Cory to fanboys – bite me

Cory to fanboys – bite me

Jan 29

Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing editor, speculation fantasy author, and all-around wet blanket, had another poke at comics today as he wrote up the second trade collection of Warren Ellis’ Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. – as ever, it got my goat. I continue to disagree with the term Underwear Perverts as any sort of useful comment on comics, particularly when the user hasn’t, you know, barely reads superhero comics. Warren has earned it – Cory, not so much. He calls out an X-men-sure-do-come-back-to-life-a-lot” joke as deft lampooning. So…

Anyhow, I debated (and I’m still debating) commenting directly to the man himself, using Boing Boing’s new comments system, only to find about a half dozen people have, at this writing, beaten me to the punch.

“Enough already please, Cory. You’re beginning to sound like the guy who thinks “We are the Knights Who Say ‘Ni!'” is still a good line.”

Cory’s response?

“Deal with it.”

Rightly so. There is no dealing with Cory directly, obviously, so we should deal with it. The dude has his bespectacled, self-styled Intelligentsiac head up his ass. There will be no moving him – better to focus our efforts on promoting the best in superhero comics to everyone besides him.

Superhero comics have an important place in popular culture, and reflect the era in which they’re printed – it includes post-modern deconstruction, but it should never exclude the roots of the form. Yes, some of it is bad. A lot of it is awesome. The bad is no reason to whitewash the awesome, just to appear hip and clever.

I’m still going to tell him that X-men joke is stale, though.