Panel Beating - Drawing Black Dice
Striking Fanboys over the head with very big sticks - every month.

A small and ever-dwindling audience of consumers. Derision from mainstream forms of entertainment. Misunderstood by concerned parents and the self-appointed guardians of decent society.

This isn't comics.

A loyal, hardcore fanbase which delights in trivia and parading knowledge of the product, especially over ignorant newcomers.

This isn't comics.

Adored and consumed almost entirely by people who aspire themselves to become creators.

No, still not comics. Or at least, not just comics.

Hello, everyone. My name is Antony, and I'm a goth. I'm also a roleplayer. Oh, and a comics reader. Just how much more outcast can a man get?

"There's a massive crossover between the three groups, like a Venn diagram gone horribly wrong."

The 1980s saw a lot of "alternative scenes" become popular; the comics boom, the intrusion of goth music into the pop charts, and a surge in the popularity of roleplaying games. All of them occurring while I was between the ages of 8 - 18. And in recent months, it's struck me how similar most of their fortunes have been.

For each of these pastimes, the 1990s was a really bad decade. It saw all of them dwindle, their fifteen minutes of fame burned out. The audience became insular, giddy on their own success, believing that this time they really would see their subculture become an industry worth millions.

Oh, how wrong we were. All of us.

And I say all, because the funny thing is this: there's a massive crossover between the three groups, like a Venn diagram gone horribly wrong. Where there are comics fans, there are roleplayers and a few goths. Where there are roleplayers, there are goths and a few comics fans. And where there are goths, there are comics fans and a few roleplayers. A tangled web indeed.

All of them have suffered the same problems, and nobody knows whose fault it is. If it really is anyone's fault at all. Each is, essentially, a subculture. Comics is ironically the least susceptible to this accusation, if only by virtue of their huge audience in previous times. But even then, they were still looked down upon by other forms of entertainment. The stereotype of roleplayers and comics fans - overweight, bearded and lonely men, clinging on to their childhood - is disturbingly similar. The goth stereotype is physically different, but just as misanthropic.

Each of them saw their audience - I despise the term "fanbase" - begin to fall away in the early 1990s. Again, the reasons were similar. A refusal by the major players to progress and evolve; driven by a vocal and overly nostalgic share of the audience to cling to past glories, to not change too much. Anyone foolish enough to attempt something new suffered accusations of "selling out," and the nostalgic fans turned off in their droves. No surprise, then, that the creators decided instead to safely re-tread old ground, thereby alienating newcomers.

They all have loyal followings who delight in being the know-all on the block. Goths strive to be "gother than thou"; roleplayers become "rules lawyers"; and comic fans are "continuity freaks", the people who can name every single member of CAPTAIN ANAL's family, including where and how they died. They all follow an unattainable and entirely fictional ideal; the strange notion that being a self-taught "expert" on their chosen subject will garner them respect from others in their little community, and show off their knowledge at any given opportunity. The sad thing is that sometimes... it's true.

"Our little subcultures send death threats, complain loudly and publicly insult those who enjoy a product they don't."

All of them inspire an odd wannabe syndrome, where much of the audience desires nothing more than to join the ranks of the creators. Some of the time, this is for laudable reasons; they can see how their favourite pastime has gone down the pan, and believe they have something new to offer, a potential of the medium they wish to see fruit. Whether or not they're correct is irrelevant; at least the intent is good-hearted. But another, and often far too numerous group, has no such aspirations to innovation; all they want is the applause, the adulation. These people simply want to emulate, not innovate. And due to the narrow, rose-tinted views of most of the audience, these people are often the ones most likely to succeed in their wishes.

Each audience has developed a feeling that, because they are "loyal", the creators owe them something. That they have the right to insist creators should do things a certain way (inevitably their way), and be extremely rude about it to boot. This doesn't happen in forms of mass entertainment. If Blur make a bad record, or Steven Spielberg directs a turkey, people simply ignore it and find something else to consume. But our little subcultures - starved of output due to financial constraints and bizarrely loyal to their chosen product - send death threats, complain loudly and publicly insult those who enjoy a product they don't.

But above all, they're in the same slump. For the last ten years, each of these industries (and I use the term loosely) has desperately struggled to survive and re-enter the mainstream consciousness. The audiences become convinced that if they can just find their holy grail, the mass public will accept them forever and everyone will make lots of money. That "everything goes in cycles," and Goddamit there will be another upswing in their fortunes soon, if everyone else just gives them a chance to prove how much fun they are.

Still waiting.

Antony Johnston, 2000

Antony Johnston is a staff writer at PopImage.

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