Camera Obscura: Big Brother Is Watching You

Alasdair Watson is Ninth Art's webmaster, so he knows what you people are reading. He knows what you people like. He knows your dirty little secret, and he's about to tell the world.
19 October 2001

Neophobia. Fear of the new. Ugly, rotten thing. Neophobes. Ugly, rotten people.

Comics are full of ugly and rotten people. In the extreme, for they're the ones who form organisations like HEAT (Hal's Emerald Action Team, if memory serves - they're not happy that the Green Lantern comic isn't the same as it was fifteen years ago) or complain that the Spider-Man film has him developing organic webshooters. Clear cases of brain damage, there. Something the rest of us can point to and laugh at.

Makes us feel better about our own bad habits, after all.

Don't you look at me like that. I can see that nostalgia in your eyes. I can see you dancing with delight that ZENITH is due to be re-printed soon. Don't try and hide your copy of TRANSFORMERS: ALL FALL DOWN behind your back.

But a backlist is a good thing, isn't it? The collected edition will save us won't it? I mean, we can sell collections in bookshops and everything. Normal people will read them. We'll be hailed as visionary gods by a public who will suddenly discover the huge breadth of deeply cool things that the comics industry has put out over the years. It'll make comic creators rich as Croesus. Hooray for the trade paperback.

Economically, yeah, they're fantastic. Culturally? I remain to be convinced. Maybe they are an intermediary step in the road to an original-graphic-novel-driven economy, which will allow us to put out even more challenging new works by talented creators working in a wide variety of genres. Maybe.

I'd have a hell of a lot more faith in this if I didn't know exactly what's really popular with you bastards. I can tell what you're reading on this site. No, not you personally, but I know exactly how many of you read Nick Locking's review of ALL FALL DOWN compared to the number that read Antony Johnston's review of SOUNDTRACK. Over seven times as many. As I write this it's less than 48 hours since Andrew Wheeler's review of JLA: EARTH 2 went up on the site. It's been a popular review. It's already been read more times that Marcia Allass' review of THE BROCCOLI AGENDA, which we published in our first month of operation.

Sure, I'm not surprised. JLA: EARTH 2 is by Grant Morrison. He's famous. Who's the guy that wrote THE BROCCOLI AGENDA again? How d'you spell that surname?

It's not that no-one's reading the reviews of the really good stuff, don't get me wrong. Plenty of you are, and I love each and every last one of you. It's just that so many more of you are reading reviews of the safe, easy, "mainstream" stuff.

Here's why I think that is:

You're not reading our reviews to find out whether or not you should be buying a given book. You're reading them to find out what you ought to think about something you've already bought. Why else would there be such a clear link between a book's sales figure and the number of people looking at the reviews we run?

Am I being harsh? Unfair? Tough. What am I supposed to think? You want to convince me that there's some other reason that you all love X-MEN: GOD LOVES, MAN KILLS but are less interested in SCENE OF THE CRIME? Go right ahead. Prove me wrong.

You can't, can you? It's not like you have to pay to read any of this stuff. It costs you no more to read a review of a small press title than it does to read about something that's been hyped to the sky. So why aren't you reading them both? Hell, why aren't you flocking to read about the books you've never heard of, and leaving the mainstream stuff unlooked at?

You're being given a chance to find out about stuff you've never seen before. Something new. But you're all frightened, aren't you? You don't want to waste your time on something you've never heard of. Much safer to read about something like TRANSFORMERS. You know what you're going to get with that, or you think you do.

You're all fucking neophobes.

So answer me this: why? What do you have to lose by trying something new? You're all salivating of Neil Gaiman's recently announced collection of ENDLESS stories, aren't you? You know what you're going to get. Safe, easy, predictable. Sure, it'll be good. It'll be Neil Gaiman doing what he does well. You know you'll get your money's worth, which, let's face it, is an important consideration for those of us who have to work for a living.

But for god's sake, this is what reviews are for. It's part of the reason we run the damn Shipping Forecast every week. To help you find value for money, and steer you away from the vast quantities of shit that this industry puts out. You don't need to know if Andrew Wheeler liked JLA: EARTH 2 if you already own it. You have presumably already formed your own opinion, if you have any sort of functional cerebral cortex.

But if you've never heard of Jessica Abel, then it might do you some good to read a review of SOUNDTRACK. Maybe you'll read the review and decide it's not for you. I'm not going to blame you for that. But read the review before you decide.

Another thought for you: We all know that Gaiman's new book is going to be in print for ages. It's an OGN. It's Neil Gaiman. It's not going away any time soon. So, here's a challenge for you. The week it comes out (or whenever you first opportunity to get your hands on it would be), don't buy it. Take a look through our reviews section at the books you've never heard of, find one you like the sound of, and buy that instead. If there's nothing in our archive that grabs your fancy, then go looking at iComics, Sequential Tart, PopImage or somewhere else. You'll find something. The Gaiman book can wait for the next time you've got the spare cash. Or Christmas. Or whenever. Trying something new, on the other hand, well, that's not something you people do every day, is it?

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

Ninth Art endorses the principle of Ideological Freeware. The author permits distribution of this article by private individuals, on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.