"Wouldn't it be cool if Wolverine joined the Avengers?"

"Wouldn't it be cool if Magneto was in the X-Men?"

"Wouldn't it be cool if Spider-Man made his own webbing like a real spider?"

And then would come the explanation that began with "That would never happen because..." As in, "Wolverine would never join the Avengers because his allegiance is to the X-Men...they're the only family he knows besides the Hudsons and he's not really a joiner."

But what happened at some point is, those kids who would have all of those fanfic fantasies that real fans would shout down came to have power over the direction of the characters. So that indeed Wolverine not only joined the Avengers, he's now the "good" guy while that stupid, sucky Cyclops is the asshole.

How and when did this unfortunate turn of events occur? There is a lack of maturity and responsibility in comics today.

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I've been saying for years now that so-called "professional" comics are really nothing more than hi-priced fanzines. They have in them all the stuff we'd hear the fans at conventions and in comic shops saying they wanted to see.

And this, of course, should bring to mind two by now familiar (I hope) "rules":

STAN LEE: Never give the fans what they THINK they want.

LEN WEIN: The first story you'd do as a fan should be the last story you'd do as a pro.

When did it start? Hard to say. Spider-Man's comics in the last thirty years or so has been a cascade of things that the fans wanted but should not have happened -- marrying MJ, for instance. A real turning-point for me, tho, would be when Cyclops started being written as the "jerk" some fans said he was.

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The problem with any notion for a company-wide fix is that no one really has the stones to do it. Look at DC. THREE TIMES they have "fixed" their messed up characters and continuity. CRISIS, ZERO HOUR, and now 52. But each time they didn't have to courage, the conviction, the commitment to really grab that new broom and sweep clean. Each time, bits and pieces of the old continuity hung on. 52 is peppered with story and character elements that depend on what went before.

Fear of fan backlash is what's driving this. And it is why nothing can every really be done. The lunatics built the asylum, own the asylum, run the asylum. . .

What is sad is that the companies either don't understand or care about how many REAL fans would return to take the place of those who they now try so hard to appeal to, who might leave if they were to ever go back to what we might call the good ol' days.  But I think you're right, John...those running the joint don't seem to be really bothered by how much the characters and storylines have been perverted during this period.  Sales be damned, I think TPTB actually dig being able to tell the stories THEY want to tell, rather than adhering to continuity and fidelity to the characters as established over the years.

It's fine to do a story where Cyclops begins to break out of his shell and gain a bit of confidence.  It's also fine to do a story where the X-Men are forced by necessity to form an alliance with Magneto to defeat a greater threat, during which Magneto may exhibit some pangs of conscience.  That's within bounds, IMO, of who those characters have been established to be.  Evolution, growth...to me that's fine and necessary.

But they've taken that element of storytelling too far and as the saying goes, jumped the shark. 

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Sure -- as long as it's an illusion of change. But the moment things like this become REAL change, then the stories are being played to the long-time readers, the ones who can quote chapter and verse on stories that were published ten, fifteen, forty years ago, and they begin to become inaccessible to new readers.

Before the influx of fans-turned-pro began to dominate, in the Seventies, American superhero comics were content to stay permanently "in the middle". The characters had a Past, to which occasional reference would be made, and they had a Future -- which they would never reach. And roughly every five years or so there would be an almost entirely new audience, who would not NOTICE that Dick Grayson wasn't getting any older, or that Superman had thrown Lex Luthor in jail about 8,296 times now.

Or that Cyclops wasn't "growing" as a human being. The moment we started writing for the people who DID notice that, was the moment we slit our own throats.

There are a plethora of reasons I don't read current comics, but one of the main things that bothers me is how sadistic they have become.  The violence in general doesn't bother me but some of the warped scenes shown are sickening and need to be reigned in.

Did anyone else notice that Marvel now has an "Executive Producer" credit?  How bad do they want to be the film industry?

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Whenever I offer my Sage Council, someone invariably points to an example of my having broken my own "rules".

But what I emphasize in these cases, is that the opinions I offer are born from years -- well, yes, DECADES -- in the business. I did not spring fully grown from Zeus' head, already knowing all this stuff. It took me a long time -- and not a few times of doing it WRONG -- to figure out how to do it RIGHT.

When did this happen? When did it become "cool" to bitch about such things, instead of being the oddball who was looked at askance for wasting time on such thoughts?

And yet, not once do I recall a scene of Ben, or Joe, or Hoss, or Adam going out back to look at the array of headstones on the hillside.