New Brevoort Formspring

Here’s the thing: every memorable and classic story from years past involved some sort of meaningful change to the characters involved–whether the Dark Phoenix Saga, Born Again, Age of Apocalypse, or whatever. Fans want change, for all that they are simultaneously terrified by change.

There is a truism–in television they call it the “Moonlighting Effect”–that if you listen to what the fans are saying, you will put yourself out of business. Because there’s a profound difference between what the fans want as readers involved with the lives of the characters (”I want to see Rogue and Gambit get together and consummate their relationship/”) and what they find interesting and compelling as readers.

John Romita Jr tells the story of being a kid reading Spider-Man and bugging his father: “Why can’t you let Peter Parker be happy? Why does he always have all of these problems?” And it wasn’t until he was older that he realized that the problems were what made the strip interesting, and what kept him coming back for more. Eliminate those problems, make the character happy, and watch the audience wander away.

We don’t do anything with the specific motivation of alienating the fans or pissing them off. We do often do things that we believe will probably piss them off–but that’s not the motivation, not the reason we do them. We do them because they are interesting stories to tell, put the characters into new positions, and provide good fodder for future stories.

it is absolutely a truism, however, that the louder the fans scream about some upcoming twist or change, the better the sales of it are likely to be. The worst thing that can happen from our point of view is for us to announce a storyline and for the audience as a whole to go, “Okay, cool.” That’s death. That’s readers wandering away.