Just when you thought we’d left Infinite Crisis behind, replaced by the likes of Civil War and 52, The Village Voice pulls us back with its critique of the miniseries as sweeping commentary on the contentious creator-creation-fan relationship:
In Infinite Crisis 4, Earth-Prime’s vindictive Superboy, angry over his prolonged incarceration and the loss of his loved ones and homeworld, picks a fight with DC’s current Superboy. Like The Simpsons‘ Comic Book Guy, the villainous Superboy is a whiny, awkward loner, who stammers, “You’re ruining me!” as he battles a group of heroes. The fact that Superboy’s Earth-Prime represents the readers’ world confirms his status as a stand-in for the ugly side of comics’ audience.
Readers seem to have largely missed the subtext; indeed, a trip to DC’s message boards reveals a fan base validating Johns’s characterization with its vitriol. A typical comment reads, “Thanks . . . for making my heroes the most disgusting, childish, nasty, ridiculous people ever.”
The portrayal of Infinite Crisis‘s villains reflects the comics industry’s contentious relationship with fans. The readers typified by the evil Superboy are fiercely loyal but resistant to change, much like the art form they love so dearly. DC finds itself forced to serve two masters: these fractious lifers and the children that were, in decades past, comics’ target demographic.
So, if Superboy-Prime equals fandom, then Alexander Luthor is … Geoff Johns? No, that can’t be right. Dan DiDio, maybe?
June 30th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
I didn’t think Superboy Prime represented Fanboys.
When he spoke, “You’re ruining me”, he was breaking the fourth wall and talking to Geoff Johns. Saying, ‘I’m supposed to be a hero, what are you doing to me?’, in a way.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
I find this to be a very interesting way of looking at it. And if it’s accurate, I’d say that Alexander Luthor merely represents a different segment of fandom: rather than the whiny, complaining fanboy he represents the lucid, eloquent fanboy who nonetheless believes that no matter what the writers/artists/editors are doing *he* could still do it better.
But Luthor’s “being able to spell” doesn’t make him any less of a jerk…
June 30th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
I think it’s a valid deconstrution. Especially considering how meta textual IC was intended to be (arguably to its detriment in places).
June 30th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
How many closet metatexualists are lurking out there any way? I fear for the future until the next reboot.
I wince at criticism that purports in some way that the critic has picked up “subtext” (or whatever) that the mainstream has overlooked or ignored. It’s akin to being the critic to praise David Lynch’s Twin Peaks all the way to the end, when most people look back now and say “Wow poor bastard lost his way somewhere in the tale didn’t he?”
I daresay no one could fathom the “subtext” because the actual printed text was bogged down with continuity that made the story inaccessible to anyone operating without a Jess Nevins-like level of knowledge.
June 30th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Superboy= Waid
Alex= Meltzer
Superman= Johns
Max Lord= Warren Ellis
June 30th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
Mr. Coyle–who is Wonder Woman in this (interesting) mix?
July 1st, 2006 at 12:41 am
That’s funny. I said something similar a while ago on Jim Roeg’s blog.
July 1st, 2006 at 1:06 am
I don’t know, my problem with Infinite Crisis was that it PROMISED so much and delivered jack shit.
I wanted it to be a meta meditation on fandom. I wanted it to bring about a clearly new universe. I wanted something NEW, I don’t mind change, I was ready for it, BEGGING for it.
But…never have I been so dissapointed in an event. I was told this was a real change and changed nothing at all. One Year Later, it’s the same old earth with a handful of new characters who will die on the vine because the fanboys want ONLY what they grew up with.
And I wasn’t represented in the meta commentary: I’m the guy whose railing against fandom and begging for more READERS.
Fans suck, readers rule. I read comics, I’m not a ‘fan’ of them(or of anything fans inevitably expect things a reader, listener or a consumer doesn’t).
I just want good stories, and the current DCU offers nothing but hindrances to good stories.
I’m saying it: Continuity is a hindrance to good stories. We all know it, it’s simple logic, having to work your story into 10 20 30 years of mediocrity is not the recipe for good stories.
And DC comics have a long history of mediocrity. The past fifteen years of Superman has been crap. Past decade of Batman, crap.
July 1st, 2006 at 9:45 am
Continuity is a hindrance, yes.
But right now I’m watching Loonatics Unleashed on Kids WB, where Rev Runner is a talking Road Runner and he’s pals with Tech E. Coyote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loonatics_Unleashed#Characters
I mean they live in Acmetropolis!?! Chuck Jones, I miss you. Talk about tossing continuity out the window.
In all seriousness, my six-year old son enjoys it, but I really need to get classic Looney Tunes on DVD for him to understand how diluted a product he currently is watching.
In that same vein, I need to snag some Showcase reprints and leave the current DCU to its own devices.
July 1st, 2006 at 4:16 pm
No matter how you spin it, IC still sucked.
July 1st, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Why are we always being accused of being resistant to change? Last I checked it was the industry that keeps trying to reboot itself and return to some lame status quo. Oh we don’t like Spider-Man unmasking? Maybe that was because it was out of character! Oh and we’re not the ones bellyaching over Spider-Man being married. It’s Marvel that seems so hellbent on returning him to the world of singleness. That’s not resistance to change. That’s just asking that we let the character grow and mature organically!
DC’s problem is that whenever they want to shake up their line and draw attention to different genres they have to kill tons of characters. Maybe if they offered real growth instead of continuity gliches they wouldn’t have this problem every twenty years.
Anybody else catch the middle finger they sent to Marvel in issue six with “Civil War” gag?
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:15 am
Pfft! The Village Voice article is just a bunch of cliches. (And if Matt Singer thinks the DC Message boards are an accurate reflection of Comic Book Fandom’s hive mind, he’s way out of touch.) Some fans are like Superboy Prime, and some aren’t. You can’t put such simple labels on real people. It would be more accurate to say that Prime represents an attitude expressed by some fans at certain times, but not all of them all of the time.
Change is good sometimes, and sometimes it’s bad. Right now it’s too early to say if the changes brought about by Infinite Crisis will improve the comics or not.
July 5th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Kevin–
I don’t think I ever say Superboy Prime represents all fans, but rather represents a particular sort of fan (or, if you prefer, a particular stereotype of a particular sort of fan). And the sort of comments I found in response to CRISIS on a variety of message board (I was only able to include DC’s) made an interesting comparison.