Bias & Fanboyism in Comic Reviews

As most of you know, I review new comics over at Weeklycomicbookreview.com.  It's an interesting avocation because there is no established source for comics journalism.  Even the "big boys" of Comic Book Resources, Newsarama and iFanboy probably aren't making much money on this stuff and if you go down a notch further down to sites like WCBR, you're talking about folks who are creating content just for fun.  Yet, there are fans and readers who want objective reviews.  

One's life as a comic reviewer is interesting.  You start out just flinging reviews into the ether.  You can see the traffic stats for your reviews and see that you're getting a whopping 15 page views per day and that most of those are search engines.  Then something interesting happens: You get an email from a real, live comic book creator who is thanking you for saying something nice about their comic book.  

You get an epiphany at this point, "Creators read this stuff!"  And, many of those creators are friendly guys.  Lots of them doing creator-owned comics at places like Image aren't getting paid anything and have dreamed of doing comics their whole life and suddenly they've got people critiquing their work in public.  

I don't know about you, but I don't love it when my professional work get's critiqued in public.  

Eventually you get friendly with some of these guys.  You become friends on twitter, learn that you have things in common with a few of them, see them at conventions, have them as sources to ask insider questions, etc.  Yet, along the way....you are still having to review their work.  At some point, it becomes like being asked to critique a friend in public.  It's also good to remember that it is a one-sided relationship in that way......Ryan Stegman probably isn't going to start blogging about my skills at writing patent licenses.

It's all fun and games until the creator does something you don't really love.  What do you do?  We all know what the options are: lie about it, just avoid it and review something else or be candid.

For me personally, if they work isn't complete crap, I've usually tried to do the candid thing.  If it's a creator that I'm friendly with, I'll usually drop them an email to warn them, explain what I didn't like and say that I hope they realize the value of having quality reviews that are as unbiased as possible.  It's also worth keeping in mind how reviews at multi-contributor sites work.  At WCBR, we have some titles that are "assigned" to us and some that we just sign-up for.  I've heard creators say, "Why would you review something when you have nothing nice to say?"  Well....we do it because we said we wanted to do it.  For a title like Batman, there are often several reviewers who want to review it, so you really can't sign up for it and not review it.  It would be like taking the last bit of food out of the pot when there are other hungry people around and then not eating it.

But, the sneakier thing in comic reviews is the subtle bias.  Anything that is "really good" becomes "issue of the year!!!!!", material that is really average becomes "very good" and a comic that is actually kinda subpar is "average".  That sort of bias is really insidious because you can't really see it happening.  It's like how you can't smell your own B.O. or bad breath.  Most reviewers actually like it when readers drop a nicely worded comment pointing out some possible fanboyism.  I know I appreciate it.

The other thing for fans is to know your reviewers.  Personally, I can't see any value in individual reviews taken alone.  You have to know what kinds of comics a particular reviewer enjoys and which they do not enjoy....and it takes a consistent review for that to happen.  Over time you realize that Dean really seems to like Scott Snyder a lot and that he really doesn't like Greg Land at all.  And you can consider the reviews appropriately.  This is why I see ZERO value in sites that allow user reviews except as a kind of crowdsourced average score.  I just don't know how you can get much value from a dude who posts a singular review under a screen name like "Poopmonster63".

So, to wrap up....we are biased, but we never said we weren't.

- Dean Stell