First Off

X-Posted to Designated Sidekick

"For example, if you were offered a shot at being in the Teen Titans, why would you take it? The level of death, pain, insanity, torture by demon/alien, loss of loved ones, loss of team mates and the rest that goes with the membership card would have to have you say "Sorry, Suicide Squad has better working conditions"." Quote the Designated Sidekick

Even with the added risk, an offer to join the Titans (or the JLA, or the Avengers, etc.) is like getting drafted to the NFL. Sure, there's a high chance that you could sustain massive, life-threating, crippling, even fatal injuries, but damn, it's the NFL.

Same idea applies, I think. I hope I'm not being overly simplistic here, but I think even within the DCU and Marvel U, there is an urge in the younger/ less popular/ less powerful superheroes to want to play with the 'big boys,' and this has even been written enough times to prove true. (To great effect, I thought, by Grant Morrison in his JLA run, where..um, Kyle Rayner, maybe? is talking about being in the presence of near-gods. feel free to correct me on this one... i know for sure it's JLA, at least. I believe Spidey does a similar thing in the New Avengers title.)

Now really, to get to the heart of it, writers on the big universe books tend to suck. Even when they have great bodies of work outside the big two, they just phone it in, or are forced to do shoehorn work with editorial mandates, or any number of things influenced by ego and the newest summer blockbuster, writing for these licensed-content-generators can't be a terribly rewarding experience. Characters get killed, rebirthed, recharged, crisis-ed of the infinite or identity varieties, etc. etc. ad-freakin-nauseum. It's easy to fill a few pages of paying work with the death of one shmuck or another. If it boosts sales and leads to a few more bucks in your pocket, great. If people get pissed off and start screaming your name from rooftops or message boards, they just need to remember to spell your name right.

So why do we keep buying this crap?

a)Because *we* want to play with the big boys. Through all of this BS, somehow, Batman is still -cool-. Spider-Man could be written to be a furry with a particular fetish for Aunt May in a Snoopy costume, but that's not going to change how great Spider-Man...wait, that might actually do it...

The idea of Spider-Man will remain great. "With great power comesyaddayaddayadda" and all that jazz, there are some amazingly fantastic stories out there starring your friendly neighborhood sad-sack, whether or not another good one ever gets made. The moral to this, I think, is that continuity isn't actually that big a deal. The best stories almost all stem from a revamp, reboot, or retelling these days. Who cares if you miss a few months years decades, if nothing substantial actually happens?  Which brings me to...

b)...is a little trickier. b) is your comics geek self-loathing that says it's better to put up with a little crap just so that you can keep having your new crap the week it comes out...and besides, it's bound to get better soon(er or later), and it'd be lame to have a *gasp* gap in your collection run, cuz y'know one day Nightwing #134-147 are going to totally put the little one through grad school... keep in mind, anything that DC or Marvel put a TM or circle-R to are the equivalent of Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne. Superman sells Pepsi... end of fucking story. Especially at the level that books are selling these days, fans are essentially worthless to anyone up the ladder in Marvel or DC. What's your $3 worth when the movie is worth $300,000,000?

So, once you've gotten over b), you take another look at a) and start buying collections wisely, only proven material. Who needs to spend $3 a month for a 10-minute decompressed sexist racist anti-intellectual lightboxed-from-a-porno 'read?'

Not me, not any-fucking-more.

Comics should be good, but they're often not.  It seems that when it comes to human artistic endeavour, there's always a need to seperate wheat from chaff.  Hopefully one day they'll stop giving jobs to the guys who suck, and keep giving them to the ones who rock.  Ones who rock being, by definition, ones who aren't sexist, racist homophobes, and don't resort to easy outs or cheap tragedy to keep the drama level up. Y'know, good writers...

I still read a few big-2 heroes, and am inclined to pick up new ones, too. The great thing about the small market is the freedom it brings. Brubaker's run on Captain America has been amazing to me so far, and I've -never- been a Cap fan before. Gail Simone has me pretty hooked to Birds of Prey, I love Peter David's X-Factor, and am looking forward to Vaughn's Dr. Strange and Brubaker's X-Men, and Morrison's Batman...
--Ian