In Which Lexi Talks About Why She Sides With Marvel

So there's this thing that happens when I get interested in a new series or franchise. It's called "the fandom scares me the hell away so that I watch from a distance instead." The fanbase for a particular show or book or movie or comic can often be the deciding factor of whether or not I get into something. For instance, the Twilight fanbase was the reason I started to dislike the Twilight series - Stephenie Meyer and the books themselves are the reason I despise it - and for the longest time I refused to watch any episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic because dude? Seriously? Bronies are messed up. (The show is pretty cute, though.)

And even the stuff I do like have scary fandoms: Supernatural has its insane shippers, and Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and The Avengers have all had shipping wars, some totally bloody. Hell, Marvel's fandom as a whole has had explosive fandom wars - some of the older comic book fans are openly contemptuous towards the newcomers who came this way via the movies.

And yet, while that fandom can be a scary, scary place indeed, I feel safer and better off there than anywhere near the overall DC fandom. Except for a few well-done shows and cartoons that have their own pocket fanbases (Green Lantern: The Animated Series for instance) the DC fanbase as a whole is pretty unsavory based on my experience with it. And the worst part is, as I said in my last rant, DC seems to be catering specifically to that demographic.

I could talk about the New 52 and how I absolutely hate what they did to Wonder Woman and Oracle and Starfire. I could talk about the overabundance of Escher Girls. I could talk about the fact that they had Rob Freaking Liefeld heading a few titles before his public fallout with the publisher. But that's not the reason why I tend to skew towards Marvel when it comes to the superhero genre.

I have a story. Get comfy.


So as recent as last spring, I attended an art school here in Chicago. A very well-known artist went there - Alex Ross? He does realistic watercolor paintings of the big-time superheroes?

Any artistic self-esteem you had just died a fiery death. Kneel. Bow before your comic art king.

(For the record, Jill Thompson went there, too. She created Scary Godmother and now draws for Sandman, even penciling a special book about Death. She is my idol.)

Well, seeing that so many famous artists that now work in the entertainment industry graduated from this particular school, a lot of hopeful art students and comic fans attend as well. Case in point, the guy this story is about. We'll call him Bob.

So Bob and I had a class together, and I got him into TRON (which I regret, because now he's objectifying Quorra, good grief.) In return, he tried to get me to ditch Marvel and hop on the DC train.

Let me make this very clear: he is the biggest DC fanboy that I have ever seen in my life. He hates Marvel with the burning passion of a thousand suns. He thinks that Marvel is run by unoriginal, talent-less hacks. He wants to see them crash and burn. He predicted that The Avengers was going to bomb so hard that it would utterly decimate the economy. You get the drift?

Also, he draws nothing but pinups. Literally nothing but women in skimpy outfits doing ridiculous, sexualized poses. He tried to get me to watch Witchblade with him. He tried to talk me into dressing up as Zatanna Zatara (old costume; not the new, less-skimpy one) for Halloween. (For the record? I like Zatanna.)

He approved wholeheartedly of the New 52. He loves Starfire's new costume and personality. He thinks Wonder Woman is a stupid, worthless hero. He was the one who mocked me for liking Static. And I ask myself constantly why I befriended him.

Moving on.

So last year, it was SUMMER OF THE SUPERHEROES! And the dueling banjos were going at it.

Let me shorthand his reactions to the big superhero movies of 2011:

"The manliest romantic comedy ever. Fucking retarded."

"A fucking ripoff of Superman, goddamn."

"BEST FUCKING MOVIE OF THE SUMMER, HOLY SHIT. MAYBE BEST MOVIE EVER!"

...you see where I'm going with this? *eye twitches* Also, for the record, I don't cuss as much as he does. Good grief.

Now, in the summer of 2011, I hadn't seen Thor or Cap yet. I had little to no interest in seeing Green Lantern. All I cared about was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and I was content. Even so, despite my general ambivalence towards the Green Lantern movie, he still kept bugging me and bugging me and bugging me. His behavior was on par with a four-year-old's.

I'm not kidding about this. One time, I found a TRON comic at my local Graham Cracker. It was on sale and it was TRON, so of course I bought it and brought it in to show Bob. Thing is, Disney owns Marvel and Disney produced and distributed TRON and TRON: Legacy. So of course, Marvel did all of the tie-in comics (except Ghost in the Machine, which I'm still hunting for.) So, of course, Marvel's was the name on the spine of the trade paperback.

Bob took one look at the red label and yelped like a bee had stung him and threw the book across the table. My brand-new trade, thrown across the table and onto the floor. I mean, yeah, it's just a book, but it wasn't his! And... I... I have no words for how utterly bewildered and annoyed I was at that.

I kid you not, he acted like the book was on fire, just because Marvel had printed it. Good bloody grief.

So it was months upon months of dealing with behavior like that, plus the fact that he was all sour grapes over Marvel utterly dominating the comic book movie genre, that conditioned an almost Pavlovian aversion to DC in me.

Thanks to the lovely people of Tumblr and the ever-noble Linkara, I'm able to stomach DC for the most part. I do love my DC girls, and I love my Static, but when it comes down to it, I'm picking Marvel over DC. If only because I don't want to be like Bob, the rabid fan who throws books across tables just for being printed by the rival company.

...yeah. Told you it was stupid.