I wrote a review on Nightwing #0, and some guy left me a comment that said:
"No offense, but fans of the Old continuity are whats killing the new 52, the old DCU isnt comming back, and if you took that out of the picture this was a very enjoyable story :)"
That rather irked me, so I wrote him a response which I believe is worth sharing.
"No offense, but you are completely wrong.
"First, DC has never been dying. Their market share might have been decreased over the last couple of decades, but there is a big difference between a shrinking market share and the dying of an industry.
"Second, DC is certainly not dying now. Rather, it has just made a remarkable improvement in health reaching record sales this past year.
"Third, the DCNU is doing well with the old fans not in spite of the old fans. No industry can survive without its base market. Sure, it was largely new fans which added the larger numbers to DC sales last year, but they would not have been near enough to sustain DC if the old fans had not stuck with the comics.
"Fourth, there were some old fans that were so upset by the reboot that they stopped reading, but those fans were few and far between, and they are already gone. Therefore, you cannot attribute any problems to DC's current operations to those people. They are not strangling the industry by refusing to buy comics; they simply left and washed their hands of the whole thing.
"Fifth, you seem to be under the impression that most fans of the old DCU are not fans of the new DCU. This is not the case. Old fans can like both. From what I've seen, a slight majority of old school fans prefer the old universe, but there are still plenty of old school fans who feel the reboot is exactly what the industry needed.
"Sixth, I bought the comic before reviewing it, so obviously, I am not killing the industry.
"Seventh, I did not even give the comic a bad rating. I said it was okay, and that is the rating it rightly deserved.
"Eighth, critiquing the work of a comic book is not meant to be a slam on the DCNU, DC, or even necessarily the particular writers and artists who made the comic. Rather, it is a way of giving other readers and possibly even the creative staff feedback on the comic. It is not an effort to tear anything down; it is an effort to build things up by saying, "This could be better."
"Ninth, any industry that does die under a little scrutiny deserves to die.
"Tenth, as a presumably new fan, you should be thanking old school readers like me for keeping the industry alive for all the years people like you have been neglecting it. If it were not for the old school fans, there would have been no comic book industry, and you would not have been able to jump onto the comic book wagon after they performed their latest gimmick.
"Eleventh, let's pretend for a second that all the stories you have read in the past year were suddenly wiped from continuity? Hacked off? Now multiply that times twenty-five.
"Twelfth and final, sure there are some fans who will whine about every little change made to continuity, but for the most part, I think old school fans have moved over the shock of the DCNU. We are ready and willing to accept changes in continuity, but they have to be good changes. Undermining the father/son bond between Bruce and Dick is not a good change."
Any thoughts?
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