#Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

[Captain Manning]

I hope comicsgate gets more radical in the future...

On the one hand, that sounds cringe as fuck.

On the other hand, the fact that sounds cringe means it would be perfect fodder for this thread.

I would recommend against it, but I'm not in the driver's seat. I could adapt to either one. As long as I get to laugh at something or somebody.

Fuckers took the most important comic publications and you guys talked about talentless hacks like @NasserRabadi13 .
I Blame the @Frog God for all of this. You build up an army of Cucks instead of attacking. nobody cares about your dicksucking underlings and their retarded comcis.

Attack how?

They were going to take the "most important comic publications" anyways. That's what happens when "they" take over companies that own the IP that comprise the things you like. You gain access to an IP, and you basically access the right to shit all over it. Hence all these silly "-gates."

The only conceivable way you can "attack" them is to just not buy their shit. They are getting their clock cleaned by manga these days for a reason. They ain't happy. They have crowed themselves king of a trash fire. They will either tone down the bullshit, or continue to see a loss in sales.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

so that speaks volumes about how much of a waste of talent his career is.

But he wrote this masterpiece! How could you have forgotten?

 

[Analog Devolved]

I hope ethans lawyers invite Leroy to testify on their behalf. Preston is a poo licking cuck that would make fellow cucks TUG and Donal blush with shame.

Heavy Metal magazine went woke years ago I don't know why people are suddenly shocked.

Peggers lolsuit against his internet enemies is absolute bunk. Call Leroy to the stand.

 

[Captain Manning]

This word is used a lot, perhaps too much... but...

Neil Gaiman is literally a cuck:

Amanda Palmer Gets Intimate

After her self-released album debuts at No. 10 on Billboard's 200, we discuss her powerful relationship with her fans

www.out.com

I have never grasped the point of getting married if you'd gonna do this. Do some people just have a hardon for filing their income taxes jointly, or what?

There's also another thing concerning Gaiman that I have been thinking about since the lawsuit dropped, and some of the big comic book names have been talking about CG.

Gaiman spoke out during the whole Boiled Angel controversy. Now, I agree with Gaiman that Mike Diana should NOT have gone to jail for Boiled Angel, but I'm wondering if Gaiman is the type to get on @FROG's ass for pointing out how disgusting Lamont's artwork is. Hell, both men are from Florida (which possibly should be of concern for Lamont, considering that obscenity law is STILL on the books).

I hope ethans lawyers invite Leroy to testify on their behalf. Preston is a poo licking cuck that would make fellow cucks TUG and Donal blush with shame.

There are a LOT of actual cucks opposed to CG. TUG, Preston, and Gaiman for sure. My God. Almost makes you want to support CG just because.

EDIT: He should NOT have gone to jail.

 

[A nameless trool]

There are a LOT of actual cucks opposed to CG. TUG, Preston, and Gaiman for sure. My God. Almost makes you want to support CG just because.

Wasn't EVS also cucked by his former wife, the gun nut who dumped him for her parachuting instructor?

 

[Captain Manning]

Wasn't EVS also cucked by his former wife, the gun nut who dumped him for her parachuting instructor?

I dunno. Was he? Did he put up with it?

I'm specifically talking about a wife who engages in sexual escapades with people other than their husband, and with the knowledge and approval of that husband. Not infidelity that ends in a divorce.

TUG knows that Trashley is Lola. He has to. He's apparently okay with it. To me, that means he subscribes to the idea of an "open relationship." I could certainly sympathize with him not wanting to stick his dick in that landwhale, but he should probably look into a divorce. He won't, because he's TUG.

 

[A nameless trool]

I dunno. Was he? Did he put up with it?

I'm specifically talking about a wife who engages in sexual escapades with people other than their husband, and with the knowledge and approval of that husband. Not infidelity that ends in a divorce.

TUG knows that Trashley is Lola. He has to. He's apparently okay with it. To me, that means he subscribes to the idea of an "open relationship." I could certainly sympathize with him not wanting to stick his dick in that landwhale, but he should probably look into a divorce. He won't, because he's TUG.

EVS had relayed this story acouple times on his livestream
No, he was not knowing it, his wife dumped him for her paearchute instructor (so there was a good chanve she was cucking him) and then the instructor died when his parachute did not open.

To me, a cuck is the guy who does not know. Open relationships are... a different kind of beast if the guy gets any action on the side too (and I believe Neil Gaiman was getting a lot of action on the side too but I cannot verify it at all)

 

[Captain Manning]

No, he was not knowing it, his wife dumped him for her paearchute instructor (so there was a good chanve she was cucking him) and then the instructor died when his parachute did not open.

Sounds like she made a bit of a mistake. Is a pancake really better than Ethan?

To me, a cuck is the guy who does not know. Open relationships are... a different kind of beast if the guy gets any action on the side too (and I believe Neil Gaiman was getting a lot of action on the side too but I cannot verify it at all)

I think they're fucking ridiculous.

Also, cuckoldry is a fetish for some weirdos. It's also called "wife watching." I think that's what people are alluding to when they speak of cucks these days. Willingly allowing it.

 

[Pilule Noire]

Yes cuckoldry has changed its meaning over the years. The French playwright Molière, writing Le Cocu Imaginaire (The Imaginary Cuckold) in 1660, has the protagonist 'cuckolded' simply by a (mistaken) belief that his wife has been unfaithful to him.

Poor Molière had no idea that 350 years into the future, cuckoldry would eventually mutate into the disturbing fetish pornograph that we know today. The kind that we denizens of The Gate know all too well, from witnessing it being physically performed and acted out by Preston Poulter along with a blonde woman and a black man named Leroy - a pornograph seemingly helmed by Preston's then-wife and now Comicsgate author, Auby Ann. I mean there's so many levels of cuckoldry going on there, it would make poor Molière's head spin! Even as he rolls around furiously in his grave at the mere mention of his name in the same breath as the Poulters, and Comicsgate.

In more CGish news, has Shane Davis been radicalized?
He did a great 'Jeff Hicks' style video today, but with a twist - instead of lackadaisically town-crying about the pathetic state of Disney Star Wars toys, he's lackadaisically town-crying about the pathetic state of US comics in their own homeland. They have been 'cucked' in a sense by the CHAD MANGA.

It's must be an incredibly painful video to watch for CGers, it's like that Song To The Siren scene in Lost Highway:

 

[Captain Manning]

I hope ethans lawyers invite Leroy to testify on their behalf.

Given the subject matter of the case, I think the only one that needs to be called to the stand is @NasserRabadi13.

Lawyer: Mr. Rabadi, as our expert witness on comic books, would you mind telling us your professional opinion of Mr. Lamont's artwork?
Nasser: THAT'S SICK!
Laywer: Thank you Mr. Rabadi. The defense rests.

He did a great 'Jeff Hicks' style video today, but with a twist - instead of lackadaisically town-crying about the pathetic state of Disney Star Wars toys, he's lackadaisically town-crying about the pathetic state of US comics in their own homeland. They have been 'cucked' in a sense by the CHAD MANGA.

He's not wrong.

 

[Miniluv]

In more CGish news, has Shane Davis been radicalized?
He did a great 'Jeff Hicks' style video today, but with a twist - instead of lackadaisically town-crying about the pathetic state of Disney Star Wars toys, he's lackadaisically town-crying about the pathetic state of US comics in their own homeland. They have been 'cucked' in a sense by the CHAD MANGA.

View attachment 2216151
It's must be an incredibly painful video to watch for CGers, it's like that Song To The Siren scene in Lost Highway:

Shane said it himself, manga has "something for everyone". American comics are virtually dominated by one thing for a very narrow range of customers which is getting smaller all the time.

There's manga geared towards pretty much every demographic in a wide variety of genres, available weekly (in Japan anyway) and for a cheap price. The stories are easy to get into because they're almost all kept in print and even the most popular ones have an ending. They aren't 70 year old trademarks fighting the same fights over and over with zero stakes storytelling that can't even kill a side character or let any change stick because it's a 70 year old trademark that needs to stay the same and the ever aging manbaby audience likes the status quo to return eventually. Reboot, rinse, repeat.

Mainstream American comics are creatively bankrupt because they aren't outlets for creativity, they're work-for-hire life support systems for ancient properties that are far more successful as movies than they've been as comics in at least a decade.

Warren "Internet Whorin'" Ellis wrote about this wretched development 20 years ago in a piece called "The Old Bastard's Manifesto", which contained this snippet later used by Bendis in an issue of Powers:

Fuck superheroes, frankly. The notion that these things dominate an entire genre is absurd. It's like every bookstore in the planet having ninety percent of its shelves filled by nurse novels. Imagine that. You want a new novel, but you have to wade through three hundred new books about romances in the wards before you can get at any other genre. A medium where the relationship of fiction about nurses outweighs mainstream literary fiction by a ratio of one hundred to one. Superhero comics are like bloody creeping fungus, and they smother everything else.

It's been the hip and trendy thing to do, recently, to say that superheroes are, you know, all right. And, if they're well done, I agree with you. There's room for any kind of good work, no matter what genre it's in.

But that doesn't excuse you from going out and burning out all the bad work at the fucking root with torches. It doesn't excuse all the nameless toss that DC and Marvel and Image and all the others slop out every month. If you want to read three hundred superhero comics a month then you are sick and you need medical help.
Rip from their steaming corpses the things that led superhero comics to dominate the medium - the mad energy, the astonishing visuals, the fetishism, whatever - and apply them to the telling of other stories in other genres. That's all THE MATRIX did, after all.

The whole thing is worth a read. Ellis was ahead of the curve on a lot of ideas back when he still had ideas, even acknowledging he was part of the problem since he would deride publishers for pushing out superhero pablum right before accepting work from those publishers to produce more superhero pablum. He championed the manga model before most stores were carrying manga. And he's absolutely right that American publishers making what are ostensibly kid's comics for an overwhelmingly adult audience is not helping anything, but slowly choking the industry to death.

 

[Captain Manning]

There's manga geared towards pretty much every demographic in a wide variety of genres, available weekly (in Japan anyway) and for a cheap price. The stories are easy to get into because they're almost all kept in print and even the most popular ones have an ending. They aren't 70 year old trademarks fighting the same fights over and over with zero stakes storytelling that can't even kill a side character or let any change stick because it's a 70 year old trademark that needs to stay the same and the ever aging manbaby audience likes the status quo to return eventually. Reboot, rinse, repeat.

Amen.

There's some pretty old "franchises" in manga, but the thing is they are usually divided up into segments that are thematically similar, but not in the same continuity. Like whatever Gundam they do tomorrow doesn't require you to know or give a shit about 1979's Gundam. It also allows them to tailor some part of a franchise to a particular sub-demographic, or the changing sensibilities of readers/watchers.

Meanwhile, Spiderman is the same fucking Spiderman. Like, exactly the same. Same Peter Parker. It can never change. Ever.

To carry on a story that long in Japan is basically unheard of. I think their reluctance do what Marvel and D.C. do makes the barrier to entry less intimidating.

Also, yes. Do NOT get too attached to any character in manga in anime. Ever. The writers will straight up bust a cap in their ass if it helps advance the story. Or perhaps even if they think it's lulzy.

 

[Miniluv]

Amen.

There's some pretty old "franchises" in manga, but the thing is they are usually divided up into segments that are thematically similar, but not in the same continuity. Like whatever Gundam they do tomorrow doesn't require you to know or give a shit about 1979's Gundam. It also allows them to tailor some part of a franchise to a particular sub-demographic, or the changing sensibilities of readers/watchers.

Meanwhile, Spiderman is the same fucking Spiderman. Like, exactly the same. Same Peter Parker. It can never change. Ever.

To carry on a story that long in Japan is basically unheard of. I think their reluctance do what Marvel and D.C. do makes the barrier to entry less intimidating.

Also, yes. Do NOT get too attached to any character in manga in anime. Ever. The writers will straight up bust a cap in their ass if it helps advance the story. Or perhaps even if they think it's lulzy.

Even if you decided you wanted to know about the 1979 Gundam, it's readily available. You don't have go digging around a moldy dungeon to find an overpriced back issue because the publisher hasn't bothered to print the story you're looking for in a collected volume and put it out in bookstores.

Another thing that separates a lot (not all) manga from American comics is that they're usually done by the same creator/team for their entire run. You don't get a storyline completely derailed because editorial decided they wanted to go in a different direction in the middle of an arc. The idea of a series following the vision of the people that created it until it ends is very appealing and makes it a distinctive work of narrative art instead of a hot potato passed around to various freelance chucklefucks who may not give a single shit about it and have no investment in it beyond the pittance given to them by the megacorp that owns the IP.

The latter is how you end up with confusing bullshit continuity that's little more than a game of telephone that started before WWII.

 

[Mecha]

If you want to read three hundred superhero comics a month then you are sick and you need medical help.

Ellis has some interesting ideas here, but the bottom line is without the earlier "capeshit" there wouldn't be room for whatever Ellis wants to write. He's got a lot of anger directed at something thats a personal preference and not exactly a problem, without offering much a solution in that snippet.

I think most people want to read good comics of whatever variety. Looking at Manga it's not all super shit, Aside from the obvious My Hero Academia there's variety in a sense and just enough. Even with Steven Spielberg talking about Superhero movies going the way of the western, Marvel is still on track to dominate the box office, even if the reaction to the Eternals is mixed. People like SuperShit. There's nothing wrong with that. You're not an elite for hating on them.

I'd argue it's gone beyond just enjoying superpowers and bad guys, but the characters that embody that. Look at the fury at any casting announcement or speculation for Wolverine, and there will be pages of discussion, go back to Ben Affleck being announced for Batman, and you will see more than anything, a love for the established characters, and their lore. Not just a love for anyone who can fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes. Henry Cavil's casting remains in doubt and widely speculated on after the black Superman news or whatever is going on with that. It's important to get a character people have been reading since 1938 right. They still buy his comics after all.

Wanting to read 300 good comics even if they wear capes isn't something you need to seek help for. It's that kind of disillusionment that's lead to all the deconstruction we're seeing get popular now, The Boys, Invincible, and Jupiter Rising all successful TV series airing at the same time for example. Those are all pretty good entertainment in one way or the other, and kind of refreshing after a decade of good but unsurprising marvel movies. There's a place for deconstruction and thankfully its turned into a good product in its own right.

The Matrix is Superhero fiction. Even has the dreaded "chosen one" trope everyone should be tired of by now. The Matrix just did it with trench coats and sunglasses, with a little 1337 hacker speak thrown in. It's aged like milk in comparison to Superheroes.

If you don't like Superheroes thats fine, but its not a medical issue, or some kind of fiction faux pau to read or write them. Nor is it a medical emergency. I'd say that level of cynicism is much worse than "Superhero fatigue"

 

[Miniluv]

Ellis has some interesting ideas here, but the bottom line is without the earlier "capeshit" there wouldn't be room for whatever Ellis wants to write. He's got a lot of anger directed at something thats a personal preference and not exactly a problem, without offering much a solution in that snippet.

I think most people want to read good comics of whatever variety. Looking at Manga it's not all super shit, Aside from the obvious My Hero Academia there's variety in a sense and just enough. Even with Steven Spielberg talking about Superhero movies going the way of the western, Marvel is still on track to dominate the box office, even if the reaction to the Eternals is mixed. People like SuperShit. There's nothing wrong with that. You're not an elite for hating on them.

I'd argue it's gone beyond just enjoying superpowers and bad guys, but the characters that embody that. Look at the fury at any casting announcement or speculation for Wolverine, and there will be pages of discussion, go back to Ben Affleck being announced for Batman, and you will see more than anything, a love for the established characters, and their lore. Not just a love for anyone who can fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes. Henry Cavil's casting remains in doubt and widely speculated on after the black Superman news or whatever is going on with that. It's important to get a character people have been reading since 1938 right. They still buy his comics after all.

Wanting to read 300 good comics even if they wear capes isn't something you need to seek help for. It's that kind of disillusionment that's lead to all the deconstruction we're seeing get popular now, The Boys, Invincible, and Jupiter Rising all successful TV series airing at the same time for example. Those are all pretty good entertainment in one way or the other, and kind of refreshing after a decade of good but unsurprising marvel movies. There's a place for deconstruction and thankfully its turned into a good product in its own right.

The Matrix is Superhero fiction. Even has the dreaded "chosen one" trope everyone should be tired of by now. The Matrix just did it with trench coats and sunglasses, with a little 1337 hacker speak thrown in. It's aged like milk in comparison to Superheroes.

If you don't like Superheroes thats fine, but its not a medical issue, or some kind of fiction faux pau to read or write them. Nor is it a medical emergency. I'd say that level of cynicism is much worse than "Superhero fatigue"

I think Ellis was getting at the idea that one genre dominating the American comics industry and coupling that with the limited availability of the monthly floppy (the abandonment of newsstand distribution) and catering to one specific audience was not a good thing.

You have to remember Ellis wrote that piece 21 years ago. The superhero movie boom wasn't even a thing yet. At the time he wrote it, the first X-Men film was months away from premiering. Marvel wasn't involved with Disney in any way. The movies available to the audience were limited to the Christopher Reeve Superman series, the Burton/Schumacher Batman stuff, and the awful Spawn adaptation. Superheroes on film were slim pickings and were a mixed bag in terms of quality, if I'm being charitable.

As far as these days go, of course those stories appeal to people, they're classic morality tales and the hero's journey is a story that will never go away. It's the oldest story humans have, really. Warren Ellis was talking about the comics industry, not the idea that people wouldn't go see a superhero movie. His point was that concentrating your efforts into one genre for a limited audience with a limited distribution is a death sentence for creativity in the American comics industry, not Hollywood.

Yes, people still like superheroes but they don't go buy superhero comics at comics shops in the same numbers they buy tickets to movies. This does the American comics industry no favors. Avengers made a billion dollars at the box office but that didn't translate into billions in comics sales. It used to be that comics told stories that movies couldn't because there were certain things you just couldn't depict on screen due to the limits of technology. Those limits have been all but shattered in the last 20 years.

Superheroes are a viable genre for Hollywood, but not necessarily for the future of American comics. People want to read interesting stories done well across a wide variety of genres and American comics don't really offer a lot of that. This is why you have manga overtaking American comics in sales and American comics pros like Gerry Conway wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth about it.

Yes, the American industry was built on "capeshit" but the industry is dying and they need to adapt or be completely overtaken. They're well on their way.

 

[Captain Manning]

Guys, I got some bad news. @PocketJacks claims he just signed the petition to shut down Kiwi Farms. And it's all Jon Del Aroz's fault.

We're fucked. It was nice knowing you.

https://twitter.com/ComicsJacks/status/1399100201609138182?s=20

Archive: https://archive.md/1FjP4

EDIT: Fuck you @TheCosmicWarrior, you've doomed us all!!!

 

[jspit2.0]

I think Ellis was getting at the idea that one genre dominating the American comics industry and coupling that with the limited availability of the monthly floppy (the abandonment of newsstand distribution) and catering to one specific audience was not a good thing.

You have to remember, Ellis wrote that piece 21 years ago. The superhero movie boom wasn't even a thing yet. At the time he wrote it, the first X-Men film was months away from premiering. Marvel wasn't involved with Disney in any way. The movies available to the audience were limited to the Christopher Reeve Superman series, the Burton/Schumacher Batman stuff, and the awful Spawn adaptation. Superheroes on film were slim pickings and were a mixed bag in terms of quality, if I'm being charitable.

As far as these days go, of course those stories appeal to people, they're classic morality tales and the hero's journey is a story that will never go away. It's the oldest story humans have, really. Warren Ellis was talking about the comics industry, not the idea that people wouldn't go see a superhero movie. His point was that concentrating your efforts into one genre for a limited audience with a limited distribution is a death sentence for creativity in the American comics industry, not Hollywood.

Yes, people still like superheroes but they don't go buy superhero comics at comics shops in the same numbers they buy tickets to movies. This does the American comics industry no favors. Avengers made a billion dollars at the box office but that didn't translate into billions in comics sales. It used to be that comics told stories that movies couldn't because there were certain things you just couldn't depict on screen due to the limits of technology. Those limits have been all but shattered in the last 20 years.

Superheroes are a viable genre for Hollywood, but not necessarily for the future of American comics. People want to read interesting stories done well across a wide variety of genres and American comics don't really offer a lot of that. This is why you have manga overtaking American comics in sales and American comics pros like Gerry Conway wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth about it.

Yes, the American industry was built on "capeshit" but it the industry is dying and they need to adapt or be completely overtaken. They're well on their way.

I've read the Ellis piece. It was shit than and its shit now.

I've had this argument. I've had it and I feel like people, who don't read American comics, will continue making it until those of us that do and did just let them repeat the lie over and over.

"Capeshit" isn't shit at all. The American comic book industry dates far before superheroes to noir and jungle comics. How many of you have even read comics or been in a shop in the last fifty years?

If you had you'd know three things. First, there has always been hundreds of alternative titles. Archie, Sandman, Preacher, Jonah Hex. Fuck, Antarctic, Aspen, Crusade, and Crossgen were all built on anything but superheroes. They all sold extremely poor. Second, that's because 'Capeshit' is what actual customers want from American comics. Batman, Spider-Man, Superman. Fans like this so called shit, which as a whole wasn't uniformly shit until about a decade ago, when they started to look less like superheroes and more like 'Vertigo Shit'. Third, Japanese comics aren't any fuckin' different. As someone who has actually read both I know for a fact that something trash Naruto Shippuden will crush everyone and a hidden gem will piddle along in its shadow.

 

[TheCosmicWarrior]

Guys, I got some bad news. @PocketJacks claims he just signed the petition to shut down Kiwi Farms. And it's all Jon Del Aroz's fault.

We're fucked. It was nice knowing you.

View attachment 2216691

https://twitter.com/ComicsJacks/status/1399100201609138182?s=20

Archive: https://archive.md/1FjP4

EDIT: Fuck you @TheCosmicWarrior, you've doomed us all!!!

Surprised he hasn't sent all of us frivolous lawsuits yet.

 

[Captain Manning]

Japanese comics aren't any fuckin' different. As someone who has actually read both I know for a fact that something trash Naruto Shippuden will crush everyone and a hidden gem will piddle along in its shadow.

I think the point here is that publishers like Shueisha, Kodansha, and Shogakukan cast their net pretty wide, and you get a lot of different genres that get pretty good exposure. Manga is a medium, and not a genre. It's not all giant robots. Not all slice of life. Not all magical girls. Not all cooking. Not all sports. Et cetera.

Their publishing analogs in America (Marvel, D.C., Dark Horse, Image, et al.) are inundated with capeshit, to the point where is really drowns out anything else.

I am aware there is some non-capeshit stuff, but you really got to dig more for it, and I think most of it is from much smaller publishers.

This is not a weeaboo thing. It's just a sad fact. I dunno why, either.

 

[Miniluv]

I've read the Ellis piece. It was shit than and its shit now.

I've had this argument. I've had it and I feel like people, who don't read American comics, will continue making it until those of us that do and did just let them repeat the lie over and over.

"Capeshit" isn't shit at all. The American comic book industry dates far before superheroes to noir and jungle comics. How many of you have even read comics or been in a shop in the last fifty years?

If you had you'd know three things. First, there has always been hundreds of alternative titles. Archie, Sandman, Preacher, Jonah Hex. Fuck, Antarctic, Aspen, Crusade, and Crossgen were all built on anything but superheroes. They all sold extremely poor. Second, that's because 'Capeshit' is what actual customers want from American comics. Batman, Spider-Man, Superman. Fans like this so called shit, which as a whole wasn't uniformly shit until about a decade ago, when they started to look less like superheroes and more like 'Vertigo Shit'. Third, Japanese comics aren't any fuckin' different. As someone who has actually read both I know for a fact that something trash Naruto Shippuden will crush everyone and a hidden gem will piddle along in its shadow.

Nobody is saying all superhero comics are shit. As Ellis said in the piece, there's room for good work in any genre.

But the bottom line here is that manga sales are overtaking American comics sales and comics shops are closing all over the country. Hardcore fans may like superhero comics but that audience is growing older and shrinking and nobody is replacing them. I go to a shop about twice a month and I rarely see kids inside. I see plenty of middle aged dudes buying up multiple copies for speculation purposes (it got so bad the shop had to institute a one copy per customer policy). You know what my local shop does not sell? MANGA. The shelves are full and the floor is empty. And this is a store that's been around for 40 years.

When I go to Barnes & Noble, it's a different story, one much like the story in Shane Davis' video. Plenty of traffic in the manga section and crickets in the mainstream graphic novel area. Kids don't want a $5 floppy copy of one the multitude of Batman series or the dozen Avengers tie-ins. Kids do want One Piece and DragonBall. The basement bunch might buy superhero books regularly but they don't exist in numbers that will keep the industry alive in 10 years. If kids ain't reading the comics, they're done. Maybe not now, but eventually.

It's really easy to point out the top of the superhero heap like Batman and Spider-Man and go "See? Batman/Spider-Man sells". Of course Batman sells. It also sells primarily because DC publishes five Batman series since it's easier to sell five Batman books to one person than it is to sell one Batman book to five people. The bulk of what's on the mainstream shelf is dreck. But the dreck sells to the same people that will never stop buying them no matter how stupid they get the same way idiots like TFM mindlessly consoom the same bullshit they constantly complain about.