No Alarms And No Surprises

This is strange to write on a blog but…

I miss the comic book universe pre-internet.

One of the biggest reasons I was pro-kill Captain America was not so much because I wanted him to die (I would rather Superman die and stay dead long before I would choose Cap) but because I was impressed with Marvel’s ability to keep this a well guarded secret. Any time Marvel or DC can actually surprise me, no matter what it is, I’m on board.

I love surprises.

I remember the *plink* of the bullet going through Kitty Pryde and hitting the thought to be dead Colossus.

I remember Xorn being revealed to be Magneto.

I remember not knowing that Robin was going to die. (Imagine how that would have played out today. A 10 AM Wednesday post - Newsarama.com interviews Geoff Johns about "A World Without Robin")

Call them cheap tricks. All I know is I read those comics multiple times.

There didn’t used to be so many options. I never fucked with the newsgroups because it was so unorganized and messy but once I went to Newsarama the first time. It was over. Now we have thousands of comic blogs and websites getting their information from Marvel and DC, Previews books, weekly spoilers from Rich Johnston.

Nothing that happens these days are a surprise. Even things like Civil War or Infinite Crisis when we don’t know what the final issue will be like, we know what the editorial landscape will be for the next 3 months.

Sadly, the only pleasure I get like that is from my older brother.

Our basic system is this: I buy all the comics and read them. Then every 3-4 weeks, he comes to my apartment and takes them home with him to read. He doesn’t go to Newsarama or Comic Book Resources or even this blog unless I forward him a link. The only advance comic book knowledge he gets is from me.

So after he finally dives into the weeks of comic books I’ve just given him, I get a ton of phone calls:

“Holy shit!”
“I can’t believe he’s dead”
“YOOOOOOOOO! Why didn’t you tell me?”

I never tell him (Okay, sometimes I tell him what to read first) because I am vicariously living thought his sense of awe and surprise that I have long since lost.

It’s too late for me. I read at least 7 comic websites a day. I am addicted to spoilers. I can’t help it...

The day that Captain America #25 dropped, I didn’t know Captain America died until I actually read the issue because I was on vacation and wasn’t using my computer so I didn’t go to my daily bookmarks list.

I heard all the stories of people being spoiled by Yahoo and NY Daily News.

Even the cashier at Golden Apple tried to spoil it for me assuming I already knew but I was like “Don’t say a thing. I haven’t heard anything about it yet and I haven't read it.”

I got into my friend’s car, read it, said “Oh shit!” and felt like a technological child again.