Circles of Tribalism, Part 2

This then points to the structure—or lack thereof—within the broad definition of comic book fandom. Batman might sell a copy of each issue to 100,000 fans every month, but those 100,000 people break up into much smaller groups to enjoy and discuss the issue with one another. There might be a group of a dozen that meet up at the local library once or twice a month. There might be 100 or so over at one message board, and another 100 at another board. DC Comics has their own official message board set up for Batman discussions, which attract another crowd of fans. Others are likely using social media sites to conduct their discussions. Still others might limit themselves to private emails. The point is, of course, that there is not merely a single outlet for fans to get together and share their appreciation of Batman. Individuals will seek out other like-minded fans and congregate when and where they can find one another.

Comiket was founded as an alternative meeting for people that broke from the manga taikai. They wanted to have the freedom of expression, to be able to parody, criticize and rewrite established works.
—Ichikawa Koichi, The Otaku Encyclopedia

Each of these smallish groups acts more or less independently, as outlined in the previous chapter. Each has their own social rules and mores they follow, and each group’s overall character is slightly different. However, many of the ideas are the same or similar since, after all, they are all united by the same appreciation of the same character(s). Will Brooker, in Batman Unmasked, drove home the point that, regardless of the specific interpretation of the character, there remains some unifying traits common among every iteration and every reading of the character. Whether any individual reader responds more strongly to the detective aspect or the martial arts expert angle or latent homosexual readings or simply the diverse cast of supporting characters, the unifying traits are the larger portion of what’s being responded to, which then provides a commonality among all Batman fans, regardless of why they first enjoyed it.

As in ‘The Batman Nobody Knows’, each participant argues for his or her own interpretation over the others, regardless of its improbability—Julie Madison’s hero would be eighty years old, after all—and when Batman, shadowy and noble, appears to free them, each reads from him only what suits them: the beauty of a former sweetheart, a ‘faar out’ old amigo or a dude in ‘wicked armor’. It is a sweet, generous story and, I think, in some ways symptomatic of DC’s current willingness to allow a little play with the rules of the Dark Knight.
—Will Brooker, Batman Unmasked

Each of the several hundred informal Batman fan groups in existence are acting independently; however, it’s almost certain that some fans travel in multiple groups, thus allowing cross-communication among them. Similarly, some Batman fans likely also travel in other non-Batman fan groups, such as those who enjoy Action Comics or Uncanny X-Men, which each have any number of smallish, independent groupings. Which, in turn, each have some overlap with other groups. The number and variety of overlapping fan groups would be so complex as to be virtually impossible portray in a Venn diagram, especially when you start including fans of particular artists and writers, companies like Active Synapse and G.T. Labs, and visual styles like ligne claire and sprite comics. It is then the culmination of all of these groups that would be the body of comic fandom, each one acting independently from the others but all sharing similar values and characteristics based on a common medium.

As noted at the end of the last chapter, however, it still seems almost self-evident that there ought to be a fair amount of difference between fans of Batman and fans of Asterix. Indeed, not all of these circles of fans necessarily overlap directly. Those with the fewest commonalities, not surprisingly, bear the least relation to one another, creating a distinct ingroup/outgroup scenario even within the overall ingroup of comic fans. One group of people might be fans of the medium of sequential art, while another might be fans of superheroes who happen to be frequently sold to them in comic form, as I suggested earlier.

This is where the conflicts stem from. While different tribes of comic fans are using the same terminology—scripting, line weights, page layouts, etc.—they’re speaking different languages. One group is applying those terms to and discussing them in relation to a medium, while another is applying the terms and discussing them in relation to a genre. So when one side claims Maus as a great example of comics, the other is left confused because they’re applying genre criteria to a work outside that genre. Conversely, a group lauding the workmanship in Green Lantern confuses the other side because they’re applying the full range of considerations for the medium against a specific genre piece. They are using the same words but speaking different languages, leading to an ingroup/outgroup dynamic.

Johanna Draper Carlson relayed to me an example of this type of ingroup/outgroup conflict within a small segment of comic fans. When she worked for DC Comics, part of her job was to moderate the company’s online message boards. At the time, the character Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) had gone insane, became a villain and was replaced by Kyle Rayner. Although Draper Carlson enjoyed this new character, she was in a distinct minority on that message board community and was on the receiving end of some particularly insulting remarks. Against claims that she was simply unfamiliar with Hal Jordan, she read through his appearances from previous decades. When she responded that her opinion was unmoved, she received even more insulting comments, even going so far as to claim that she must be sleeping with the book’s editor.

Draper Carlson suspected (probably rightly so) that jealousy had some influence here. After all, she had free access to a great deal of material the others did not. But part of the conflict came from the parties essentially discussing two different things: Draper Carlson was looking at the character from the standpoint of a new character with interesting story possibilities, whereas those insulting her were focused on how this new character would, to them, never be as good as the previous one. When those message board posters could not understand what Draper Carlson was saying (as they were trying to run her comments through a mental “But he’s not Hal Jordan” filter) she became an outgroup member in their eyes, and they began attacking her on anything else that was fundamentally different, including her gender.

That disconnect is especially note-worthy here because it highlights how diverse fans can be, even within a relatively small segement of the overall body of comic fandom. Even though everyone was discussing Green Lantern, the modes of discussion were radically different in their approach.

One of the keys, then, to avoiding such conflicts is to understand the approach others with whom you are speaking are taking. It is indeed possible to discuss the very same comic using any number of methods and to be able to float bewteen different camps, one needs to adopt slightly different perspectives on the same topic.

When I began to associate with a number of different comic related groups, there were five or six guys I chatted with every week at my local comic shop. There were a group of ten or twelve of us who hung out on one Fantastic Four centered message board. There was a group of 15 or 20 who hung out at another board that was also FF-specific, but part of a larger set of boards that included sections for about 30 of the most popular characters. Some of my comics research led me to the Marvel Chronology Project, where fans used storytelling elements from within the comics to try to establish a timeline for the entire fictional history of the Marvel universe. Plus, running my own website put me in contact with a host of other fans, several of which became contributors to the site itself. There was certainly some crossover among those groups—Carolyn was a regular contributor to both of the message boards, Jeph came from the board I moderated and provided contributions to the Chronology Project, Gregg contributed heavily to my site and popped over to the message boards, I was obviously a regular of all of them—but each group was a small community that had its own tenor. The group of message board moderators was decidedly more formalized and structured than the people I would run into in the comic shop. The Chronology Project discussions tended to run on longer and into much more detail than what I’d find on message boards.

All of these groups were discussing comics—frequently, the exact same ones—but the specifics of the dialogue were noticeably different. The message boards tended to look at issues more emotionally (“I really liked where...”), my site tried to stay more factual and apply objective standards to stories (“The framing structure glossed over key story beats...”), the Marvel Chronology Project focused almost exclusively on temporal placements (“The flashback scene must have happened after the previous issue because...”), and local shop discussions had a business-centric flavor (“Marvel is going to increase sales dramatically by...”). All of these disparate tribes contributed to the larger group of Fantastic Four fans, which also helped contribute to the larger group of Marvel fans, but that’s still only a small sampling of all comic book fans. You can begin to see the interlocking circles as you look at each of the properties that each publisher works with.

Also during this period, I began reading other types of comics with interest. Some were merely based on larger genre considerations, while others were to see variations and/or innovations in the actual storytelling form of comics. Regardless of the reasons, though, I was reading and enjoying books that were generally not being even noticed, much less read, by most of the people I was interacting with. If I wanted to have any sort of interactions connected to these other books, I needed to join other circles of comic book fans. I initiated a column for a magazine focused on a single creator, Jack Kirby; I signed up for an academic comic listserv (a discussion group using an automated email system); I began talking with comic creators at conventions who expressly did not work in the superhero genre; I started blogging and interacting with other comic bloggers whose interests were also not exclusive to superheroes.

I, and people like myself, provided something of a bridge between fans of superhero comics and fans of other types of comics. While there often is a marked difference between a typical Batman fan and a typical Naruto fan, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive and both contribute to the overall body of comic fandom. Each defines him- or herself as a comic book fan and are both correct in doing so. They have characteristics that they identify in themselves which match what they believe are prototypical for a comic book fan, and it’s that self-categorization that I’ll address next.

Circles of Tribalism, Part 1

It is effectively impossible to count the number of comic book fans there are. In the first place, people go in and out of fandom all the time. The term “gafia” gained some popularity in science fiction fandom as an acronym for “getting away from it all” to shorthand that notion. (Curiously, the phrase originally was used in reference to joining fandom and getting away from the mundanity of the real world, but eventually reversed itself and came to mean leaving the internal politics and strife within fandom.)

Another point to consider is that, even if one person is a fan of Wolverine, that doesn’t preclude them from being a fan of Teen Titans also. I suspect, in fact, that anyone who considers themselves a fan of comic books isn’t exclusive to one character or title. And since there’s no single, unifying body that covers all of fandom, a head count by way of comic book sales would necessarily include at least some redundancy.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume the estimates of Diamond Comic Distributors’ sales numbers are equal to the number of fans of each character. If that were the case, Justice League of America would have had 131,420 fans in August 2007. The New Avengers, under the same assumptions, would have 117,906 fans. But even assuming those numbers are gospel, we have no way of knowing how many of those New Avengers fans also bought the JLA book. We can safely assume that at least 12,000 people who bought JLA didn’t buy New Avengers but that’s about it.

Of course, using those sales estimates is rife with problems. First and foremost, they’re estimates based on Diamond’s closely-guarded actual numbers. Secondly, it only addresses the direct market of comic books, and not all of it, at that! While Marvel and DC have exclusive distribution agreements with Diamond, the same is not true of all publishers. Any comic shop can order books from a number of other sources, including directly from publishers in many instances. Furthermore, that’s just a portion of North America, and doesn’t even begin to include other continents.

As noted earlier in the chapter on defining fandom, the multiple directory attempts over the years offer paltry numbers compared to even basic comic circulation figures. If books like JLA and New Avengers garner over 100,000 sales apiece, then even the combined total of the most recent The Fandom Directory and the WSA membership list (arguably, the best broad-based sets of this type of data that has so far been compiled) wouldn’t account for more than 20% of that.

You can look to the 125,000 attendance number at recent years’ Comic-Con International as a guide, since convention organizers have worked hard to filter out dual countings. But, of course, CCI and events like it don’t draw in comic book fans exclusively. How many folks are there for Twilight or Star Wars and other licensed properties? Not to mention the certainly significant number of fans who simply can’t even attend. And here again, we’re looking almost exclusively at one country. Comics are popular enough to have conventions all over the globe from Barcelona to Tokyo.

Using any numbers along those lines, however inaccurate they may be, does not address a very significant aspect of comic fandom: namely, there’s no way any individual could possibly be connected with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of other people within the same group. A single, 15-minute conversation with 125,000 people would take over three-and-a-half years, assuming you spent absolutely no time sleeping or eating. It should be obvious, then, that most comic book fans do not actually interact with the vast majority of comic fandom. Indeed, the number of regular interactions fans maintain is considerably smaller: around 150.

In a 1992 paper, Robin Dunbar put forth the idea that the number of regular, social interactions an average human can maintain is 147.8, a number he arrived at by comparing the size of primates’ neocortices against the size of their overall group. Dunbar choose the neocortex as a determining factor since that is the portion of the brain involved with the higher functions such as spatial reasoning, conscious thought and language. That correlation led to an equation that would predict the size of other primate groups, based on the size of their neocortex. Plugging in the size of a human neocortex, Dunbar arrived at the 147.8 number, which is frequently rounded up to 150. Although such casual rounding is generally frowned upon in scientific circles, Dunbar himself cited his results with 95% confidence margin. In statistical circles, this means that group results in general would tend to center around 147.8, but any individual result could swing as much as 50 points in either direction.

Dunbar went on to provide any number of examples to reinforce that group sizes tend to max out around 150. In particular, he noted that most organized armies throughout history have a basic unit of 150, and postulated that they have all arrived at the same conclusion through trial and error. Although more anecdotal in nature, Andreas Kluth reported in The Economist in 2009 that Facebook reported the average number of friends each user maintains is 120, further reinforcing Dunbar’s hypothesis in 21st century social media. The theory is new enough that it still warrants continued scrutiny, but evidence so far suggests that it is at least pointed in the right direction.

A skeptic might well ask about larger communities. Clearly, much of our civilization is based around groups larger than 150; Marvel Entertainment currently has about double that on staff, not mentioning the number of freelancers that work with them on a regular basis. This seemingly arbitrary 150 limit, though, applies to groups without a formal organization structure. By providing layers of organization, with clearly defined hierarchies and channels of communication, a group can grow much larger than 150 people. Back in the 1960s, for example, Marvel was a small company with only a handful of full-time employees and a dozen or two freelancers working with them. Their organizational structure was famously and notoriously loose with Stan Lee acting as head writer and editor-in-chief, handing out drawing and inking assignments almost haphazardly. The fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants style Lee embodied only could work because the company was so small. By the 1970s, Marvel (including the freelancers) had grown large enough that rules and regulations needed to be established so the company could continue functioning. This transition from an informal to a formal structure was, not surprisingly, characterized with corporate growing pains, including a fairly rapid succession of editors-in-chief. Ultimately the company was organized and structured around groups of books (all of the X-Men titles, for example) so that each group within Marvel contained fewer than 150 members.

The theory behind Dunbar’s number is that human brains only have the capacity to maintain only a certain number of social contacts on an ongoing basis, which is why Dunbar used neocortex size in his original study. Beyond that 150 person limit and we are unable to keep up with all of the individuals of the group in any sort of meaningful way. To have human societies that grow beyond a simple tribe, therefore, some organizational structure needs to be imposed. This provides a conduit of communication that can go beyond 150 individuals effectively, as each individual maintains 150 contacts, but not necessarily overlapping with everyone else’s 150 contacts. The structure of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter highlights this point; anyone using those sites will likely see some friends’ names appearing as others’ contacts, but it’s unlikely that any two individuals have the exact same lists of friends. Each individual has their own circle of friends, which may or may not overlap to some degree with someone else’s.

Us vs. Them, Part 2

It has been something of a running joke within comic book fandom that Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons is the perfectly prototypical comic fan. He’s single, overweight, condescending, emotionally arrested, obsessive, sarcastic and socially inept. His self-image has little connection with reality, due in large part to spending as much time as he does reading works of fiction, and he has no real influence or authority outside of his comic shop. He is, of course, a pastiche meant to poke fun of the worst aspects comic book fans. Given that people join groups, in part, to help their self-esteem (more on this later) it is absurd to hold up such a collection of negative traits as a prototype.

A comic book fan prototype, by contrast, has all of the characteristics of a comic book fan that are considered valuable or useful within fandom. For example, one characteristic might be the ability to identify an artist by the nuances of his or her linework—a trait that would be useful when looking at older comics that did not carry artistic credits. Another characteristic might be an excellent memory, which one could use to make connections between contemporary stories and older ones. It would virtually impossible to provide a complete list of every trait that could be assigned to a prototypical comic book fan, if for no other reason than such a list is mutable. These valued characteristics can change over time as they adapt to their surroundings and changes in the comic landscape. The specifics of what a prototypical comic fan looks like in the 21st century is different than what he or she might have looked like in 1970 in part because there were no such things as webcomics in 1970. Comic book fandom is organic and will continue to change as its membership changes.

Likewise, the traits and characteristics of outgroups change with time as well, and new outgroups are constantly being formed. There was no such thing as a “Star Wars fan” prior to 1977 and no such thing as a “Twilight fan” prior to 2005; those stories had yet to be produced. Since both comic fandom and all of its outgroups are constantly changing, therefore, the interactions between and among such groups is dynamic as well. What it means to be a comic fan now is different from what it meant to be a comic fan ten years ago. The landscape has changed, both within comic fandom itself, as well as among all the outgroups.

As new members are indoctrinated into fandom, they observe the actions and behaviors of existing fans. While each fan is an individual and has their own attitudes and mannerisms, commonalities can be seen by the new member across many of the existing fans. If a significant proportion of fans, for example, repeatedly cite a particular creator as talented, either directly by name or indirectly by his or her works, the new member is likely to adopt a similar stance. At least until they have a chance to analyze that creator’s work more critically themselves. Everything could be under consideration: from “is it acceptable to consider a creator’s political views when reviewing her or his work” to “is it okay to call a creator by his or her first name?”

During this learning process, the new fan will also observe how fans act and react to other fans. They will learn who others consider the Big Name Fans (BNFs): that is, who is most respected and who has the most authority within the group. Interestingly, these BNFs are often those individuals who are themselves most closely aligned with the group’s prototype. Because these individuals have a larger than average number of those most highly valued traits among the group, they are generally afforded the most respect within it. It should be noted that the BNFs demonstrate those traits through active participation (a topic to which I devote a later chapter) and accruing cultural capital (another chapter-worthy topic) accordingly.

Online user studies suggest the extent to which people watch and learn the norms of a group. Jakob Nielsen noted that, “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.” This points to the notion that a vast majority of people (99%) are spending most of their time with the group simply observing how the most active 1% behaves. Some of those lurking users are almost certainly either looking for a specific piece of information, or seeing if the group is one worth joining—neither are likely to consider themselves members of the group and, in that respect, don’t really factor into our notion of comic fandom. But the overwhelmingly lopsidedness of the equation, even accounting for those non-members, shows just how significant the impact of those prototypical members can be, and how much they can contribute to the overall group dynamic.

In many ways, I consider my induction into comic fandom proper well-timed because it didn’t occur until I was well into my twenties, allowing me to more consciously observe the process at work. I’ll share my own experiences here to highlight what I’ve been discussing.

Although I’ve been reading comics as long as I can remember, it wasn’t until my eleventh birthday that I became really enthusiastic about them. Among other things, I received a copy Fantastic Four #254 and it was so mind-boggling powerful to my pre-pubescent brain that I was hooked almost instantly. I started actively scouting down back issues; I got a subscription through the publisher, Marvel, to make sure I didn’t miss new issues; the very first check I wrote soon afterwards was to Mile High Comics for $15.00 worth of back issues. In my own mind, I was most definitely a fan.

Except no one knew it. I couldn’t drive myself, so my trips to comic shops were sporadic at best. I knew only a couple people who read comics at all in school, and they weren’t really fans so much as casual readers. My questions sent in to other fans (whose addresses were printed in comics’ letters pages) went unanswered. I couldn’t afford to keep up with fanzines as well as the comics themselves, closing that avenue of discussion for me. So even though I considered myself a fan, I was not a part of the larger body of comic book fandom.

Once I began really interacting with other comics folks through some of the early Internet chat rooms and message boards on America Online, I learned, by trial and error, how not to jump into a chat room with a comic creator and start blasting them with questions. I learned how and when a back-and-forth message board discussion that’s veered wildly off the original topic needs to be taken to another forum. I learned how fans shared knowledge and trivia about the stories they’d read. Sometimes I’d jump in with my own thoughts and comments, but only after I had spent some time watching and reading others’ messages. I didn’t make an attempt to play the game until I had learned the rules. It was by holding back and paying attention to what was going on that I learned how best to interact with this community. And, while I moved from AOL to Internet message boards, most of the same characteristics remained in place, regardless of who was running that particular board. Furthermore, those characteristics remained in place as I began frequenting comic book shops regularly enough to be recognized on sight. I had internalized the notion of what it meant to be a comic book fan and found that it carried me in good stead if I were online or in person, talking with old friends or complete strangers. As long as we were all comic book fans, we could all rely on fandom’s unspoken rules of engagement and get along just fine.

There’s a curious contemporary anecdote to highlight how the salience of an outgroup’s characteristics can change what some of those rules of engagement might be. Science fiction fans began holding conventions long in advance of their comic counterparts. Indeed, comic conventions sprang fairly directly out of science fiction ones, a fact which is owed to a fair amount of overlap between the two groups. While not exactly the same, their similarities allow for a bridge from the comic ingroup to the science fiction outgroup. Thus, many conventions over the years have featured both science fiction and comic book components, and there were relatively few complaints from comicdom. But when Comic-Con International began hosting movie-based events, comic fans became upset. And when Twilight fans came to CCI because of events catered almost exclusively for them, comic fans became outraged.

Well, last year Twilight caused an absolute Beatles-mania sh*t show with tween girls and their Twi-hard moms camped outside the convention center’s Hall H for hours upon hours in order to get one of the 6000-or-so seats inside.
—Erik Davis, Cinematical

Anyone who attended last year’s Comic-Con can attest to how much of a cluster-fuck was caused by Twilight’s presentation in Hall H. Hundreds of tweens and Twilight Moms/Dads camped overnight to be the first ones into Hall H. By the time the ‘normal people’ began to line up hours before doors were set to open, thousands of Twilighters were already in line.
—Peter Sciretta, /Film

This type of reaction was fairly common and much more visceral than typical complaints about programming issues at a major convention.

Many attributed the reaction to the predominantly female audience that Twilight brings, compared with the predominantly male audience most American comic books bring. However, that’s only partially accurate. It would be more appropriate to note that the group of fans who appreciate Twilight differ substantially from fans who appreciate the mainstream comic books or science fiction typically found at American comic conventions with regard to what they consider important characteristics of their respective fandoms. One example might be that Twilight fans are more accepting of open displays of emotion, as opposed to comic fandom’s comparatively more reserved nature. The differences between the two fan bases are significant and note-worthy enough for comic fans to consider “Twilghters” a decided outgroup, despite both groups being fairly similar conceptually. Both groups, after all, enjoy commercialized escapist fantasies that explore human dynamics through supernatural beings.

Perhaps more interesting to note, however, is that the Twilight fans, while always an outgroup to comic fandom, were essentially insignificant initially. There was knowledge they existed and, even if comic fans didn’t “get” Twilight, they generally accepted those who did. As far as comic fans were concerned, there was no perceptible overlap in any salient characteristics, so their outgroup status was recognizable, but unimportant. As Twilight fans began “encroaching” on comic fans’ territory—namely Comic-Con International—comicdom’s evaluation of the threat level changed substantially. The Twilight fans were literally entering into territory that was once reserved for comic fandom. What was once an inconsequential characteristic (where a Twilight fan happened to stand) became a decidedly more relevant one in light of a comic fan’s characteristic (where she or he was trying to get to). Although not exactly justifiable, it was only after that single characteristic was directly challenged that other differences in traits became “problems.”

Also of interest is that Twilight fans did not display the same open hostility towards comic fans (except, perhaps, in instances of self-defense). As Twilight fans, relatively new as a collective group, had no prior territory to call their own, they had no qualms sharing space with another fandom. A comic book convention was as suitable a gathering place as horror convention or a science fiction convention, as far as they were concerned; they were largely pleased to simply have a physical location to share their enthusiasm together.

This should have been entirely expected. In fact, there are reports from early science fiction conventions that expressed much the same sentiment about comic book fans that comic fans are currently displaying towards Twilight fans. Communications of the time limited the scale of and reporting on the events, but the general attitude is similar. In Comic Art #1, Dick Lupoff alluded to “some petty ill will” directed towards comic fans at the 1960 Philcon. Other comic book fans would recall the same types of sentiments years later...

Most [science fiction] fans looked down their noses at comics—and with some justification. After all, sf fandom had been given a bad name (as had sf itself) by the public media association of science fiction with ‘Superman’ and ‘Buck Rogers,’ which were very bad sf, irrespective of their merits as comics.
—Ted White, Squa Tront #9

The argument could be made, of course, that Twilight is a single intellectual property, whereas comics and science fiction are much more broad, encompassing any number of properties. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to compare Twilight fans to, say, Batman fans? And, for that matter, wouldn’t Batman fans noticeably differ from fans of Tintin or Naruto? I’ll cover that in the next chapter.

Us vs. Them, Part 1

One of the most tumultuous times for the comic industry on the whole was the mid-1950s, when comics were under a seemingly constant barrage of attacks from any number of people looking for a juvenile delinquency scapegoat. Similar problems erupted more-or-less simultaneously in several countries, and comic book fans were frequently bewildered by the hatred and venom being shot at their beloved medium. Not only were comics collected and burned, but those who dealt with the medium were, at best, looked down upon. Retailers selling comics were boycotted. Creators whose livelihood came from creating comic books had to start making up other occupations when asked what they did for a living if they didn’t want to be shunned out of town. Children began hiding their comics under their mattresses, lest their parents confiscate and destroy them. The industry, collectively, had to ban together to deflect attacks from people no less powerful than the U.S. Senate. Although a few (notably EC publisher Bill Gaines) tried continuing their fights solo, it was ultimately those who joined together who were able to survive in the comic book industry. They saw the conflict very much in an “Us versus Them” mentality, and came to the conclusion that their only hope was to ally themselves under a united banner.

The basic story is indeed quite old. Two different groups meet and, out of ignorance, don’t understand one another. This lack of understanding leads to conflict, and individuals near the conflict are frequently demanded to choose a side. “Are you with us or against us? Are you one of us or one of them?”

Although this is often seen in terms of larger conflicts (i.e. war) it applies to almost all sizes and sorts of group dynamics. Think of the traditional cliques that spring up in school: jocks, nerds, slackers, etc. Regardless of what the groups are actually called and the precise roles they play within the school, they’re continually generated year after year, decade after decade. My high school had fairly small graduating classes of around 100 students each year, and yet nearly everyone still had a group they fit in with, almost to the mutual exclusivity of others. Acceptance into one group almost inherently prevented acceptance into another. The clique you associated with became your “us” and everyone else became “them.”

This type of intergroup discrimination, exhibited in some manner in different cultures throughout the world, was studied at length by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, who developed it into their theory of social identity.

The basic theory suggests a fairly simple model of human organization. In fact, it’s not that far removed from the classic “us versus them” discussion: a person views others as part of their ingroup or an outgroup. An ingroup can be described as just the collection of people who belong to the same group as the individual in question; for the purposes of this book, that will generally be “comic book fans.” Everyone not a member of the ingroup is, therefore, part of an outgroup.

The distinction is not actually as binary as it might appear at first. If we assume our ingroup is that of comic book fans, an obvious outgroup would be “people who hate comic books.” But another outgroup might be “people who are indifferent to comic books.” Another might be “fans of Joss Whedon who read/watch everything he writes, regardless of the medium.” People in this last group will have read some Astonishing X-Men comics, but might not care about Colossus and Kitty Pryde’s relationship beyond what Whedon himself wrote. Nor about John Cassaday’s art. Or the collectibility of multiple cover versions of the comics themselves. Their sole interest might be Whedon’s writing and they would never consider themselves comic book fans, despite making any number of trips to their local comic book shop while tracking down his work.

As transmedia becomes more commonplace, we are likely to see more and more people who would not be considered comic book fans buying comics. In 2006, Frank Beddor began releasing his “Looking Glass Wars” story to the world. It was initially touted as a trilogy of prose novels, based loosely around Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books. Beddor, however, was an early adopter of transmedia storytelling and didn’t limit himself to prose. There was also a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, a soundtrack, a webcomic and multiple printed comic book series; all of which advance and elaborate on the overall story in their own fashion without retreading on other material. People who read the first novel came to his website, looking for more information, and were shocked to find there was a comic book series out as well. Some comments from the official message board include:

I apologise if this is said in another thread. But how long have to comics been out? And how many are there? Until i found this site, i didn’t know that any of these things existed!
—Dodge

Anyone know where i could get a copy of the first and or 2nd comic cuz i’ve searched and can’t seem to find them anywhere.
—Sir Pyros

I can’t even find it! I suppose I could special order it through Walden’s, but where did you guys find it?
—Sir_Vincent_of_Cheshire

im not a comic book reader never liked them. Sorry. But i am in love with lgw and is the hatter comics worth my money or time?
—Alyss*Fan

It’s mature stuff...definitely not quite the same demographic as the book
—Her Imperial Viciousness

It’s plainly evident in reading through the message forums that good number of people who were actively seeking out more information about “Looking Glass Wars” were, at least in some cases, at a complete loss for where to even look for a comic book. Others were skeptical. Clearly, many of these people who were actively seeking out the comics were not fans of the medium (as they were showcasing ignorance or even hostility towards it) but were nonetheless eager to track down the comics out of their enthusiasm for “Looking Glass Wars” material. Not surprisingly, there were also comic book fans who bought and enjoyed the series, but I use this example to illustrate that while the “Us versus Them” mentality is an example of an ingroup/outgroup dynamic, it is by no means a mutually exclusive one.

Let’s look at the ingroup more closely, as the outgroup is largely defined as “what the ingroup isn’t.”

As I discussed on my chapter about defining fandom, the group that we’re discussing is largely self-identified. Henri Tajfel and John Turner noted in their original writings on the subject that such a group is, “a collection of individuals who perceive themselves to be members of the same social category, share some emotional involvement in this common definition of themselves, and achieve some degree of social consensus about the evaluation of their group and of their membership of it.” Putting that in terms of comic fandom specifically, they’re saying that comic book fans have a pretty good understanding of what it is to be a comic book fan. The fact that they’ve spent as much time and put forth as much energy into comic books as they have means, in part, that they’ve gained some understanding of what the nature of fandom is. That understanding is shared within the body of fandom, generally by way of example. A person stepping into comic book fandom for the first time picks up on the customs and mores of the group and, over time, adopts them in an effort to become more of a member of that group. Those who continually and/or willfully disregard the basic commonalities of fandom are rejected from the group in some manner.

Groups start over a common interest; in this case, enthusiasm for comic books. There is a high degree of likelihood that many fans came to appreciate the medium for the same, or at least similar, reasons. It is, therefore, a reasonable assumption that these fans also share similar traits amongst themselves that allow them to appreciate the same form of entertainment. Those commonalities then form the basis of those customs and mores, which are inherent in a majority of the group members anyway. The prototypical comic book fan begins to emerge.

Although it conventionally refers to the first instance of an object, a prototype here is meant as a perfectly typical example. In literature, the term “archetype” might be more appropriate; however, that particular word was already being used in psychology and “prototype” was used to avoid confusion. Since I’m discussing fans from that perspective, I’ll also use “prototype” here.

A Brief History, Part 2

Within twelve months, comic fandom also saw the publication of other fanzines such as Don and Maggie Thompson’s Comic Art, coming out days after Alter-Ego #1 and focusing on the comic medium as a whole; G.B. Love’s The Rocket’s Blast, also created without knowledge of A-E’s existence; The Comicollector, an adzine spun out from A-E; On the Drawing Boards, a newszine spun out from A-E; and Joe Pilati’s Smudge, which featured future underground comix artists such as Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson. The fans who were creating these publications were also getting letters published and frequently writing amongst themselves. They formed a sort of correspondence community.

I have been grossly underestimating the size of comic fandom, and considering it a subsidiary of SF fandom. It is possible that I read through ALTER EGO #1 & 2 too quickly, but the first inkling I had of the size of CF was COMIC READER #12 and then COMICOLLECTOR #7... I had considered A-E and other such zines to be the results of Double-Fans -- those who were both comic and SF fans. It took the recent zines to show me my mistake.
—Bruce Pelz, The Comic Reader #13

It was Ronn Foss who first began bringing the fans together in person. In travelling across the country, he would make stops at the homes of other comic fans, chatting with them in person and going over their collections. Bails followed suit during his professional trips. But in 1964, Bails found the ballots he received for the Alley Awards (the first awards formally given out for outstanding achievement in comics) were too numerous to count himself, so he invited many of his friends and acquaintances from comicdom for a party at his house to help tally them all. Almost two dozen people from various states showed up, making the event the first significant comic fan gathering. It would only be another two months before the first bona fide comic convention took place, in Detroit, Michigan. There, over a dozen dealers sold their wares, door prizes were awarded, and the H.G. Wells movie Things To Come was shown.

Within a few years, interest in comics and comics fandom was springing up all over the world. Comic conventions began cropping up from New York to Detroit to Houston to Oakland, attracting professionals like Otto Binder, Archie Goodwin, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. New fanzine titles were coming out every month and underground comix began taking root in both in the U.S. and abroad; cartoonists like Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton were almost as famous in the Netherlands as they were in America. Fanzines and comix became the proving grounds for future creators across the globe like Joost Swarte, Alfredo Castelli, Brian Bolland and Vaughn Bodé.

This increased communication encouraged fans to become even more organized. The first attempt at making a formal price guide came out in 1965. In 1968, Carl Gafford founded the United Fanzine Organization, a co-op for minicomic creators. The following year, Dean Motter, Ron Sutton and Ron Kasman helped form a comic club for students at York University in Toronto. Enterprising fans like Bud Plant, Chuck Rozanski, Dick Swan and Robert Beerbohm began dedicated comic shops and mail order businesses.

Beginning in the early 1970s, comics fandom started becoming a business in its own right. Stanley Blair, a newcomer to fandom, started a weekly adzine called Stan’s Weekly Express. That it came out regularly and frequently sent its circulation into the thousands very quickly. As an adzine, it inevitably ran into problems with mail fraud and Blair took up the task of making sure the perpetrators were caught. A stroke, however, removed him from fandom for a time and, during that hiatus, Alan Light stepped in to publish The Buyer’s Guide to Comics Fandom (now simply called Comics Buyer’s Guide, behind Netherlands’ Stripschrift, it is the second-longest running comic magazine still in publication) to fill that niche. Blair returned and focused on continuing fraud investigations within comicdom, establishing a formal organization, the WSA (an abbreviation of Stan’s Weekly Express Seal of Approval) and restitution processes for comic fans experiencing issues of fraud. The program served as an ersatz Better Business Bureau for the comic fandom industry while it was moving from amateur to professional capabilities.

The WSA Program will investigate all mail-fraud cases; members against nonmembers, members against members, or nonmembers against members. It is a rare instance when we receive a complaint regarding a WSA member.
—Ron Frantz, 1976 WSA Board of Directors Meeting

The process of moving fandom into a business was progressing around the globe by the mid-1970s. Comic-Con International, the largest and most successful U.S. comic convention, was relatively well established by then and was drawing about 5,000 fans each year, a number which would grow to over twenty times that amount by 2005. The Angoulême International Comics Festival in France began in 1974 with Maurice Tillieux, André Franquin, Burne Hogarth and Harvey Kurtzman in attendance, and presented a more prestigious international flavor to comic awards. The following year saw the introduction of Tokyo’s Comiket, a convention devoted exclusively to dōjinshi, self-published manga often illegally featuring “borrowed” characters from existing anime and manga. These last two conventions did well financially and grew, respectively bringing in a quarter and half million attendees with each show now.

The distinction between strictly fan activities and the fandom industry became harder to define. Gary Groth took The Nostalgia Journal fanzine and morphed it into The Comics Journal magazine by 1977. Bails’ original mimeographed The Comic Reader became a for-profit magazine with offset printing. The Thompsons’ Newfangles fanzine got absorbed into Light’s Buyers Guide, which he eventually sold to Krause Publications allegedly for $500,000 in 1983. The new comics magazines that were coming out (e.g. Amazing Heroes, Comics Feature, Hero Illustrated) were soon being printed in full color and sold on newsstands. Comic Book Marketplace launched its premier issue with a circulation in excess of 23,000. Comics that were being bought and sold at dedicated comic shops were increasingly from smaller and smaller publishers, many of them effectively being operations run by a single individual. The cheaper costs of printing and production meant that it no longer required the fortunes of a major corporation or wealthy financial backer to start up as a publisher. The comics that once would have been relegated to small press runs of an obscure fanzine could be printed and distributed as independent comics and would look, for all the world, to have the same production values as anything from a major publisher.

Though originally established in 1980 as a means of electronic communication, it wasn’t until 1987 that Usenet really became functionally attractive enough for comics fans. Usenet is essentially a global messaging system available on the Internet, and provided the ability for people to have discussions with anyone on the planet in an organized fashion. The number and variety of groupings on Usenet was rather confusing initially, and it was in 1987 that a more cohesive hierarchy was established, providing a category for recreation and a subcategory for comics. This provided a central, if virtual, location for comic fans to gather and discuss their hobby. As the group continued to grow, it broke off deeper subcategories for comic strips, X-Men, ElfQuest, Vertigo, selling/trading, alternative comics, etc.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, commercial Internet providers such as America Online, Delphi and CompuServe took some of their ideas from Usenet, while adding real-time virtual chatting capabilities and online file storage. They structured their message boards similarly, adding a decidedly graphic element to them. It also provided publishers with an opportunity to create their own virtual spaces, which did a little to help re-distinguish the boundaries between fans and professionals since it required money and some technical skill, neither of which most fans had. Comic creators, though, still appeared in these forums as essentially no different than fans.

As the World Wide Web’s importance began to outstrip individual commercial endeavors, though, pricing became cheaper and more user-friendly tools started becoming available. People and businesses began moving into their own virtual environments throughout the 1990s. Fans began setting up their own web-based discussion boards and posting sites devoted to a single character or title. Issue reviewers and comic news reporters like Matt Brady and Rich Johnston moved their articles from Usenet to their own websites. Columnists and freelance writers detailed their thoughts on their own blogs and through social media sites.

Thanks to today’s global communication capabilities, the connectivity comic fans have today is amazingly pervasive, especially when compared to fandom’s infancy. Fans and creators alike are able to work and interact with others from around the world and David O’Connell is able to produce and sell his Tozo: The Public Servant comic internationally just as readily as Shary Flenniken once gave away her mimeographed, 4-page Sky River Funnies to Oregonians. Being a part of fandom is no longer just connecting with other fans, but selecting which fans you want to connect with. You aren’t limited to talking with your neighbor about a book you’re only vaguely aware of when you have the option now to speak with other fans of your favorite title anywhere around the globe.

A Brief History, Part 1

One thing I specifically wanted to avoid in this book is making it a history project. In the first place, other authors have already written more extensively on the subject than I could. In the second place, I have a greater interest in the psychological and sociological aspects of fandom. I’m less interested in the Big Name Fans than who fans are generally and how they interact with one another. That said, I think it is important to include some history of fandom here to provide context. With this chapter, I will touch on some of fandom’s highlights from the past several decades; however, for a more detailed look at the history of comic book fandom, please consult some of the texts I cite at the end of the book.

It's worth noting, too, that comic fandom’s history is primarily the work of white males in the United States. The U.S. had arguably the best cultural resources to develop fandom in the first place and Caucasian men tended to exercise their authority almost to the exclusivity of others.

I wasn’t selected to be on the nominating committee of the Alley Awards. Don and I had been in the field the same length of time, had the same input, and Don was on the committee and I wasn’t. And I said, “Hm. Interesting.”
—Maggie Thompson, The Golden Age of Comic Fandom

Though I’ve tried to ensure some measure of parity throughout the book, much of what’s written here is reflective of what’s available; that is to say that what this book might lack in balance is due, at least in part, to a lack of balance in both the comic industry and fandom on the whole.

Fans of one type or another have been around since people began having enough time to think about something more than survival. But the type of fandom that comic fans might begin to recognize as something similar to our own began in the pages of Hugo Gernsback’s publication Amazing Stories. In 1926, he began the magazine as the first one devoted entirely to science fiction. The following year, he instituted a regular letter column called “Discussions” and published the names and addresses of those people whose letters he published. This provided science fiction fans with their first opportunity to speak with other fans. Amazing’s manager editor, David Lasser, saw the significance of fans being able to connect with one another and used his position to help launch the Scienceers, science fiction’s first formal fan club, in 1929. The following year saw science fiction’s first fanzine, The Comet (later renamed Cosmology).

The significance of including the early history of science fiction fandom might be questioned here, until one learns of some of the early members of the group. The Comet was created and edited by Raymond A. Palmer, who would become the namesake of DC’s character The Atom in 1961. Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger, both later to become editors at DC Comics, helped conceive and bring to life the science fiction fanzine The Time Traveller in 1932. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of Superman, came out with their own fanzine, Science Fiction, later that same year. A frequent fanzine contributor throughout the 1930s, Eando Binder was the pen name of Earl and Otto Binder; Otto going on to write many comic books for Fawcett including twelve year’s worth of Captain Marvel.

Also providing early crossover bridges between science fiction and comic fandoms were people like David A. Kyle. In 1936, Kyle’s fanzine, Fantasy World, mostly featured original science fiction comic strips and he quickly began using the subtitle “Cartoons of Imagination.” Jimmy Taurasi had two fanzines, Fantasy News and Fantasy Times, which, while primarily consisting of science fiction information, also included comic book news from time to time, noting items such as the litigation issues surrounding Victor Fox’s Wonder Man. Taurasi even managed to get word out about Amazing Man Comics before it was actually published.

Comics themselves did begin having something of a dialogue with their readers in the 1940s. Promotions tagged with the likenesses of Canada Jack, Captain America or Little Orphan Annie got kids to join patriotic organizations like the Canada Jack Club, the Sentinels of Liberty or the Junior Commandos, where they created small, local, informal groups of fans of the comics. Joe Simon later noted that Sentinel of Liberty clubs were formed “by the hundreds.” In Mexico, Guillermo Marin encouraged readers to send in story ideas and personal photos, which he would publish in Pepín. That title and others such as Chamaco and Paquín also ran contests periodically, getting fans to send in drawings of their favorite characters and stories as a means of encouraging feedback.

However, since comic books themselves did not, at that time, print fans’ addresses, science fiction fandom remained essentially the only vehicle though which comic fans could interact with each other at something other than a local scale, and those fans were primarily science fiction fans who simply happened to like comics. It wasn’t until 1947 that Mal Willits and Jim Bradley published The Comic Collector’s News, the first fanzine devoted only to comics. A few years later, though, they dropped it in favor of a science fiction fanzine, Destiny, which included extended articles on H.P. Lovecraft and the like.

This emphasis on horror and science fiction, not surprisingly, began to coalesce around EC Comics, as they had began introducing books like The Crypt of Terror, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear in 1950 and started running fans’ letters and addresses in the backs of the comics. Taurasi began working on a new fanzine, Fantasy-Comics, in 1952 that focused on these types of science fiction and horror books, of which EC was the most predominant publisher. The EC Fan Bulletin from Bhob Stewart came out the following year, focusing specifically on the EC stable of books as the title implies. It was Stewart’s work that inspired numerous imitators, and was allegedly the impetus for publisher Bill Gaines to create the official EC Fan-Addict Club.

It wasn’t until 1958, though, that a concerted effort towards coalescing comic fandom on the whole began falling into place. A long-time fan of the old Justice Society of America, Jerry Bails saw that the Flash character had been revived, after a fashion, and he began writing letters to editor Julie Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox suggesting that they revive the entire JSA. The eventual revival, now called the Justice League of America, intrigued a young Roy Thomas to write in to Schwartz, asking about obtaining back issues. Schwartz referred Thomas to Fox, who referred him to Bails. Thomas and Bails began an enthusiastic and ongoing dialogue through the mail, and soon conceived of the idea of a “JLA newsletter.” Bails was encouraged by Schwartz and began sending letters to other fans whose letters had also been published. Further encouraged, Bails and Thomas put together their first fanzine, and Alter-Ego #1 was mailed out in early 1961 to an enthusiastic reception.

Defining Fandom, Part 2

I was an early fan of Batman, and there are a number of photos of me sporting Batman t-shirts and playing with Batman toys before my fourth birthday, which I insisted had a Super Friends theme. I began to lose interest in comics as I approached puberty, but a chance reading of Fantastic Four renewed my interest with a ferocity that I hadn’t had before. I convinced my parents to drive me to comic shops and flea markets; I began writing letters in the hopes of seeing them printed; I put posters up on my bedroom wall. I drooled over the copy of Fantastic Four #23 a local shop had on display under glass, as it had a whopping three-figure price tag that my allowance simply could not even think of affording.

These practices continued on through college. My part-time job at McDonald’s did give me more money to spend, so I was able to buy more new issues and older back issues. The graphic design program I was in gave me a deeper appreciation of the work that went into making comics on a monthly basis, as I began to understand how the production processes I learned in class might apply to publishing comics. I graduated and continued buying more new comics and older back issues. I tracked down copies of the unreleased Fantastic Four film produced by Roger Corman, and even started a FF website.

But it wasn’t until I was well into my twenties when I read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and realized that, for as many comics as I had read and as much comic book trivia I had stored in my head, I hadn’t actually been a fan of comic books all those years. I had been a fan of superheroes who happened to be most frequently portrayed in comic books.

Despite the fact that I had read comics in my father’s collection ranging from Asterix to Lone Wolf & Cub to Heavy Metal, I had never been especially enthused about any of them. They were merely ways to pass the time once I had read my meager collection a few dozen times. Compare that against my eagerness on Saturday mornings when I could watch The Batman/Tarzan Hour or Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Compare that against my joy of stumbling across an airing of the Kirk Alyn Superman serials on a local UHF station. I realized that, despite my contention of being a comic book fan, I was actually a fan of superheroes. That superheroes happened to be found frequently in comic books meant that I read a lot of comics, but I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the medium itself. It was only after that realization, and a concerted attempt at exploring the medium I had claimed to enjoy for so long, that I actually became a fan of comics themselves.

The confusion, it seems to me, is understandable given the peculiarities of the American comic book industry. Without getting into a full-fledged history, the superhero genre came into popularity within American comic books in the 1960s and has dominated the industry ever since. For the past several decades, the options available for U.S. comic readers were largely limited to Marvel and DC. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the genre in and of itself, but with the predominance of it within comics and the dearth of it in other media (due primarily to the fiscal restraints of depicting super powers prior to the 21st century) it’s hardly surprising that the superhero genre is so closely associated with the comic medium. Certainly as of this writing, the phrase “comic book movie” is tossed around with films featuring superheroes like Sky High and My Super Ex-Girlfriend despite neither of them having any relation to comic books. Many people simply equate “superhero” with “comic book” and vice versa.

Comic writer Peter A. David relayed the following story on his website in 2005:

I was at a playground yesterday with Caroline. There was a little boy there, seven years old, named Steven. He was talking to other kids about Spider-Man, and what a big Spider-Man fan he was. He was showing off his Spidey sneakers very proudly.

And I said to him, “Do you read Spider-Man comics?”

He looked at me oddly and said, “No.”

“Why not?”

“I watch the movies,” he said. “And I play the video game. I beat Doc Ock,” he added proudly.

“Okay, but... Spider-Man’s a comic book character. Aren’t you at all interested in reading the comic?”

He shook his head. His ten year old brother said, “Why should he?”

I said, “Well, because you keep watching the movies, it’s the same story. What about new adventures, new stories about Spider-Man?”

The big brother shrugged and said, “He watches the cartoon.”

“I watch the cartoon,” Steve echoed. “And the movies. And play the game. I’m a Spider-Man fan!”

Spidey’s biggest fan... except for, y’know, the whole comic book thing. That he really doesn’t care about.

As I experienced myself, I think any number of other “comic fans” have made a decidedly unintentional error, mistaking their appreciation of the superhero genre for the comic medium. While a fan of Spider-Man might have a better chance of making that distinction—having several movies, TV shows and video games available as a conduit for their appreciation—that might not be quite as obvious for characters who appear primarily, or exclusively, within comics. That is, of course, not to say that superhero fans are largely unable to make the distinction for themselves; I only point out the difference to highlight the possibility that simply saying, “I am a comic book fan,” may not be wholly accurate despite the speaker’s intentions. The person may themselves confuse the genre for the medium, making the claim of fandom at least potentially fallible.

That being said, it remains as the closest thing we have to a reliable indicator of an individual’s appreciation of the medium. We have to assume that people claiming to be a fan of comic books are cognizant of the difference between comics and superheroes who frequently appear in comics, and any genre preferences they might possess are not overshadowing whatever their appreciation of the medium might be. So our working definition is a comic book fan is anyone who claims to be one.

Social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner, whose pioneering work on social identity theory I’ll discuss in a subsequent chapter, provided a slightly more elaborate definition of the criteria for inclusion in a large social group: “the individuals concerned define themselves and are defined by others as members of a group.” In essence, they claim that to be a part of comic book fandom, you have to claim to be a comic book fan and to also have others recognize you as a comic book fan. Think of it in terms of employment: a person can want to work for Dark Horse Comics all they want, but if Dark Horse never offers that individual a job, they’ll never become a part of the group of Dark Horse employees. Comic fandom works much the same way, albeit on a decidedly less formal basis. Without ever interacting with other fans who are within fandom, you can never become a part of that fandom. Membership, in an informal manner, has to be offered by someone within the group. This additional clause of external recognition helps to clarify against not only those who might try to superficially pander to a crowd (as might be the case in some actors and celebrities who travel in fairly exclusive social circles) but also those whose own enthusiasm is mistakenly attributed (as noted previously).

The nature of being a fan, and thus a part of fandom, revolves around an individual’s sense of self. A fan is anyone who claims to be one; however, being a part of fandom means that you’re able to share your common interest with others and become part of a larger group. Comic book fandom will “provide their members with an identification of themselves in social terms,” to quote Tajfel again. With the exception of the chapter on comic fan history, the remainder of the book will essentially speak to anyone and everyone who claims to be a comic book fan.