Take This Con And Shove It

Let's say a major comics company puts out a giant crossover mini-series. Let's also say that, at the conclusion of the series, some people who read it complain about its awful badness. I can guarantee you that someone else will come over all snobby and say that the people who bought the thing have no right to complain. The idea here seems to be that people stupid enough to buy any mass-market product deserve what happens to them, or something.

Having given this a great deal of thought, I can say that this snobby attitude, which is by no means unique to the specific fandom of comic books, is exactly backwards. Fans love to cop an attitude of smug superiority to other fans- comics readers crap on people who read "lowest common denominator" superhero books, people who listen to "indie" music like to sneer at people who listen to "mass-market tripe", and so on. And this attitude of superiority makes a lot of people forget something very important about how serials work.

If the first two chapters of something makes me think that a work is headed in a particular direction, and then the whole thing turns to crap, I have every right to complain, because I am not getting what I was led to expect. Ordering a steak dinner and getting something a little undercooked and rubbery is one thing. Ordering a steak dinner and being served a literal slice of truck tire inner tube is another. In the latter case, a fraud has been perpetrated upon me.

And I have every right to complain about being defrauded, no matter what the reflexively smug may say about it.