The 'Fourth Wall' is generally defined as the barrier between an audience and a work of fiction. Be it a play, movie, TV show, book or comic, we are given a voyeur's view of a world, invisible as we travel through it and follow the story as it unfolds. Our presence is void - the characters are unaware that there is someone watching them.

The phrase 'Breaking the Fourth Wall' refers to the act of traversing that barrier, and acknowledging from within the fiction that this is a story being told to an audience. It's the part in HIGH FIDELITY where Rob (played by John Cusack) turns to the camera to speak. The bit in a Christmas panto where Puss-in-Boots asks, "Where is he children? Where is he?" And when we shout, "Behind you", we are also breaking the Fourth Wall, complicit in the act of acknowledging that yes, this is just a story, and the people we are watching are merely made-up characters in the story.

You'll have seen it in comics, too, though not necessarily where you might think. Dane grabbing hold of a panel border in INVISIBLES isn't it - that's merely Brechtian, showing us that the events we see are performed for us on a 'stage,' to remind us that this is fiction. On the other hand, the appearance of the god-like 'Dave' in CEREBUS heralded an enormous Fourth Wall violation, giving the doomed Aardvark existential knowledge of his life as a fictional character.

'Comic readers enjoy a relationship with artists above any other entertainment medium.' But there is another, similar Fourth Wall in the area of fictional entertainment; one which exists in our real lives. The barrier between Artist and Audience.

Comic readers, especially the more dedicated ones, enjoy a relationship with the artists whose work they consume far and above any other medium of entertainment. Stephen King doesn't have a letter column in the back of his novels. Oliver Stone doesn't sit at a convention booth for hours, signing videos of PLATOON. You won't find Aaron Sorkin running an Internet message board just to pull in a few more viewers for THE WEST WING, and Sarah Michelle Gellar, should she ever visit the San Diego Comic-Con, is not likely to be found at the hotel bar in the evenings.

Yet comic fans are given the opportunity to meet their idols at regular, well-attended conventions. They can write letters, knowing there is a good chance the creator will respond. And for the last ten years at least, these same people can often be found online, engaging their fans in conversation.

Think about that for a second. Imagine what would happen if Patrick Stewart signed up to rec.tv.misc.st-tng and actually posted there, regularly, holding conversations and debates with fans. Imagining the electronic body count alone is enough to make one need a lie down.

What does this tell us, other than the fact that most comic creators have far more patience and tolerance than many realise or give them credit for?

Traditionally, the artist is only 'available' to their audience when The Numbers are sufficiently low. An indie musician at the start of their career may well hang out in the bar after a gig, or a novelist fighting to make their first book a modest success will perhaps engage the online community in an attempt to curry favour and goodwill from a core audience.

But it's rare indeed once success hits. Suddenly, the band you once shared a pint with at a fifty-capacity club with a crap PA arrive and exit through stage doors, spending the intervening time in their dressing room. The novelist with whom you enjoyed a heated debate concerning character versus plot no longer answers your emails, and hasn't signed on to the message board for over a year.

The wall has been erected.

But the truth is, that wall has always been there - it isn't so much erected as stepped behind, and only the artist is allowed to pass the guards. Your name's not on the list, and you're definitely not coming in.

'The barrier deprives us of feeling close to these artists.' The question is - is this so bad? We treat our movie stars like, well, stars. We idolise our favourite bands, and we each hold a few novelists in high respect. If we ever meet them, we are tongue-tied - 'starstruck', even - because we have been allowed, even if under contrived and safeguarded circumstances, behind the wall for an all-too-brief moment of time. The barrier serves to deprive us of feeling 'close' to these artists. Instead we are drip-fed their work, in turn ensuring that when it becomes available we devour it like hungry pack animals and beg for more. But they tease, and promise us that maybe we can have some more when they feel like it. Not at our whim.

This is what keeps us coming back for more. This is what maintains a sense of wonder about the artist and the works they produce, a feeling of awe as we watch them wielding their craft at the allotted time.

Comics, as usual, are entirely different. In terms of percentages, there are more representatives of the professional comics medium online than there are for any other form of entertainment. There are regular conventions, attended by literally hundreds of creators. Signings. Letter columns. Easily obtainable email addresses.

Why is this? Why do comic creators make themselves available to their readers in a manner unknown in other media? One argument holds that it is primarily down to the great majority of today's professional creators having 'risen' from the ranks of fandom themselves. They remember very well how much they would have enjoyed the same level of interaction with Kirby, Lee or Kane, and so - like a selfless parent - strive to give their own fans what they could never have.

A more cynical argument is that these creators still are 'mere fans' at heart, and genuinely enjoy getting into 300-message-long internet debates about whether or not Thor could beat up the Hulk.

'Familiarity breeds contempt. We see it every time we log on to a message board.' Whatever the reasons, this interaction dispels that sense of awe that we feel for professionals in other media. Once a fan has recovered from their initial gosh-wow reaction, their latent tendencies to argue about comics rises to the fore. Before you know it, the creator is no longer seen as a professional, but as just another person who happens to be sitting behind a booth, or at the other end of an email.

And familiarity breeds contempt.

The evidence is before us. There are comic fans who become enraged when a creator refuses to talk to them for fifteen minutes in the middle of a busy convention. There are fans who insult creators to their 'faces' on internet message boards, or who truly believe that because they have been buying someone's work for a few years that the creator is duty-bound to sit and sign a hundred comics for them. Worse still, there are fans who believe creators must sit and listen to their ten-minute diatribe on why Hal Jordan should never have died, or how much better an artist's work was ten years ago. The list is long.

It is, of course, a double-edged sword: a good 'community presence' can be of real benefit to a comics creator, helping them to develop reader loyalty for their work and also even to gain new readers, who are delighted to be given the chance to converse with a working professional. Peter David, Warren Ellis and Brian Michael Bendis are perhaps the three most adept people at fostering this sense of accessibility, and all have reaped the benefits.

But the other edge can leave a nasty scar. While it's doubtful that a creator is going to quit the field because a couple of hundred people directly tell them they 'suck,' one has to wonder what it does to their morale, and their desire to continue working in the field.

There are no answers to this one, but I ask you all to consider this: perhaps we have become too familiar with our idols. And as I said before, familiarity breeds contempt.

Antony Johnston is the author of JULIUS, SPOOKED and THE LONG HAUL. His new ongoing series WASTELAND begins in July 2006.

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