13 Truths Comic Book Fans Would Never Admit To Themselves
8. You Won't Buy Books Featuring Second-Stringers
What You Say: How come Marvel and DC wont give any of these lesser-known heroes a chance? Every comic book at Marvel has to have an X or Avengers in the title, or has to star Wolverine or Spider-Man to be successful. Meanwhile, DC has fifty different books featuring Superman and Batman. And whenever a lesser-known hero does get his or her shot at a solo book, its cancelled within the first twelve issues! Why wont they give any attention to these guys? But What You Really Mean: Yeah, there are people who will mock second or third-string heroes even though they secretly love them, but then there are also people who will profess their love for those characters yet refuse to support their books when they come out. Gambit is probably the second most popular member of the X-Men, and hes gotten three ongoing solo books at different times. Each one cancelled because of low sales. And then there are characters that people hate when theyre around but then suddenly have legions of fans when the character is killed. This happened with Maggott, one of the X-Men from the 90s who was the subject of legions of hate mail. After being killed after a long absence, forums suddenly erupted with support for the character.
Percival Constantine is the author of several novels and short stories, including the Vanguard superhero series, and regularly writes and comments on movies, comics, and other pop culture. More information can be found at his website, PercivalConstantine.com
