So, recently, Paul O'Brien got mad as hell at Marvel, and by god, he decided he wasn't going to take it anymore.

At first, his ire was directed solely at the excessive amount of ads in Marvels recent releases, something he had done last year. But comments later in his (for lack of a better word, especially since I don't know what they call this kind of thing in Scotland*) rant betrayed a deeper grievance:

Heaven forfend anyone should suggest that Marvel has a chronic lateness problem because they indulge primadonnas who think their Jerry Bruckheimer story is Citizen Kane; artists who somehow find time to draw magazine covers when their regular title is six months late; and TV writers who put their TV work first and have no discernible intention of handing in their scripts on anything remotely resembling a deadline. Heaven forfend anyone suggest that Marvel's scheduling department appears to consist of six monkeys and a dartboard, and that the company persistently announces comics on schedules that it knows full well will never be achieved. Dear me, no. It's all because the unexpected continues to occur with clockwork regularity, and Marvel care so terribly much about quality.

If you happen to not know who Paul is, he's a comics reviewer who focuses mainly on the X-Men comics. He's been reviewing them all for years (longer than I've been following comics on the interweb, certainly).He's easily one of my favoritereviewers on the internet, and has turned me on to a lotof non-X-Mencomics that I probably wouldn't have heard ofwithout readinghim.

Now, usually I don't have any time at all for completists who buy a bunch of comics from a given company no matter what the quality of them is, which is sort of what Paul is. But I think this is different, becausehe does actually critically analyze the books he reads, and in doing so, does a great service to all of the many lapsed X-Men fanatics, by telling us if any of the X-Books are worth reading. He's helped me save a lot of money, he has. Also, he has a good point here (the whole point he's making, not just the bit I cherry picked), even if he seemed to have channeled John Byrne a bit to do it.

If nothing else, if Marvel ispissing offsomeone like Paul, who has identified himself primarily as a genre fan andbuys a lot of their product, you really have to wonder what the hell's going on over there. I'm the last person to give a crap about shipping schedules, usually. I read everything Grant Morrison writes, after all, and it's not like All Star Superman or Seven Soldiers ever came out like clockwork. And I can't say I ever do more than flip past most ads in comics. But, like I said, I think the man has a point. And I think Marvel might do well to listen to him, even if he is foreign and from a place where they eat haggus*. Because if they start seriously alienating readers like him, who will they have left?

*I can never remember if Scotland has one or two ts in it. I'm sure some smart ass commenter will corrrect me if I'm wrong. Who needs spell check when you have readers?

**I'm not sure if that's how you spell haggus or not. I'm sure that smart ass will correct me again if not. If not him, then another. There's a lot of them out there,orphaned by the death of Fanboy Rampage and looking for a place to snark.