Apparently not everybody is looking forward to Neil Gaiman’s upcoming Batman two-parter, announced over the weekend at Comic-Con. As evidence, Gaiman posts this exchange on his blog:
I hope this reaches neil himself. Never have i ever known of anyone as full of himself as well as shit, than you. Now another milestone in your over-hyped career, Writing Batman. Not only are you under the impression you can write, but write batman? F**k You. You Tried before and it sucked. It was just gaiman… With Batman in it. F**k You.
If I’d known that Secret Origins of Batman Villains #1 had made that much of an impression on people, I would have… actually, probably not done anything different, really. I was rather fond of it.
If you think you won’t like the Batman comic I’ll write, probably you’d be best off not reading it. It’ll just be a two part Batman comic, you can save your money. Although if you’d bother to write me a letter like that you might buy it just to prove to yourself that you hate it as much as you know you’re going to…
After the completely random capitalization, my favorite part of the email is the opening sentence — “I hope this reaches neil himself.” — which leads you to expect one of those touching “The Sandman helped me through my awkward teen-age years”-type messages. But instead … wham!
July 31st, 2008 at 9:24 am
Well, THAT was rather rude.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:33 am
Uncalled for. I mean, I’m not exactly jumping for joy at the news. I really don’t care one way or another. But I’m sure as heck not going to email the man and tell him that.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:38 am
I wonder what happens when Neil Gaiman doesn’t help you through those awkward teen-age years?
July 31st, 2008 at 9:48 am
I think this dude is going to buy TWO copies of each issue. One to read and hate, the other to burn, just to show DC and Gaiman how much he hates it.
Rage dude, rage.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:51 am
You published my comment! You really REALLY published it!
. . .
I mean, “wow, that guy, how rude”.
. . .
It wasn’t me. I’m just taking credit for it.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:52 am
Oh, by the way, if you use quotes and/or single-quotes in your comment with Firefox, the whole blog submission form completely fails. Just FYI.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:26 am
Really? I’ve not had a problem with it.
“Quote”
‘Single quote’
July 31st, 2008 at 10:26 am
Nope, no problem.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:31 am
I really liked Gaiman’s take on Batman and his villains. And I say this as one of the few comic book fans who doesn’t like Sandman.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:34 am
Half of my blog posts don’t work here anymore. Probably not this one either.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:08 am
Rude, but does ANYONE have an explanation for the supposed Batman reboot or whatever?
It doesn’t even make sense from a marketing perspective.
Seriously, I’d like to know what, if any, thinking there is behind it.
Anyone?
July 31st, 2008 at 11:24 am
Bruce Wayne will probably retire. Dick or Tim will take over for about 2-4 years while The Dark Knight sequel is made. Bruce will be back with “the biggest Batman story ever!!!!!!” just as the sequel is coming out.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:32 am
“Rude, but does ANYONE have an explanation for the supposed Batman reboot or whatever?”
The vital word in that sentence is “supposed”.
We’ve no CLUE what they have planned. And we have no clue how long those plans will last, what their reprecussions will be, and how long till they go back to The Way Things Should Be.
All we have is a lot of adrenalin coursing through veins that are not quite sure what to do with it.
Bruce Wayne Is Batman. This will not change, or at least not for long. If you make that major a change to the character, you alienate and confuse each and every one of the people who saw Dark Knight and walk into a comic shop for the first time. They leave shaking their head and mumbling “I thought Bruce Wayne was Batman…”
The whole reason they stopped doing Peter David’s Supergirl is because dan Didion came on board, and basically asked, “Wait a minute, you’re doing a completely different Supergirl that has nothing at all to do with Superman, and being Superman’s cousin?” Because that’s just plain not what people Know To Be True about Supergirl. I doubt they’re then going to do that with Batman, or at least not for long.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:52 am
Re: Shaun and the Blog Posting.
It pops up this thing about not having JavaScript or Cookies, but I agree with Shaun; about half the time I get the error and half the time it works. With the same browser. Always works with IE, but not always with the Firefox.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:53 am
Vinnie, if you want more PAD Supergirl, check out Reign in Hell.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:03 pm
My favorite part is that Mr. Gaiman calmly and civilly responds to this man’s nearly incoherent rant, rather than rising to the vitriolic bait. That shuts him down much more effectively than fighting fire with fire.
For example, I like Mark Waid a lot, but he could learn from Mr. Gaiman’s response. When people attack him and he attacks back just as strongly, if not more so, he’s just giving them what they want. Poor man’s going to burst a blood vessel one day.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Posting problems…
I’ve had them, too, and I’m using Firefox. It’s not Firefox’s fault the new site hasn’t been upgraded properly. In this day, more and more people are using browsers other than IE, so programmers need to be aware of situations with all browsers.
HELP for that posting problem…
I’ve found that I sometimes have to open “Leave a Reply” as a separate window, then type and make my post. It always works that way.
And I never have that problem at the main site, just here.
ADDED—just had that problem and opened a new window.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I’ll bring this to the attention of the tech folks. Thanks.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Hey… just wanted to say, that the Linda Danvers in Reign of Hell is in no way similar to anything Peter David did with the character and completely ignores her final, and probably best arch… “Many Happy Returns”, where Linda has been seperated from the fallen angel shtick and was just a cool character with an odd mix of powers.
Love Neil… think this will be great.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
And in that post, Gaiman was unsurprised to discover that when the rude fanboy was typing “F**k You”, what he meant was “I love you.”
Yeesh. What a jackass. The mere existence of anyone who could harbor such venom towards Neil Gaiman just boggles the mind.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:46 pm
haha. I also can’t stand Gaiman. It’s pretentious, rose tinted and choke full of bad metaphors.
But clearly there is no need for personal attacks and this language
July 31st, 2008 at 2:19 pm
It’s pretentious, rose tinted and choke full of bad metaphors.
that is his writing….
July 31st, 2008 at 3:23 pm
The posting problems are an issue with the comment spam plugin on this site. WP-SpamFree has become really popular lately, but it can easily get confused. It’s not Firefox-specific, either — it just prevented me from making a comment with Opera, telling me to turn on scripting and cookies — then told me that I already had them both enabled.
Bugginess aside, I dislike the tactic of requiring the commenter to have scripting and cookies enabled. It’s an accessibility issue. People using mobile browsers, or using assistance software, or surfing with scripting turned off for safety reasons or per system/network policy (in which case they can’t always re-enable the features themselves) are left out in the cold.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I don’t buy the “movie block” on something like this. The comic books don’t affect the bottom line of the movies at all, and any movie bounce on single issue comic sales has always been minimal and shortlived at best. If a new reader walks in to a comic shop or book store, they are more likely to buy a TPB than a single issue (to get a full story), and there is certainly no shortage of classic Bruce Wayne TPBs.
If DC really felt it was important to match the movies, they wouldn’t be in the middle of a decidedly new-reader unfriendly event right as the movie comes out. Not to mention that the highest profile Batbook, ASBaR, features a Batman well out of sync with what the current movies present.
I think the “comics must match the film/mainstram perception” thing has always been something that people expect to be the case without it actually being true. DC could very well get away with this if they play it like Marvel has with Cap.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:41 pm
On topic: yes, the guy was incredibly rude. I’m looking forward to seeing Batman get the “whatever happened to” treatment.
Off topic: posting problems: REFRESH THE PAGE. If you open the blog post and then spend time reading everything, you’ll often have taken too long for it to allow you to post. I don’t know why there’s some sort of timing to it, but there is. Refresh the page. What you typed will still be in the box. Then hit Submit Comment button and it will post successfully. I’ve done this in Firefox 2.x and Firefox 3.0.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I bet that dude owns a comic shop. He has the right attitude for it.