Drunken Comics Rage

Holy Shit! Can you believe that Aunt May and Mary Jane were skrulls all these years? How messed up it that????

Okay, so not really. No spoilers here. Everyone stand down.

Actually, I'm not even really going to talk about Secret Invasion much at all. The most I can really say about it is giving the Evil Artist (our silent partner) mad props for flat out calling one of the Skrull reveals many, many months ago. I won't say which one it was, but I have to say I'm pretty pissed about the whole thing. Not because of the reveal itself mind you. That part I found pretty amusing. No I'm pissed because when Evil Artist called it way back when, we both laughed about how silly it would be if that person were a Skrull, even though it made perfect sense. And now we find out he was right and I hate him for it. Mostly because I didn't think of it first.

Really, the topic at hand here is that of spoilers as a whole. Do folks out there care about them? Do you hate spoilers? Crave them? With the title of this post being as it is, there's actually kind of an assumption here that you, my dear reader, either don't give a rats ass about spoilers or have already read Secret Invasion. Either of which is fine. However, if you read this far and you do care about spoilers, well you aren't very bright. But at least the book wasn't actually spoiled for you. Unless I lied about lying about Aunt May and Mary Jane, in which case you're fucked but don't know it yet.  Regardless of what group you sit in (the ones I described or the one I insulted) your opinion still counts. So read on and we shall ponder the topic further. And I'll spoil stuff in hidden text. Funny, huh?

So what is a spoiler really? I suppose in the most simple defintion it is anything that may give away a key plot point in the story. Hell sometimes they can give away the whole story depending on the particular detail. And beyond a shadow of a doubt, spoilers run rampant across the internet. Welcome to the information age right?  Nothing makes the best use of technology quite like posting images or details from a a movie/tv show/comic that completely fucks up someone elses enjoyment of the piece by giving away critical plot points. Like maybe saying right here that Jarvis is a skrull.

Hey everybody! Soylent Green is people! And Hank Pym is a skrull!!!!

Nothing will get you a virtual angry mob quite as quick as pulling something along those lines on the wrong message board. Posting spoilers aren't all malicious in nature mind you. Folks just really want to talk about stuff they've seen and sometimes don't think about the very real possibility someone else hasn't. No one really wanted Sixth Sense or Usual Suspects ruined for them and if was, they probably didn't enjoy the end quite as much as they might have. And in that case, I understand.

But here's the other interesting thing about spoilers. There are other sites that live for that shit. There are news sites and blogs dedicated almost entiely to finding out new storylines for tv shows, catching camera phone pics from a movie set, or reviews of supposed scripts for upcoming movies, etc. While I believe the phenomena occurs with most serialized tv shows, books, etc. (think like Greys Anatomy or Desperate Housewives), genre fans are well and away the worst offenders on this front. We've practically taken it to an art form. With the ever growing numbers of forms of communication and means by which to share information it's an impossible flow to stop. There's one pretending to be Sue Richards as well.

Which of course has caused creators (and companies) to react by trying to throw out false information to throw people off the right track. Marvel had a lot of misleading teasers running about at the end of Civil War and I'm rapidly beginning to believe a lot of what DC makes public is of the same ilk. Afterall, not every idea they have can be completely insane can it? Dating back to last year, JJ Abrams was denying left and right his monster flick was called Cloverfield after the fanboys has scooped that information. Fat lot of good it did him obviously, but the effort was made. Truth be told, it all predates the current spoiler craze. Blue Harvest, anyone? Dum Dum Dugan went skrully and blew up SWORD.

It really fascinates me that within the fanboy subculture, there are actually two warring subcultures of their own. Because you know, fanboys aren't ostracized for their nerdery quite enough. Let's try to find a way segregate ourselves into even smaller socially awkward and fanatical subsets. That probably puts a little too fine a point on it because I suppose it's the zealots on either side who make the whole thing seem weird. Anyone who has to blab every single thing about a story is really just kind a dick and anyone who avoids all news and images on a subject entirely is a little weird. If you truly believe that you can tell exactly how a movie is going to turn out just by seeing the trailer for it, it likely means one of two things.

1. It might not have been the best story to start with if it was that transparent from 60 seconds of footage on a 110 minute movie
2. You're gonna need to learn to live with disappointment because every movie is gonna be completely screwed up for you for the rest of your life. Get used to it.

Myself personally? My feelings on spoilers are at best  ambivalent and at worst inconsistent. I've been known to hit a website to catch a glimpse of the new batmobile or the Cloverfield monster or what have you. I've been known to buy a comic and flip to the last page just to see how it's going to end. Don't misunderstand me, I don't crave that level of spoiler.  It's just by large it doesn't bother me at all. More times than not, I'm as entertained by the journey as I am the result. Knowing that we are ending up at "point B" isn't half as important as how we got there. On the rare occassion that I have a creative thought for a story, I almost always have the beginning and end scenes in mind and its all about connecting the dots for me. It's just kind of how my mind works. So in that case I'm ambivalent about spoilers.

Except when I'm not. That's right. I said Dum Dum Dugan. Anyone remember him?

There are those rare occasions where I don't want something spoiled for me. I don't get all fanatical about it, but I will avoid a conversation on a tv show episode that I haven't seen (Heroes comes to mind). There are those rare comics that I intentionally won't flip to the back to see how they end. I want to take the ride without knowing where we are going. And really Secret Invasion has become like that for me. Just in reading the majority of the Bendis' work at Marvel over the last several years, I had unknowingly been reading the entire story leading up to this event. So when suddenly it was "oh by the way, this is a skrull thing. I've been laying down hints at this shit for awhile, go back and read it again", they caught my attention. I figure I had no clue about it this far into the story, why spoil it now? So I kind of want to get the skrull reveals as they happen, not in advance. I wonder if he's related to Hacksaw Jim Dugan?

So don't worry folks, no spoilers on Secret Invasion in this post. Lied my ass off there, I did.

Except that there are. You just don't know it. Unless you can see this, then you do know where they are.

And one last thing:

He loves you.

 

Filed under: DVO Reading Rage