START: NYMPHOS, TRAITORS
BY MATT FRACTION

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A friend of mine, who shall at his own request remain nameless, bought some sort of Star Trek: The Next Generation comic this last week. He is, by all accounts and examples, a rational, reasonable, well-read man of usually high standards and good taste. He derides crap comics, is embarrassed oftentimes at some of the more shameful moments of his collection and the high volume of crap superheroics therein, and for all intents and purposes Should Know Better.

I say this, because he freely admits this. He told me of his purchase like it was a terrible secret and burden on his soul. Apparently, the book involves Picard fighting Space Ninjas.

Of course, I asked him why. Why he bought it, I mean; not why was Picard fighting Space Ninjas. I would assume the Space Ninjas were up to some sort of no-good, thus requiring the services of Picard and co. to make right. Anyway.

Brian Hitch, as it turns out, drew the first handful of pages before the art chores fell to, as my friend put it, the "Wildstorm Irregulars". Hitch, my friend concedes, was the bait and acquitted himself admirably on those few pages he drew. Certainly, though, even the most cursory of inspections would reveal that Hitch didn't draw the whole thing. One could also assume that the Space Ninjas would also make their presence felt by a simple flip-through. And yet, my dear friend who-say it with me-Should Know Better bought this insipid tripe, took it home, read it, and now confesses to it. The only good to come of this incident, aside from the embarrassed chuckles is the fact that he now parenthetically adds "But I'm the guy that bought the Star Trek comic that Picard fights Space Ninjas in" to any sort of statement of opinion he makes.

Speaking of Star Trek, did you know that the definition of Nymphomania is the joyless compulsion to have sex in women; in men, the phenomenon is called satyriasis? It is. I don't have a dictionary to refer to currently; that's a paraphrase from The Big Lebowski.

'Joyless' and 'Compulsion' are the two words to keep in your cache for the time being.

Reactions to the recent events at Marvel, especially in the X office, have surprised me. Not because Harris and Claremont got fired, or demoted, or transferred or whatever the shit happened to them. I mean, who didn't see this coming like a fucking parade float down main street? These men bungled the tie-in with one of the biggest movies of a summer desperate for hits. How is it possible to fail at piggybacking the success of a two hundred million-dollar box-office blockbuster? Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, yo.

Ah, but that's all water under the bridge now.

What really freaked my shit out was that this changing of the X-Guard has brought out opinions from lots of people whom, prior, I never ever would have assumed read the X books. Many of these people I respect to a certain degree, several I like. And yet, they all have come forward with the same confession, that Yes, this is a Good Things, because the X books are Crap Lately and have been Crap for a Very Long Time.

At first-and I'm not kidding here, I'm really not-my reaction was "Well, how would you know?!?". And then of course, I realized these people were, well, sort of traitors.

I'm being polite. They were traitors.

Not traitors to me or to any sense of anti-superhero snobbery, or anything so lofty or pretentious-- All this talk of cleansing and making a better industry, a better kind of comics meant nothing. They were traitors. If you tell people that you're a vegetarian, but you eat fish or chicken you are not a fucking vegetarian. You're a traitor to this code of conduct you allege to adhere to.

These people committed, month in and month out the joyless compulsion of buying and reading the X books (or whatever-the actual title doesn't matter). Buying and supporting guilty pleasure books is one thing-hell, not just books, any form of media (you are reading the words of a man who owns True Grit on DVD, because goddamn if I don't need digital technology to catch all of Kim Darby's pithy fucking nuances). This is, again, about Joyless Compulsions.

I wanted to bang my head against a wall.

The last Joyless Compulsions of mine were Starman-- I bought that book for a solid year without reading it once-and Eightball, during the interminable 'Ghost World' period. I looked at what I was buying. I wasn't digging it. I stopped buying them. Whereas Eightball was purely a matter of taste, Starman got the axe because of a noticed, continual decline in quality and, as a result, my enjoyment.

And I'm not talking about some fascist one-strike-you're-out sort of deal or anything like that. I'm talking about sustaining an inferior, poorly -made product indefinitely for no good reason. Reading a book for six months, two years, forever, because of history. Because of nostalgia. Because of habit.

Okay. Basic supply-and-demand economics here. A publisher manufactures a product that you, the buyer, have preordered, have reserved, or purchase regularly from a retailer. Said retailer looks at the amount of said product they ordered that month and what they have left at the end; they then order new product accordingly. There is a demand, a pattern of behavior, a code of conduct adhered to which is met according to the data best provided by dollar bills.

See, the publisher has one primary concern: to produce a viable, sellable, popular product to retailers. Everything else is secondary. If DC had guaranteed, clinical, undeniable, scientific proof that if they made Superman a child molester, and millions of people would plunk down two bucks a month to read of high adventures for truth, justice, and twiddling, then DC would do it. DC-hell, all publishers with a few notable, remarkable exceptions-- follow orders from retailers. And retailers hedge their bets according to your behavior. Which is tainted all too often with joyless compulsion.

And the continual joyless compulsion we, as an audience, are compliant to results in sub-par, un-literate tripe, volumes of turd tomes wasting away in useless plastic and cardboard monuments. The retailer-as-businessperson doesn't care that you don't like a book you pay him or her for. They care about the money. Which flows upstream to the publisher. Who keeps on keepin' on, because you never told them not to, because piss and moan as you will about the quality, YOU ARE STILL PAYING FOR THE PRODUCT.

You do it to yourself.

I don't know what else to say without belaboring the point. Things will not get better at the publisher level, or the retail level, until you you YOU stop buying bad comics.

Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics. Stop buying bad comics.