Spontaneous Musings

I was going to respond to all the comments to the Buffy comics poll that I created last week, but was overwhelmed. Will state this, love them or hate them, people are certainly still passionate about the comic books and Buffy.

Anyhow, the results of the Buffy Comics Reading Poll were rather interesting, not to mention the most responses I've ever received to a poll. 79 people responded to the poll, which is a fairly good sample of the portion of the Buffy fandom that I've interacted with, both in the past, and currently.
I was hoping for a bit more than that, to be honest, but did not really expect to get more than 30 at the most. If I'd gotten less than 50, I would not be doing a meta.

Of the 79 that responded?

81% have read the comic books.

Of the portion that had read the comics: 88.6% have bought the comic books. (11.4% did not - from the comments, the 11.4% that did not buy them either downloaded the file online, read the comic in the store, or got it from a friend or relative.)

50.7% of those that have read the books are still reading them.
49.3% gave up.

Of the 50.7% that is still reading:

only 25.5% are enjoying them. 43.6% are unsatisfied/ambivalent and waiting to see what happens with Twilight or the arc in general. From the comments, Twilight appears to be the only reason the 43.6% are still reading the comics. That and to see if Spike ever shows up, although many of them really hope he doesn't because they no longer trust the writer/writers to be faithful to their favorite characters. A few are hanging in there out of general curiousity - to see where Whedon takes the story and how he manages to fit it with the Fray universe.

30.9% hate the comics.

Their reasons range from a dissatisfaction over how the characters have been portrayed to how the setting, world, and general storyline has unfolded. The inaccuracies regarding Europe, Tibet, and specifically England were cited as major points of contention. (eg. In No Future For You the depiction of England as something out of a 19th century Harlequin romance novel or X-men comic book annoyed several people. The fact that everyone outside the US was shown as being in pre-modern times or barbarabic - such as the steam engine train in Germany (Germany by the way is miles ahead of the US regarding rail technology - they have trains that can rival a jet engine, stream lined, and beautiful, safe, and environmentally compliant. Europe is actually more advanced in some respects than the US, specifically in regards to trains and electronic hybrids. The US is actually behind the rest of the world in health care and transportation advancements.) )

Now this surprised me, because it turns out that we were wrong in our speculation of what turned people off of the comic books.

Of the 49.3% that stopped reading:

33.3% stopped at The Long Way Home - the first arc of the series. They tried the comics, and found they did not like them. End of story. They did not comment or if they did, that was the general sentiment.

26.7% stopped at Retreat - they commented on why they stopped at this point, stating the either the plot stopped making sense or they had just gotten bored and no longer cared.

20% stopped at Wolves at the Gate - they didn't comment on why.

10% stopped at No Future for You - they stated that the setting was handled in an offensive manner and the characterizations did not work for them.


Regarding the canon question?

45.9% said the comics are not canon. 14.9% stated that only the Buffy comics were canon. While 21.6% stated that the Buffy and Angel comics are.
Most people did not care and ignored the question - there's something to be said for that I think.

Personally, I think we should all just agree that the Buffy comics are how Joss Whedon would continue the story without actors, networks, and budgetary concerns associated with network television, and leave it at that. Because that is actually a "factual" assessment of the situation, upon which everyone should be able to agree. The need to put a lable on it, while understandable, is hardly necessary. For short hand - just say "Joss Whedon's canon" or the canon according to Joss Whedon or JWC or JW canon. Just a suggestion.

On all the other questions? About 50% of the 79 who responded, answered them. The ones who didn't stated in the comments that they either weren't interested, did not care for the rest of the poll, it did not pertain to them, or they thought the questions were stupid. (Most were fairly polite about it and kept their reasons to themselves.)

Here's the results in case you are at all curious:

1.Xander/Dawn relationship - 12.3% liked the pairing. 67.7% could care less or were ambivalent, i.e. bored. And 20% disliked it with a fiery passion (I'm guessing B/X shippers? But I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time.). (Xander/Dawn shippers get to call themselves a beleaugered minority from this point forward, with Joss Whedon as their president (Whedon's idea) and Nick Brendan as their nemesis (he apparently hated the pairing).)

2. Character people most want to reappear? (This got quite a bit of traffic in the comments.)

Spike got 42.6% of the vote. So he wins. Dru was a distant second with 9%.
According to the comments, those who want Spike to reappear, basically want the same thing I do, closure. And they are curious as to how Whedon sees Spike in Buffy's journey.
Those who do not want to see Spike reappear or are deeply ambivalent - fear how Whedon and Dark Horse will write the character or resolve the situation. Then there's a third group, who believes that the character would ruin the comics much as he did the tv series and the comics should only be about Buffy. (Which begs the question, are you reading these comics? Because I'm not seeing all that much of "Buffy" in them, to be honest.)

3. The lamest Character to appear or Character whose reappearance we could have done without, award goes to:

Warren with a whopping 71.9% of the vote. Highest to date in the extraneous and somewhat meaningless fun question category. (So, Warren shippers? Or Warren/Amy shippers? From hereon out, you are officially a beleagured minority. I got one or two comments that actually liked Warren's reappearance and seemed a bit put-out with the rest of us, can't say I blame them.)
The one's who disliked Warren's presence - stated his reappearance took them out of the story, broke their suspension of disbelief and more or less ruined the gravity of Season 6, Willow's actions and the arc. If Willow didn't actually kill Warren with the skinning what was the point?

4. Best pairings?

Giles and Faith win by 37.7%. No one else came close. Buffy/Satsu was 13.1%. What was interesting about these results and sort of ironic is that people stopped reading the comics during or because of the issues each of those ships appeared in. Not that that means they disliked the pairings.

(And yes I know I should have included Xander/Dracula - but I had managed to delete that ship from my memory banks, so didn't think of it. Just as I should have included Buffy/Fray - which I sort of liked, but forgotten. Doesn't matter - only 5 people picked the other category, so clearly the vast majority of responders forgot about them too.)

5. Who do you hope/think Twilight is?

Note I put hope in there - because at this point I don't think there are any clear clues to the guy's identity. There's a couple of people I think that I could fanwank - Giles, Hank Summers, Xander, Buffy, Willow, and Ethan Raine. I was tempted to list Tara as an option, but ran out of options. That's the reason I didn't put "I don't care" as an option because I ran out of options. Those nasty lj programmers limit the number of options you can list.

There really wasn't any clear winner in this category, so I'm guessing most people don't care or don't have a clue. Which means the Twilight secret identity story ain't working for the audience, I suspect. Or at least the portion that responded to the poll - which is really all I care about at this point. (shrugs)

Xander got 18.2%
Someone we've never seen got 14.5%
Some subsidiary character 16.4%
Other 10.9% (these are the folks who did not care and answered the question)

No one explained why they picked Xander as the winner - but I can guess. If it were Xander - that would hurt Buffy the most. It would be the biggest twist and be the most shocking.
Also, I'm guessing part of this could well be a reactionary response to the Xander vs. Spike wars that many of the commentators mentioned. Apparently there are a few Xander fans in the comics fandom who are getting off on bashing Spike and Spike fans, even though Spike has yet to appear in the comics and if he does, will probably do so briefly much as OZ has. Sigh.

I don't think Twilight is Xander. But I could be wrong. I think Twilight is either someone we haven't seen or Giles. I hope he's Hank Summers - but I'm in the beleaguered minority on that score.

6. Best Comic or Preference?

(And yes, I know, I left off - hate all of them. But I figured that was already answered above. One repetitive question was more than enough. Apologies for the one, by the way.)

No true leader here either. Buffy comics were ahead by a smidgen of a percentage point.

Buffy - 38.6%
Spike -35.1%
Angel and Spike -10.5%

I'd say this was a case of Spuffy, except notably it was not Buffy and Spike comics that they preferred. It was an either/or scenario.

The fandom is in other words, split down the middle on this issue. In the comments section, quite a few people made a point of stating that while they loved the Spike comics - they loved them because they knew they weren't meant to be a continuation of the tv series by Whedon or what they would define as canon. (Which I found fascinating. So if they were meant to be part of the series or Whedon was behind them? You'd not like them? Hate to tell you this, but Whedon read them, told Minear this is exactly how he sees Spike and loves it to pieces - that's why he gave Lynch all his notes for the Spike movie and Angel After the Fall - he felt Lynch could do it justice based on the Lynch Spike comics.) Others stated they only liked whatever was written by Whedon or controlled by Whedon and ignored everything else. They felt that Angel After the Fall wasn't Whedon's canon, because they'd like to think Whedon would write Angel less flatly than Lynch apparently did. [I don't know, I saw the character as straight-up noir hero, which is pretty much how Whedon described him in his last question on the topic, and written flatly and portrayed flatly in the tv series. So, I'm guessing you'd be disappointed in Whedon's take and more or less already got it? ]

Thank you for taking the poll, sorry wasn't able to respond to the comments. Time has gotten away from me. Off to make dinner before it gets much later.