Comic books are one of the coolest forms of writing and art. Using superb storytelling mixed with fantastic art is a delicious combo, much like the Big Daddy Cheeseburger (cheeseburger + gyro). Such a winning formula would attract a lot of fans, right? Kind of. A lot of people walk around wearing shirts with comic covers on them that they got at Wal-mart and say how much they love Batman, but do they? If I went up to one of the “I only date super heroes” girls and said “Robin is great.”. “Oh yeah, I love him!”. “Which one is your favorite?”. “I thought there was only one.”

Listen, too many people are hopping on the comic bandwagon because of aesthetic, edginess and the movies. Every fifteen year old girl thinks they know what’s what about Batman after seeing the Christopher Nolan trilogy and everyone loves Marvel because Iron Man and the Avengers happened. I’m very much involved in the community and all these people hopping on and trying to say that Spider-Man never had a megazord (he did) need a little reality check. There are many different kinds of bandwagoners, but we’re going to cover the three worst, or the holy trinity of hoppers .

Ever since Dark Knight came out, everybody has been all over the Joker. They saw that movie and a few sad panels from ‘The Killing Joke’ and they got all over that. All over Facebook are pictures of Joker with quotes like “I believe what doesn’t kill you makes you stranger” or “There is no sanity clause!” set over drawings of Heath Ledger with filters. We get it, you’re different from other people with a dark side, and you might happen to love Korn.

Hopping off the Joker is the Harley Quinn wagon. All these girls are like, “Because I love you but I’m crazy and I’ll kill aha” and guys are like “That’s hot”. There’s always pictures of Harley Quinn and the Joker that say “relationship goals”. Considering Joker hit and beats Harley up and threatens to kill her on the daily, that doesn’t really sound like a good relationship. It’s pretty bad. Toxic, if you will.

The real worst is Deadpool fans. I love the character, don’t get me wrong, but everyone freaks out over how awesome he is. Nobody even talked about him until Ultimate Alliance came out, and then he was everyone’s favorite character when Marvel vs. Capcom 3 came out. After that everyone decided to go back and watch Hulk vs. Wolverine to fuel the fire so they can cosplay him and just scream about chimichangas. Then his game came out and threw 500 oak trees and a barrel of gasoline on the fire. With his movie coming out, I don’t see it being doused any time soon. I have seen a few people reading his books, but if I asked the average Deadpool fan who Weasel was they’d say “That guy from Silicon Valley”.

They like to preach Indies and don’t know that TMNT used to have all red bandanas, know who Axe Cop is (let alone know it was technically written by a 5 year old), and they’d call me an old person if I asked them what a Cerebus phonebook was. They like to talk Spawn and Hellboy for sheer edginess along with Walking Dead, but they get mad when they realise Daryl isn’t in the comic.

Being a person who’s been following comics and the community since I was 4 years old like social justice warriors follow Donald Trump’s wrongdoings, a lot of these people irk me. No, Batman doesn’t have bronchitis, no Spider-man’s black costume doesn’t look like just his regular one but black, and yes, Fantastic Four is actually dope.I want to talk to you about comics, but I don’t want to talk about Dark Knight and the MCU the whole time. People want to be part of the community without the effort of actually reading a comic. If you picked up a Spirit collection you’d want to get it on it, but nobody wants to read one.  As much as I love them, I blame movies and DC’s television stronghold. If ‘Arrow’ wasn’t so good, not as many people would be praising DC the way they are now. So listen up scrubs, either get in the know, or get out my face with that weak sauce, you ole poo-poo face.