"Welcome to the Fantasy Zone! Get ready!"

fuckyeah-nerdery:

serendipity2345:

the-unpopular-opinions:

I dont care if you’re a guy or a girl, but if you wear comic book clothes, you better know some knowledge about the comic book character

This ^

Before the character in question received a movie.

I think fans can be made no matter how they were introduced to the medium.

One of the biggest problems in the comic book industry at the moment is, despite a growing acceptance of the medium, nerdom, and such, many of the venues in which comic books are sold are so elitist to the point where those who would want to become fans are essentially berated or otherwise made quite uncomfortable by the treatment they receive for not already being fans before dropping into the shop.

Getting single issue comic books outside of a dedicated comic shop is difficult in most places. While stores like Barnes and Noble may carry trade paperbacks of many series, the trades can have a pretty high entry fee; they don’t end up in the discount racks after a few months with the same frequency many other books do.

Not only that, but many comics in recent decades are also written in such a fashion where they outright require years of foreknowledge of the universe in able to even understand the story, let alone enjoy it. Callbacks other homages to previous story-lines would be one thing, but in many cases new comic story-lines can read like labyrinthine fan-fictions where anything less than several years of back issues would render the plot an incomprehensible mess.

Comic book films, meanwhile, have stories that are a hell of a lot easier for folks unfamiliar with the character/s to digest without needing to invest months of time and hundreds of dollars in materials for something just to even see if they like it. If they like what they saw in the movie, they can be much more encouraged to make the dive to pick up the newest issue at the comic shop, or even one of those more expensive trades mentioned previously.

The comic book industry has some very serious structural problems.

Chasing or scaring folks away just because they saw the movie first, instead of the comic, just makes the industry look all the worse for folks who may want to dip their feet into the medium. Not only that, but acting like the elitist social misfits the rest of the media portrays comic book fans and other nerds as kills potential means of attracting new fans.

Sure, not every comic book moviegoer will pick up a new issue. But a few will.

Ideally, we should want to share this medium with as many folks as possible, rather than berating them for how they got introduced to it.