Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Geekier Than Thou.

I've always used facebook or whatever to air out my dirty geek laundry, yet I have this blog sitting here gathering dust with old youtube videos and not much else.

I originally planned this place as someplace for my friends to put up their ideas, videos, and so on. A shared blog on all geek happenings going on in their lives.

In the end it never really caught on, seeing as most of my geek friends also have the strange inability to read and write (except you Geoff, I know). Anyway, I saw The Wolverine last night, and enjoyed it. But it led to one extremely nerdy set of thoughts, (Why I Hate Wolverine Fans) and another set of thoughts beyond that. Which is what I'm going to talk about now.

I have this thing where every time I see someone wearing a comic book T-shirt, I judge them.

Don't get me wrong, my closet is full of them. Captain America, Batman, Green Lantern, Dragonball, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and more.

My judging comes from the fact that I wonder if any of them have ever even read the source material that the symbol on their chest comes from. When you really think about it, in the grand scheme of things, how many people who wear a Batman shirt have ever actually read Year One or Dark Knight Returns? Or even then something like Knightfall or No Mans Land? Or even more how about reading Batman monthly or even in trades as they come out?

My point is, when I see someone wearing a Batman shirt (just for example), I assume they've seen Batman '89, Dark Knight, or played Arkham Asylum or hopefully at LEAST watched Batman the Animated Series.

But even then I scoff at them, because they don't know the source material. They're fans of the "idea" of Batman, but not the character of Batman. And that goes the same with every other character too.

"I wear a Daredevil shirt, because I thought the movie was awesome". That's not Matt Murdock! That's just... a version of him. But not the source.

And to be fair, the source gets diluted between every artist and author who touches the books too. Peter Davids version of The Hulk is not the same as Bruce Jones version of the Hulk. And I may be getting off track, but even there, if a person can tell me why they prefer Alan Moore's take on Swamp Thing better than Scott Snyders, then I can at least respect them because they've READ the source material.

Oh, but comic book fans don't you think I'm letting you off easy. BERSERKER BARRAGE!!!




No no, there's a whole subset of you little dorks who think it's cool to bash characters you've never even read. Like Aquaman, Cyclops, Captain America, or God forbid the Superman himself.

I look down on you even more. You are the scum of the comic book racks, you are the worst of the worst. You are not fans, you are scabs.

At least with those other fans, they've just never read a comic book, or have never wanted to. They're simply unaware.

But the comic book fan who doesn't like Aquaman because "all he does is talk to fish" and has also never read a page of Aquaman is an uneducated fool.

Every single hero cannot be judged by their power set, they have to be judged on the stories told about them. People don't realize that right now, if they went to their comic book store and picked up the latest trade of Aquaman or Wonder Woman, they would be in for a treat because they have genuinely good writers writing them.

Now, I understand disinterest. I, for example hate Deadpool, but the current run on Deadpool is good and I cannot deny it. I still am not crazy about the character, but the guys writing him right now are great. I'm not blinded by my dislike of the character, because this version of the character is actually good.

My point is blindly hating Superman because "nothing can beat him" is ignorant, especially when you've never read For all Seasons, Birthright, Secret Origin, Geoff Johns run, All-Star Superman or any of the greatest Superman stories ever told. Because you LITERALLY don't know what you're talking about.

Anyway... I think I made my point. Feel free to disagree.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I can say I definitely relate. I've only recently started to read some actual source material, even then only bits and pieces, but nonetheless I can say I have a better appreciation of some super heroes. I too have also never been interested in some characters like Superman(mainly because he seems generic to me, somewhat stemming from his namesake) and others. I also don't have tolerance for the willful ignorance you describe towards the end of this piece. No creation or concept can really be considered crap unless you do step 1 which is actual consideration. I do however think, contrary to your opinion, that one can have an unfavorable opinion of a character in any medium without knowing anything about the other mediums. But I would add that one should think negatively of the character of that particular medium that they experienced rather than the same character from others. For example, the 1970's cartoon "Super Friends" version of Aquaman was quite lame and not too many people would deny that. It is not fair though to then apply that label to every version of Aquaman that has existed before or since that version. Nonetheless, you can still have the opinion that the Justice Friend's Aquaman was indeed lame.