thedeadlyhook (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thedeadlyhook) wrote2010-05-07 10:19 am
thedeadlyhook) wrote2010-05-07 10:19 am
How to Win Friends and Alienate Readers
Thank you for all the lovely birthday wishes! And thanks so much for the virtual milk and cookies, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lyrstzha! And Happy Belated Birthday to you as well - I hope you had a great day!
I've been reading a few first reactions on my flist to the latest Buffy comic (#35), and... wow. I'm sorta speechless. But only sorta.
Can I say that this latest is just reconfirming my impression that the comic has succumbed to the general boy's club-ish atmosphere of comics fandom? Y'know, kind of like what happened in video games, when it became known that girls liked to play Tomb Raider. So then nervous marketing departments had to go into high gear and remind every nervous male player that Lara Croft had big, porn star tits! Thus both reassuring the coveted demographic that they weren't being girly at all by playing a game that girls apparently liked -- hey, who doesn't like tits? -- and incidentally creating such an eye-rolling atmosphere that most of the girls who had inexplicably ventured into what was clearly meant to be their treehouse were motivated to leave.
Not on purporse or anything. Just... because.
Seriously. If I had been asked to sit in, in an editorial capacity, on a meeting to plan out the comics continuation of a popular TV show, penned by its creator, that happened to have a female lead and a large following of adult women, here's what I probably would NOT have advised:
Be sure to include lots of in-jokes to other comic books. And for the love of god, make them specific enough that you'd have to be an honest-to-goodness comic geek who's read comic books since the 1980s to really get them. Because it's always a good idea to alienate a general audience that's coming in from television and may not have experience with (or the best opinion of) comics and their readers -- y'know, leave them with a lasting impression.
Oh, and make sure the art is really cartoony looking, because adult readers who may already feel slightly embarrassed about buying a comic book will feel extra-embarrassed to be seen reading something that looks like it was specifically targeted at kids. And include sex scenes too. Yes, the same artist. No, not ironically.
BTW, for those who don't fit that category of comic book geeks - it so happens that I do - the cover is a parody of X-Men #138, the issue right after the Dark Phoenix saga ended with the death of Jean Grey. (You'll have to Google it: my browser is being old and hinky and won't allow me to upload to Photobucket.) The figure on the cover walking away from the camera is Cyclops, and he's leaving the X-Men, aka the figures in the background, for an extended leave of absence.
How does this fit the current situation in Buffy? Uh, it doesn't. Is Buffy is leaving the team? Did her significant other just die? No. It's just a sight gag for comic geeks, and meaningless, unless you'd like to cite the Lara Croft effect above and call it part of an unconscious attempt to drive away readers who don't get such jokes.
Also, to me, the steampunk spaceship Spike arrives in at the end reminds me a bit of the owlship in Watchmen. (The scene where the ship crashes in the snow in the Antarctic outside Adrian's fortress, specifically - really, aside from some surface detailing, it's even got a similar crash effect here.)
Why? WHO KNOWS!?!?
And finally, wow. Am I SO impressed that, at least judging from the promo art, the final arc of Season 8 penned by JW himself revolves around riffing on Twilight, a series that's actually really popular with teen girls right now. Because nothing says "feminism" like mocking what girls read/watch. Especially if one's own franchise fits that category too, or used to. Girls clearly don't know what they should be enjoying, yes? Maybe they really need some male author to get right on that and tell them.
UGH.
Whatever, comic-book-production-staff-guys. From this point in, never complain about your audience. By now, you've handpicked it.
lyrstzha! And Happy Belated Birthday to you as well - I hope you had a great day!I've been reading a few first reactions on my flist to the latest Buffy comic (#35), and... wow. I'm sorta speechless. But only sorta.
Can I say that this latest is just reconfirming my impression that the comic has succumbed to the general boy's club-ish atmosphere of comics fandom? Y'know, kind of like what happened in video games, when it became known that girls liked to play Tomb Raider. So then nervous marketing departments had to go into high gear and remind every nervous male player that Lara Croft had big, porn star tits! Thus both reassuring the coveted demographic that they weren't being girly at all by playing a game that girls apparently liked -- hey, who doesn't like tits? -- and incidentally creating such an eye-rolling atmosphere that most of the girls who had inexplicably ventured into what was clearly meant to be their treehouse were motivated to leave.
Not on purporse or anything. Just... because.
Seriously. If I had been asked to sit in, in an editorial capacity, on a meeting to plan out the comics continuation of a popular TV show, penned by its creator, that happened to have a female lead and a large following of adult women, here's what I probably would NOT have advised:
Be sure to include lots of in-jokes to other comic books. And for the love of god, make them specific enough that you'd have to be an honest-to-goodness comic geek who's read comic books since the 1980s to really get them. Because it's always a good idea to alienate a general audience that's coming in from television and may not have experience with (or the best opinion of) comics and their readers -- y'know, leave them with a lasting impression.
Oh, and make sure the art is really cartoony looking, because adult readers who may already feel slightly embarrassed about buying a comic book will feel extra-embarrassed to be seen reading something that looks like it was specifically targeted at kids. And include sex scenes too. Yes, the same artist. No, not ironically.
BTW, for those who don't fit that category of comic book geeks - it so happens that I do - the cover is a parody of X-Men #138, the issue right after the Dark Phoenix saga ended with the death of Jean Grey. (You'll have to Google it: my browser is being old and hinky and won't allow me to upload to Photobucket.) The figure on the cover walking away from the camera is Cyclops, and he's leaving the X-Men, aka the figures in the background, for an extended leave of absence.
How does this fit the current situation in Buffy? Uh, it doesn't. Is Buffy is leaving the team? Did her significant other just die? No. It's just a sight gag for comic geeks, and meaningless, unless you'd like to cite the Lara Croft effect above and call it part of an unconscious attempt to drive away readers who don't get such jokes.
Also, to me, the steampunk spaceship Spike arrives in at the end reminds me a bit of the owlship in Watchmen. (The scene where the ship crashes in the snow in the Antarctic outside Adrian's fortress, specifically - really, aside from some surface detailing, it's even got a similar crash effect here.)
Why? WHO KNOWS!?!?
And finally, wow. Am I SO impressed that, at least judging from the promo art, the final arc of Season 8 penned by JW himself revolves around riffing on Twilight, a series that's actually really popular with teen girls right now. Because nothing says "feminism" like mocking what girls read/watch. Especially if one's own franchise fits that category too, or used to. Girls clearly don't know what they should be enjoying, yes? Maybe they really need some male author to get right on that and tell them.
UGH.
Whatever, comic-book-production-staff-guys. From this point in, never complain about your audience. By now, you've handpicked it.
no subject
Well... sort of. A lot of the comics jokes/homages in the series were what I (as a longtime comics fan) might point to as an example of comics-fan poseurs; they usually only half-understood the topic they were trying to homage. E.g., the discussion about whether Spider-Man takes money for saving people's lives. Well, he doesn't, but he DOES make money from taking pictures of himself as Spider-Man, so he does indirectly get income from his powers. So he's actually the last superhero I would've chosen to illustrate the whole protect-the-townspeople-for-free principle; I get the impression that the real reason he was used an example was so that they could use the "action is his reward" quote, from the animated TV series' theme song. So in an effort to be funny, they skipped over the real details.
Ditto with the "Dark Phoenix" homage. In the X-Men story, Dark Phoenix's powers were raging out of control, and she committed suicide rather than let her lose her humanity and destroy everything she loved. (BTW, the Phoenix story itself always struck me as an homage to a classic Star Trek episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before.") You could argue that some of these themes are present in Willow's story, but IMHO Season 7 never really grappled with or resolved her issues with power - she just suddenly became able to control magic just fine, which kind of misses the whole point that humans aren't cut out be gods because we have too many weaknesses and passions. (And never mind how the drug metaphor fit into all this.)
when Andrew was given more and more importance in S7 (it seemed very important that he be given a specific redemption arc), and the references continue to pile up, I started to resent it as a viewer, as if the show was being taken away from me.
Exactly. And as the kind of geek they were presumably trying to simulate with Andrew, I actually felt more mocked than courted. And the comics only magnified this effect. Sigh...