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08/10/2003: this reminds me why I usually avoid interviews with authors/artists
After reading this interview with Chuck Austen (on the occasion of his upcoming run on Action Comics) I hope he'll never get his hands on a Batman title. The interview also shows that not only fan writers have problems sometimes to take criticism graciously. I mean, I like some of the comics he wrote okay (though I'm not thrilled with the recent issues of Uncanny X-Men), but that were all series where I'm not very invested with the characters or the continuity. I also get what he means with making Superman more human, and less a perfect "boy scout." At least up to a point. However his views on continuity are sort of frightening.
His statements on people who don't like his writing and fans in general are less than complimentary (to put it mildly), and really how lame is it that he feels he has to resort to name calling and claiming comic fans who don't like the way he writes (or index comics for that matter) have no sex live?
"Continuity and much of the market as it stands are for die-hard fans who have every issue of every comic indexed and categorized, and give me hell every single day of the week online because they have no life, and no one who loves them, or will touch them naked, and they have nothing better to do with their day once they've indexed last Wednesdays shipment. The more we cater to that inbred mindset, the less we will appeal to real readers, or casual fans who enjoy a good story with good characters. Those casual fans will eventually move on as they have been steadily for the last many years, leaving us with only the twelve trolls online, who will have nothing to complain about, because Marvel and DC will be gone."
