Tom Spurgeon talks about pissing into the near wind:

There's a really snotty part of me that, whenever I read about people dismayed by the seething misogyny and other general, horrifying values embodied by the fruits of the American mainstream comic book industry, kind of marvels at the casual familiarity so many of those criticizing have with the offending material. I wonder if this is one of those weird cultural constructs we can trace back to Dr. Jerry Bails and other original, hardcore fans -- this notion that you're not interacting with a specific product that could and should be given the finger, walked away from and mocked when it turns sour, but that you're invested in this tradition of serial readership that asks for your commitment, a tradition that, when it fails you, calls on your ability to reform it and set things right.

He's right, of course--snotty, but right. As a consumer, if you don't like something, you generally pack it up and take your wallet elsewhere. God knows enough people have over the decades, which is how comics got the way they are. I honestly don't understand complaining about something over and over again and coming back to it anyway out of fannishness. I admit, I did pick up Infinite Crisis, but that was more a trainwrecky sort of morbid curiosity: I wanted to see what exactly DC was going to do with Booster now that...whatever the fuck happened to him in IC happened to him, and was greatly disappointed with the babysitting result. I mean, at least Skeets got to kill people, you know? I thought for sure Booster could do something a little more interesting (although ineffably fucked-up). The last floppy comic I bought was Sergio Aragones' issue of Solo, and before that I guess it was the end of Kyle Baker's Plastic Man, so those are the only two things I bought because I had a reasonable expectation that I would like them. The point of this is to illustrate that yes, I rail against most of this crap, but I'm comfortable with that, since DC doesn't actually get any of my money in the process.

At this point you may find yourself wondering why I still pay attention to things like, say, this, even though I have no affection for it and no inclination ever to buy it. To this, of course, the only answer is, "I want to make comics for real American dollars, thanks much." I pay attention to this kind of nonsense because I have to familiarize myself with the market, the major players, et cetera if I'm going to be able to sell anything. If I wanted to make manga, I would have to pay a lot of attention to Tokyopop and the other OEL publishers, which would be an entirely new flavor of repulsive madness.

But I don't make manga. I make comics. Maybe poorly, but still--there are many others like them, but these ones are mine.

[Aside: You know damn well what I mean here. Of course manga are comics. So are bandes desinees, or however the Hell it's spelled. But American comics are paced differently than manga, and that is how I pace my work. I think. I have no idea what my influences are, or why I do any of the things I do. I just know that I do them and sometimes they are fun. And that they aren't very Japanese at all.]

[Other aside: Except for Booster in Translation. Call me, DC!]

[One more: Maybe not "many".]

Because I want to make comics, it behooves me to know what's selling, so I know who might be receptive to what I have for offer, and who mightn't. Thus, I have to familiarize myself with the fact that a whole lot of mouthbreathers are apparently looking forward to a scabby superhero calling the first supervillain out of Bucks County a pussy bitch. (And that no one at DC has ever seen a Philly cop or, even more possibly, Philly itself. Or jodhpurs. Or a human thigh.) Many of these people seem to have erections over it. This is clearly not a good market for my comics, though mine also feature violence and being a jerk to people.

This is the entire reason that I got back into comics a few years ago in the first place, though I enjoyed manga and had pretty comic-geeky friends (hi Gene!). Would I have read Watchmen if I didn't want to make comics? No. Good as it is (and it is very good), I wouldn't have even thought about picking it up unless I was trying to familiarize myself with the comics canon (such as it is). But because I had to know what had been done, and what could be done, I had to go through a lot of comics. Many of them, I must say, were pretty bad, but that may be because there are only so many comics you can read about Nice Guys Who Draw and the Coffee Shop Girls Who Don't Love Them before you start wishing for the death of everyone on Earth, starting with the NGWD, moving onto the CSGWDLT (who would see the NGWDs' horrible deaths, realize that they DID love them, and then die painfully immediately afterward), and then spreading over to whoever you feel needs killin'. I didn't return to the comics I loved when I was a little kid (and thus, semi-fannishness) until I joined scans_daily and found that someone had thoughtfully slaughtered many of my childhood favorites while I wasn't using them; that drove me to look back at the old stuff and find the few modern superhero comics I think are worthwhile. But again, none of this would have happened if I had wanted to write novels instead--having put Western superhero comics behind me as a kid, I had no reason to, and if I want to read something for fun, I usually stick to manga.

It's only natural, once you come across material that you don't particularly want to get involved with, to notice its flaws. In comics' case, those flaws are usually selling points--yes, it COULD cut down on our audience to give all the women nipple-spikes (not that it does, because we are AWESOME and they are just jealous and probably gay), but only the true aficionado can really appreciate the delicious storytelling possibilities inherent in Lady Sharptits, of whom your spotty virgin ass is surely one. (Plus, it's totally hot.) You can't escape the misogyny and other frankly insane bullshit that goes on unless you really try, and even then you have to be more than a little disingenuous. (And post on Newsarama.) For those of us who actually want to make comics, it makes sense to complain about these things and to try to change them for the better--partly because if we don't want to make comics about superheroes who are radical TO THE MAXX, it would be helpful in getting work at the established companies if they took down the "You must be at least this rapey to enter" signs, and partly because if comics aren't incredibly off-putting to people who no longer live with their parents, then there might be more of an audience for what we want to do. If these things persist, then they're dragging my preferred idiom down to Hell with them, and what right have they got to do that? What's more, what do a bunch of bedwetting perverts have to objectify and denigrate ME? I'm better than they are! I don't have to take shit from a man in Cheeto stains!

This is why I'm so pissed about Minx, actually. It's not the name (which is stupid and flirty, but then so are teenage girls), but the low proportion of women involved in the thing. I don't begrudge any of the men working on the books; I'm not really interested in any of their comics, but I don't doubt that they could appeal to the audience they want, and I'm sure they're all very talented. I'm also not saying that only women can write women effectively, et cetera. What I am concerned about is something else. The Minx books, as I understand them, are chick lit with training wheels--Karen Berger came out and explicitly said that these books are NOT for boys, so lumping them in with the general YA stuff (which is more mixed in authorship and intended audience) isn't a fair comparison. Chick lit in the real world is written almost exclusively by chicks. Why is comicbook chick lit a sausage party? I know that it's because (in the case of this line) they were able to sell their ideas effectively, but I have a hard time believing that not one of the women that Minx approached were capable of coming up with something that would appeal to teenaged girls. If it's that the pay is low, then why are there men (several fairly established pros) willing to work for that amount? Is there no one out there who's just starting out (say, doing a webcomic or something) and who could really use the cash? The message it sends is that if we are female and we make comics, we can't even get work in the freaking pastel ghetto--what does that say about our chances elsewhere? It's all intensely discouraging, and it makes me want to wash my hands of the whole comics thing. (Not the Minx thing, which does not concern me directly. I hope it does well.)

Right now, because comics are still so closely tied to the direct market, that means that we have to keep an eye on what DC and Marvel are doing--hopefully that will change in the future, with the opening of the bookstore markets, but I'm not incredibly optimistic about that. Twenty years of "Bam! Zow! Comics aren't for kids anymore!" articles have dulled my enthusiasm for the premise, and most of the slots go to manga anyway. As long as we have to keep an eye on that fanboy sector, even just to glance at it, we are going to notice when things suck and when we might have an opportunity to selfishly improve them, serial readership be fucked.

As to why I want to make comics, that's because I'm an idiot.