Diary of an up and coming sociopath

I’m quite pleased today to see that one of the occasionally-coherent rants that I call my column, Alternate Cover, on Den of Geek is currently burning up after enterting the blogosphere at speed. This one was on the subject of “licensed comics” - I was trying to articulate my dislike for them in an article, as I have previously restricted that rant to my long-suffering friend Ian who doesn’t even read non-manga comics. Though he’s picked up the Warcraft manga, so he’s clearly not a stranger to the crushing disappointments that licensed comics can bring.

Anyway, Karl sent me a link to my article posted on Whedonesque (picked up because I use the Buffy and Angel comics as prominent examples) and then when I showed Sarah, she pointed out that Blog@Newsarama also linked to it. Pretty nice! Reading the comments is interesting - nothing I’ve written has had this much of a reaction for some time. McKelvie once told me that one way to make it in the comics industry is to get along with everyone, and if those Newsarama comments are any indication, I may have upset Brian Lynch. Ah well. Hopefully he doesn’t take too much notice, because I also had a fair old slice at the latest issue of Angel on CBR. Oops.

The only disappointing thing is that the discussion doesn’t really engage with many of my points. It’s to be expected, of course, being the Internet, but (and I will just paste what I e-mailed to Shaun a moment ago) there are some good replies in the midst:

Someone does question the exact value of canonicity, which is absolutely something worth debating. Personally, I NEED IT. I can’t understand how some people are happy to read, say, an X-Files or Buffy novel or comic knowing that it “didn’t happen” and can therefore not contribute to the overall development of the plot or characters - but obviously, plenty of people don’t care about that. Why is that, and what’s the value of canon? Those are points worth looking at.
 
Someone else also asked why you would make a comic if you’re not going to use the benefits of the medium (addressing the “no budget” point) and again, that’s another thing worth talking about. For me it places a problematic distance between the medium being adapted and the adapted material. If you wouldn’t have Angel riding a dragon in the TV series, it’s not going to fly (haha OH GOD) in the comics, because it’s just too ridiculous. It’s not the same world or characters once you start doing that.

Anyway. Food for thought. Overall, I’m pleased that I’ve managed to bring DoG some traffic, justifying the many review copies of things they’ve sent me, and I’m obviously pleased that people are actually reading what I’m doing and taking the time to respond. Even if they are doing it on other sites than the one I wrote it on.