Thursday, May 7, 2009

Fan Myopia vs. Real-Life Funnies

dune.jpg

About that complicated and extra-nerdy blog entry on Monday: that was just a perfectly psychologically-healthy combination, you understand, of a man’s natural love of the Legion of Super-Heroes and hair-splitting desire to make sense of DC’s time-altering Crisis events.  Really, you see things like that all the time on the DC Comics official site’s message boards.

It’s interesting (to me), by the way, how different the tones of the users on different channels of the DCBoards are, with the Crisis ones sounding like Seavey-esque continuity nitpickers or systematizers of some sort (and often complete idiots, of course) but, for instance, the Legion channel often being positively playful/juvenile and instead of asking questions like “What was Didio thinking saying Countdown to Final Crisis was better than 52?!” asking questions like “Which version of Sun Boy would you most like to date?” or “Who has the wackiest costume ever?”

Or that’s my impression anyway — which may be partly a function of the Legion having young animation fans and the Crises and other epic events, by contrast, attracting embittered old loons who’ve been trying to FIT THE GODDAM PIECES TOGETHER FOR THIRTY YEARS NOW EVEN THOUGH NASA NEVER RETURNS MY LETTERS.  Pardon me.  I’m stopping all this next month, remember.

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But comics are capable of more than needlessly-complex sci-fi and superhero plots, I assure you.  Witness this personal, real-life story drawn with Danny Hellman-like skill by Rick Parker and written from personal experience by my pal Michele Carlo, a performance artist and two-time Debater at Lolita Bar who has a cat named Jubilee after a character from the X-Men — speaking of which, last night’s debate went well for both humans and animals.

And speaking of needless complexity and things that environmentalists tend to like, I read the Wikipedia summary of the Dune novels recently, and it was like reading bad, jargon-filled fan fiction — much as I loved the first novel.  I think some of these genres are full of potential, but I’m not suggesting it’s best achieved by piling more imitative crap on the bonfire of human civilization.  Nonetheless, tomorrow: a note about Star Trek-themed porn.

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