Just finished listening to the filmmakers' commentary on my shiny new DVD of SciFi's shiny new Battlestar: Galactica miniseries, and now I'm looking forward to the new TV series even more. I mean, when it first aired, I thought it was great, but listening to the writer, director, and producer talk about the deliberate choices they made, I now have a much better understanding of why it's great. I took so many things for granted while watching it the first time--things that should be taken for granted, to be honest--that I hadn't really noticed the absence of a powerful orchestral score, or so much of the documentary-style camerawork (at least, the live-action stuff; the handheld-looking effects shots are still so fresh and different that I couldn't help but notice them). And I can see why sci-fi fans (not necessarily fans of the original show, specifically, but fans of the genre in general) seem to only grudgingly admit that they liked the miniseries, couching it in phrases like "it was better than I thought it would be" or whatever, even though the ratings for the second half were apparently better than the first half, which is unheard of. Because it doesn't hit those thrilling sci-fi buttons that the fans are used to seeing hit, and, as a result, I'm not sure they knew what to make of it. "Where are all the flashy, effectsy battles?" I'm sure they wondered. "Why doesn't everyone have weird names?" "Why aren't the characters all clear-cut?" I'm increasingly convinced that the majority of genre audiences just aren't equiped to handle something outside of the vocabulary they're used to, and so when they're confronted with something like this show or Firefly, they're not sure how to process it. They aren't just like everything else they've seen and enjoyed, so therefore, they must not be good.

Perhaps I'm being more than a bit cynical and unkind to the fans, but you can blame Geoff Johns and the new comic, Green Lantern: Rebirth, for that. For the non-comics-readers amongst you, a brief history of Green Lantern is necessary. Bear with me.

In 1959, DC Comics introduced Green Lantern, test pilot Hal Jordan by day; intergalactic cop, member of the Green Lantern Corps, by night. The character was a revival of a fairly different character from the 1940s; the only thing they had in common was a green power ring whose energy they could shape by force of will into anything they wanted. Over the course of the series, several back-up Green Lanterns were introduced, but Hal Jordan was the main one. Until about ten years ago. At that point, the Green Lantern comic was selling pretty poorly because, quite frankly, it wasn't very good, as writer Gerard Jones freely admits. In an attempt to boost sales, a story was crafted wherein Hal Jordan went insane from a series of personal traumas, rebelled against the Guardians who oversaw the GL Corps, committed multiple murders, destroyed the GL Corps, and became a supervillain. The power ring was passed to a new character, Kyle Rayner, who has been the main Green Lantern since then. (Jordan was eventually killed through an act of redemption, then brought back as a ghost... it's comics.)

Still, there were vocal fans who insisted that Hal Jordan could only ever be the One, True Green Lantern (even though he wasn't, you know, the first). So now we've got this miniseries, Green Lantern: Rebirth, whose sole purpose is to bring things back to the way they were.

Now, I always kind of liked Green Lantern, and I liked Geoff Johns as a writer, although I think he relies a bit much on reviving existing comics stories and characters rather than creating new ideas. So I thought I would read Rebirth. And it's horrible. It's truly, truly, awful, and it just gets worse every month. It's now at the halfway point, and it has been revealed that Hal Jordan wasn't responsible for the reprehensible acts he committed; it's because he was possessed by the spirit of an alien made up of Pure Yellow Fear! Now, I realize that any story can be made to sound dumb, and that superhero comics do require a certain suspension of disbelief. It's the execution that matters, and believe me, the execution here well and truly blows. I mean, there's the obvious bits, like how the story only really makes sense if you have a PhD in Green Lantern history, because there's no concession made for the new reader, and there's the clunky dialogue and overwritten narration. And then there's the mad desperation at work. (Apparently, white streaks in the hair are a sign of being possessed by a Yellow Fear Alien thing, so when Jordan was drawn graying at the temples more than 15 years ago, it was apparently a sign that he was being possessed. Well, looking at myself in the mirror, I have to suspect that I'm being possessed as well, because I'm going a bit gray at the temples, too.)

But here's the bit that bothers me the most: comics fans seem to be loving this book. They hate the new Space Ghost comic, because it's too dark and nasty, but this is a work of innovation and genius. (This, from the complete nerds on Aint-It-Cool-News, although now I can't find the review to link to it.) Innovation? Returning things to where they were over 15 years ago? Genius? "I'm not a killer; I was possessed by a Yellow Fear Alien?" I'm sorry; I don't see it. But I'm convinced that the fans who love it do so because it does what they want: gives them back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, the way they remember him.

But here's the thing: Hal Jordan hasn't been Green Lantern for 10 years or so. And for at least four years before he Turned Evil, his comic wasn't anything to write home about. So the folks who fondly remember Jordan as Green Lantern have memories that are at least 15 years old. Now, if you figure that most kids don't start reading superhero comics until they're eight or nine (or even seven), then this is a series done for people who are thirty years old or older. There aren't particularly good storytelling reasons to bring back Jordan as Green Lantern; the original creators are all dead, and hadn't worked on the character in decades, there wasn't anything particularly less heroic about Kyle Rayner, and his stories as a hero didn't have to overcome the hurdle of having been a crazy murderer, and neither Jordan nor Rayner is the Green Lantern featured on the Cartoon Network Justice League show, which probably has a larger audience than the comics ever will at this point. So it's not like they're bringing back the most familiar Green Lantern (that would be John Stewart, the one millions of kids watch on TV) to appeal to a broad, new audience. No, this is a series done solely for aging fans who have been waiting for the last ten years for things to go back to the way they once were, no matter how pointless. And a story that does that, no matter how poorly written, has to be brilliant.

And I'm going on about this too long, but here, at last, is my point: as you all know, I'm not a particularly conservative individual. And it is so clear that fans of the things I love very much are, whether evidenced by their embracing of horribly written crap like this, or their knee-jerk rejection of the new Battlestar: Galactica as soon as they hear it won't be just like the original. Now, in the case of the new Battlestar: Galactica, it seems that the actual viewer response, or at least the ratings, override the whiny fans. In the case of comics, however... Well, Green Lantern: Rebirth keeps selling out, while new, left-of-center books like Monolith get canceled. So, the message seems to be--loud and clear--that comics fans would rather have the safe and familiar over the new and different.

And since the disparity between sales and quality on Green Lantern: Rebirth is so great, it's got me not wanting to read superhero comics at all any more. Which, if you know me at all, know that's quite painful. (There are other contributing factors; I've talked before about how I'm less approving of the "might makes right" message the comics send, too, and how I see that as a reflection of the approval of the government, no matter how many mistakes and lies it forces its way through.) It's just not particularly fun for me to read them any more, feeling like the publishers have a mandate to publish weak, backward-looking junk because that's clearly what the fans want. And it's frustrating.

(Obviously, this post has been building for a while, so I'm going to stop now.)