Fanaticism Part I

Anyone that has had the chance to talk to me would know my feelings on what I'm about to talk about the fanaticism/elitism I've seen with various forms of entertainment. I consider myself a big comic reader, other than a 5-6 year span between elementary and the end of highschool, I've been into comics, started reading them as quickly as I could read. Anyway, the thing that ticks me off about comic fans is the elitism you will eventually run into. I read a lot of comics, about 30-40 a month, thankfully the discount at my shop lets me read that many, there still are ones that I don't get to read that I wish I could.. hard to believe to some, but there are a lot of comics out there.

The latest opportunity for these elitists to show their snobby attitudes are with DC and their whole Infinite Crisis movement. First up is the 80pg Countdown to Infinite Crisis comic that came out March 30. For $1 people can read the prologue of sorts to Infinite Crisis (Identity Crisis led to Infinite in ways), and it featured the death of Ted Kord aka the Blue Beetle II and one of the masterminds is Maxwell Lord (former financer of the JL at one time). I read it and thought it was good, had the feel that IC did, and a minor player got taken out. Of course there are the elitists that make me laugh.. it's one thing if you bought the book and read it and didn't like how it was portrayed but some/most didn't even do that. I read stories of "oh i flipped through it at the shop and deemed it wasn't worth my money." ..wow a quick once over (probably to the final few pages) and you can't spare a friggin dollar to get the whole situation? Or the other one "lemme just rant about how stupid idea this is and by saying it in this uproar tone I'm showing that I didn't read the book and just read a summary online!" .. seriously.. summary/synopsis != book.

Another situation with DC (that also ties into Infinite Crisis) would be the long hinted at return of Jason Todd to the living. In the latest issue of Batman, the Red Hood removed his helmut to reveal his identity (after a vicious crowbar beating to the Joker; payback is a bitch). I think if done right, the return of Jason Todd could be a welcomed sight, I mean seriously rarely have people stayed dead ( I think Barry Allen is the only character that will probably never return to the living, althought that probably won't stop them from having time travel or flashbacks occur that would keep him in everyone's memory). Maybe JT is a clone, just like Superboy was cloned from Supes/LL. Perhaps STAR or CADMUS got a hold of JT and decided to clone him.. make someone that could defend them from the Batman, but JT's personality was of a trouble maker and broke out on his own, and the lab burned/shredded the records so that there was no acknowledgement of what they had did. We'll have to wait and see, in an interview Winick seemed to know where he is going with this (although he's not writing Batman nor Outsiders in July O_O ) so I have confidence that this is going to end well, just the same with Infinite Crisis. Just quickly detractors or elitists only retort is "oh what did they just kill the Joker? how lame.. he won't stay dead either." And my response is simply.. who said he's dead.. people can be beaten within an inch of death and still live. I doubt Jason stayed to make sure he was dead.. or maybe he wouldn't even want that losers death on his hands.

Next part will focus on those otakus.