I’m sure by now you have all heard the news of Exiles being canceled. The fact that for whatever reason the industry can’t sustain a comic as good as that is a fucking joke. Month after month when looking at the list of best selling books it mostly just makes me ill. Shit like New Avengers, Dark Avengers, Ultimatum, Battle for the Cowl, Hulk (Rulk) and the like are always up in the top ten. The only reason I can think of as to why those books are among the best selling is because fanboys just can’t get enough mediocrity in their lives. They can’t be bothered by stories that challenge them as a reader. No, they want their need for mediocrity satiated week in and week out by such bland hacks as Brian Michael Bendis, Jeph Loeb and Tony Daniel.
I’m sure when most fanboys flip through comics if they don’t see one of the following things they will put it back on the rack: Wolverine, blood, death, misogyny, terrible over rendered art, boring dialogue masquerading as being “witty”, costumes giving female characters wedgies and a very color by numbers story.
A book like Exiles never stood a chance in this industry. You know what other book didn’t? That would be Captain Britain and MI 13. It was the only, I repeat ONLY, good thing to come of that pathetic excuse for an “event” Secret Invasion. It had interesting secondary and tertiary Marvel characters cast in the main roles. It was a team with morals, values, the need to do what was right and always refusing to use violence as an end to justify the means. It was a book that writer Paul Cornell and artist Leonard Kirk gave their all and that was more than enough for me. But it wasn’t enough for those fanboys that crave mediocrity. They didn’t recognize any of the characters in the book so it must have been completely worthless. Captain Britain and the MI 13 were stationed in the UK. Unless the team was stationed out of New York or California whose gives a shit. Plus, Britain is like a whole other country. What’s up with that?
The last issue of Captain Britain shipped this week and that is a sad state of affairs. Fanboys would rather have new books that somehow feel familiar to them instead of taking the time and effort to get to know something new. They would rather have yet another Avengers, Wolverine, Deadpool or Hulk book shoved down their throats and that’s just fucking tragic.
J.
