Changing Tastes, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #163

January 19, 2012 Arthur Tebbel 5 Comments

Dear Art,

It has been a stressful couple weeks to be running a comic book company.  There was a bit of a kerfuffle when it came out that frequent Internet whipping boy Rob Liefeld would be writing or co-writing three different monthly titles.  That was dwarfed by the announcement that we were cancelling Mr. Terrific and Static Shock along with six other books.  None of the books replacing them will feature minority characters.  Is this going to blow over?  Do comic book fans even give a shit in the first place?

-Dan DiDio, DC Comics

Dan,

This is hard for me to say but I don’t think I can count myself in the set of comic book readers anymore.  I haven’t been to a comic book store in over a month.  I don’t even really miss it.  There are a few books that I miss but all but one of those is probably more suited to trade paperbacks than floppy singles.  After years and years of complaining about the state of the industry but showing up dutifully to spend 20-30 bucks per week anyway I finally just drifted away.  I don’t think I’ll be coming back.

I’m shocked that this happened.  I know most people grow out of comic books at one point or another but I always assumed there was some kind of tipping point where you were in for life.  I was also pretty sure that point was before 27 years old.  I always figured myself a lifer.  Someone please keep all these words to throw back in my face when I relapse.  Also maybe keep these if I ever have a substance abuse problem so I can confront the way I was casually throwing around all this heavy terminology.

That isn’t to say I don’t have vestigial opinions on these issues.  Canceling all of the books you publish that feature black characters doesn’t make you or your company racist.  It says some pretty disturbing things about your marketing department that the only group it can successfully market to is white men.  Or maybe it suggests that the community you’ve built is so impenetrable that even if that audience wanted your product they wouldn’t risk associating with the other people that buy your product.

Rob Liefeld is a different matter but kind of related.  On the one hand you could use his sudden return to prominence as proof that your industry is stuck chasing a golden age that is almost 20 years old.  On the other hand it could be proof that people change and mature and that even if someone can’t draw feet they could still conceivably be involved in plotting satisfying comic books.  If I were still going to the store this wouldn’t chase me off a book I was otherwise invested in.  Now that I’m not going Liefeld isn’t going to bring me back in.  Good luck figuring out what will.