Posted in: Recent Updates | Tagged:

Tripping Over Myself by Joel Meadows #4 – Spoilers

It's amazing to think that, when we started TRIPWIRE back in 1992, the
internet wasn't really an issue: Image had just been formed by artists
disgruntled with Marvel and the average price for a comic was around
$1.50. We have witnessed so much change since we began life as a
fanzine, produced with a now ex-friend who wrote our music reviews and
designed by someone I went to sixth form college with. It's hard to
believe but in 1992 Brian Bendis was a blink in the comics industry's
collective eye and the name Geoff Johns didn't register at all with
comics readers. Yet now we can hardly form a sentence without
including something we've read or watched online. The Internet has
become as vital to our lives as electricity or gas. For good or for
ill, the Internet and the Web that runs on it has flattened many
fields, eliminating some and dominating others but more than anything
it has altered the way we communicate: removing divides that once
stood insurmountable between consumer and producer, media user and
media maker.

The internet has certainly blurred the barrier between fan and creator
but this increased access has also meant that new projects seem to
have lost their sense of wonder. Where's the surprise to that new
Hollywood blockbuster when everyone from the director to the dolly
grip have tweeted about it since it was announced? How can you
approach DC's latest hot new series when you've been reading about it
on Facebook for the past two years with its artist posting pages from
it for the past ten months? How can you be surprised by a character
development or a talent switch on your favorite book when the news is
broken by a site like Bleeding Cool as often as not before the
official press release has even been penned by the publisher in
question?

In the days before the Internet or before broadband, fans didn't know
every intimate detail of every new comic, film or TV programme before
it appeared and so fatigue didn't set in before it was even released.
People are just too savvy now thanks to Facebook and Twitter. They can
contact their favourite writer or director with a simple click. All of
the mystique seems gone out and, if everyone is so clued-up about
what's happening, then maybe much of the fun is gone. Also, because
everyone has smartphones, laptops or now iPads, news can be spread and
shared seconds after it is revealed. So it presents a little bit of a
quandary for magazines like TRIPWIRE, forcing us to try and give
readers something they can't get anywhere else, a deeper take on the
content itself, a connection between the material and the culture that
brought it about.

Even then, for me as a journalist who writes about this stuff,
sometimes it would be nice if I didn't know too much about a film I'm
really looking forward to seeing so some of the mystery can be
preserved. But it's not likely to change – if anything it's going to
get worse – and so we just have to live with the fact that things
won't go back to the way they were in the pre-internet days. Of
course, there's nothing stopping us from avoiding reading about that
forthcoming big movie or comic series, preserving that sense of
mystery. The choice to be spoiled is yours…

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!