"Why don’t you just shut up and enjoy them! You know, what comics use to be for before the internet."

This quote comes from a comic book blog’s comments page; and upon reading it, something about it’s passion seemed to really sum things up for me– but first some background. The overall discussion dealt with Marvel comic’s, upcoming "Secret Invasion" storyline that will run through a variety of titles before culminating in an eight issue mini next summer. The basic plot is such: the Skrulls (a big bad alien menace in the Marvel Universe) have used their shape-shifting abilities to apparently replace a number of Marvel heroes with Skrull operatives. Elektra and Black Bolt have already been revealed as skrull imposters, and Marvel has hinted we will discover many more. Considering how many Marvel heroes have been acting a little strange for over a year (and if you’ve read "Civil War" you know what I mean), the "Secret Invasion" storyline has the possibility of tying together a number of clues and plot threads from previous years worth of various titles and issues. It can end up being some masterful long term planning or it can really blow up in Marvel’s big ol’, comic producing face.

Especially since the Black Bolt reveal in Illuminati #5, the intertubes have broken out in fierce debate and speculation. The two biggest fears? Well, one that it will simply suck. Marvel does these huge cross-over events all-the-time, to the point that some fans are experiencing burnout. The other? Well, imagine if your favorite character ends up being one of the people replaced by a Skrull at some undetermined time in the character’s past. Basically, stories you may have loved end up getting retconned because the character was an undercover Skrull at the time. Even if the "Secret Invasion" storyline has been cooking for awhile, there’s the possibility that this development tramps on a previous writer’s intentions– a writer who was not writing as if the character was an undercover alien with a death ray. Some folks are worried.

Both fears encapsulate in some ways what is so wonderful about the comic book medium. Marvel comics have been around for over fifty years. Although the continuity in the universe over these five decades is far from perfect, the fact that continuity does exist and can even be attempted is pretty impressive. Few (if any) other media can build a world like this on a weekly basis over this long a period of time. More impressive is the fear of some fans that their favorite character will end up being a dirty, war lovin’ Skrull. In a technical sense, Spider-Man, Captain America, Ms. Marvel, the Hulk, and others may simply be lines on a page. But this is a woefully inadequate way to look at things. People develop affinities, bonds, and ties with these characters. Many times they’ve grown up with them all their lives. It’s folly to think that people aren’t intimately wrapped up in what happens to their favorite, fictional creations. Perhaps even a few years ago that might have been a harder argument to make. But a little wizard boy named Harry Potter proved in culture large that it’s not weird, unhealthy, or rare to become invested in fiction. Actually, it’s probably weirder not to.

Back to the quote at the top of this column. The comment came about ten pages into a heated debate about Marvel, Skrulls, and continuity. People were throwing around theories, complaining about Marvel’s tactics, and engaging in all manner of knit-picking. From the author’s point-of-view, if these people were taking time to write on a comic blog’s comments page, then they must be fans. So why would fans be wasting all this energy to complain and speculate about a storyline still over six months away? The assertion in the words is that to complain or express worry is to not enjoy the experience. It’s an understandable argument, I suppose, but it’s also a bit silly. Many people far more skilled than I have written extensively about the complexities of fan identity; and the fan is far from a passive absorber of what ever is put in front of them. Sometimes the fan simply goes along-for-the-ride; but I’d say more often than not, they become invested to the point where what happens next does actually matter. And when there are stakes on the line, people speculate, people argue, and yes, people complain.

Most popular culture viewers aren’t going to write fan-fic, aren’t going to create slash that retools characters into positions (quite literally) they’d like to see them in. Yet, we can all learn from them; for at the heart of both these activities is a sense of dissatisfaction with the limited possibilities introduced by the so-called "canonical" narratives of pop culture offerings. However, it is a dissatisfaction rooted in enjoyment and pleasure that productively blurs the binarical distinction between contentment/discontentment, enjoyment/dissatisfaction, and consumer/producer. Are we ever "all-in," where whatever happens to our fictional pleasures merely unfolds before our non-judgmental and waiting eyes? Not when it really matters. Not when our own identities and subjectivities have become affectively caught up in these fictional worlds.

The most interesting part of this quote is the end: "you know, what comics use to be for before the internet." I won’t agree with the author’s essentialist assertion that comics serve some a priori purpose, but the author is correct about the internet changing the situation. Talking about our pop culture passions use to be confined to either our close circle of like-minded friends, or perhaps the illusion of conversation provided by letters columns in various publications. Pre-internet fan clubs provided some opportunities for communication, but like all pre-internet options, they were hardly as (potentially) inclusive as the fan boards, blogs, and websites that sprout up like oceans of conversation around pop culture islands of interest. And, yes, a whole lot of that conversation is the voice of complaint, fed-uppedness, and let’s not forget– the harkening back to a show’s, comic’s, or band’s supposedly more pure and authentic past. But when has having a voice ever led to complacency? It’s conditions of silence and oppression that evoke fake smiles of agreement, not the messy process of democratized expression.

So instead of wondering why these complainers bother to post, instead of longing for some internet utopia were everyone agrees and expresses praise (and how boring would that be?), let’s remember how the net has no inherent or deterministic purpose. Instead, the net reveals the ways people actually interact with and discuss entertainment. And I suppose complaining about complainers is also par for that course. Personally, until Spider-Man ends up being a dirty, war lovin’ Skrull, I’m gonna adopt a wait-and-see attitude.