Superhero Fans: Chapter 22, Verse 1

(Warning: This one is going to be hard to stomach, but it just didn't work when I tried to minimize the egotism. Just be glad I didn't title it as an excerpt from the Book of Ragnell.)

And in the days following the return of Hal Jordan, there lived a reclusive creature of the nightshift who read the Rebirth miniseries and took great joy in the tale. It awakened a joy of comic books as had not been seen in two years for this creature, and she thought excessively about superheroes to the despair of her coworkers. As an outlet for this enthusiasm, she started a blog. She started a blog of humor and joy. She was measured and polite when she complained and she apologized when she had to let off steam to assure everyone it was nothing personal because she foolishly worried that expressions of anger would alienate her few readers.

Until there came a day of unusually strong irritation, when she cut loose and wrote a long venomous rant directed at a single writer.

And lo, her traffic rose and her comments multiplied and she met bloggers of a like-mind.

But still she worried that expressions of anger would alienate her old readers.

She attributed the success to a long-winded analysis on the subject of gender and Seven Soldiers, and worried that expressions of rage would alienate her new readers. So she went back to holding her tongue until there was another point that she could hold it no more and she let loose in a fury of comedic rage directed at the trigger for this outrage which was a person who was certainly not responsible for all of the bottled up energy and emotional that she was expressing, but by heaven he had caused some of it.

And lo, her traffic rose and her comments multiplied and she met individuals of a like-mind.

And now she worried that no expressions of anger would alienate her new readers.

When her rage had cooled, she experimented with writing another essay to achieve the same effects but discovered she was unable to finish. Other bloggers ranted and raged about various problems and she linked them, and she analyzed art and she wrote what she could but life wormed into the way of her writing. She soon found that even when confronted with an image of unimaginable horror on the cover of her favorite series she was unable to raise the necessary passion for a proper rant. She didn't have the energy, she didn't have the humor.

Her blogging faded, and her comments were few, and her traffic sank into the depths of obscurity. But she had friends of like-mind and her writing and her comic books.

Time passed, and many rose in outrage at the image of Mary Jane Watson doing laundry; and they were condemned for it; and the creature soon discovered that when enraged her more than anything right now was the fans and she blogged rants and rages and battle-cries against them.

And lo, her traffic rose and her comments multiplied and she met individuals of a like-mind.

In time a beautiful storyline began in Green Lantern, one which brought incredible joy to the creature's icy heart. She blogged her pure joy with the storyline, and then read the regular fanblogs. And many of the fanblogs were equally pleased, but when she returned to her own blog she saw that some of her commenters were displeased and making arguments that made little sense. And then she traveled to the message boards and found many pleased fans and displeased fans, and in the fanblogs the displeased began to surface as well. And some of the displeasure was subjective, and much of it was arguable, but some of it was truly out of left field and based on events in different series written by different writers. It angered her, because it was one thing to have event fatigue and another to dislike the writer or artist but the constant prophesying of the end of her favorite character really served to sour her otherwise lovely mood.

She worried about blogging this, because some of the people she was ranting against were certainly her regular readers and commenters, and she had long ago learned not to pull punches when expressing her rage but she blogged it anyway. She blogged her anger at fandom, and she held nothing back and she fully expected her readers to abandon her. For it is better to spew poisonous anger on one's own blog than to invade the comments of others and pester them like a little troll, the scripture says, and despite what dumbass commenters would have you believe there is no prohibition against ranting in the Law.

And lo, her traffic rose and her comments multiplied and she met individuals of a like-mind.

And such was the story of the reclusive Green Lantern fan in the days following the Infinite Crisis.