-out critiques that actually sound like the person read the comic their referring to. The rest are either thinly-veiled misogyny or broad claims that aren’t actually supported by what’s happening on page. I’ve had to actively stop myself from getting into a full-on internet fight with someone because I know how to cite textual evidence and they don’t.
What underlies all of this is the fact that comic books as a hobby space is full of certified, grade-A haters. We’re not talking people who are passionate about what a suit looks like, so they don’t like newer iterations on a design. And it’s not about managing expectations. I’ve seen every single one of the Sony Spider-Man “villain” movies, and enjoyed myself the entire time because I came in knowing exactly what I was getting. I saw Kraven in theaters, and, afterward, I could tell you exactly who had actually seen it and who was just clowning on it because it was the popular thing to do.
I’m referring to a population that very clearly derives pleasure from finding every possible fault in the hobby they claim to love.
We all know someone like that at an individual level. Now imagine there’s twenty of those people every single time you want to have a discussion about Spider-Man.
Sometimes, this hatred is funneled into a specific character, and then it’s just kind of funny. The way some Spider-Man fans act, you’d think Paul Rabin pissed in their cereal. If you read the volume of Amazing Spider-Man in which he features, though, he’s actually a pretty interesting character in terms of narratively juxtaposing MJ and Peter’s relationship. There are so many other things to critique in that run that I very rarely see brought up in comparison to the deafening existential vitriol reserved for the dearly departed Mr. Rabin.
But then sometimes it’s “this run is shit” or “this adaptation is an affront to God” or “this writer needs to be drawn and quartered.” Then when you actually read the run or watch the movie or check out a specific writer, it’s fine. You can see problems, but you generally enjoy it.
Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of claims about the nature of “Deadpool comics over the last x-number of years” that leave me asking: “have you actually…read…a Deadpool comic since the 90s?”
This particular subset of comic fans have decided that everything is bad until proven otherwise. Which means for something to be even just “pretty okay” it has to clear this impossible bar.
Half of it is a failure of critical literary theory. When I’m reading novels, and I find myself in that headspace of “this sucks until proven otherwise” I recalibrate. I recognize that I’m not meeting the book where it’s at, so either I readjust or read something else.
But it’s also a failure of community. Every time there’s a new movie, new people enter the comic hobby space. If the only thing they see is “everything is shit don’t bother” what are we doing?
Free Books!
Check it Out!
Pixels and Pins Studio 