You are Jack's disenfranchised masses.
The thing is, companies like Marvel know about you. And ... they're okay with it for some reason. They are happy to alienate their old clientele as long as the possibility of attracting new sales remains. I'm not sure why this is, but it happens all the time.
Think about Star Wars. Before I was here I was running several large Star Wars focused prop and costuming replication forums. These were people who spent
thousands of dollars to build replicas of stuff from the movies. They are loyal dedicated fans. You'd think Lucasfilm would have been
very interested in keeping them around because, as the original nerds to cut their teeth on the first 3 films in the 70's and 80's, they are now having babies and giving them the Star Wars kool-aid to drink. That is
a lot of toy sales.
But Lucasfilm didn't seem interested and over about 6 years (2 prequels) I saw an attrition rate of "old" star wars fans that was only slightly lower than the number of college students still declaring themselves "pre-med" after their first semester of Organic Chemistry. Jar-Jar, standing in for "Orgo 1" killed off nearly half the fan base within the first 10 minutes of the first prequel. The remaining fans were picked off sniper style by C3P0, Hayden Christiansen, and gratuitous CGI (It gets kind of lame making costumes that are impossible to replicate because they don't really exist.). Anyone still standing after Darth Vader's anti-climatic "Nooooooo" bomb at the end of #3 gets a special badge of honor for being a true die hard fan and willing to put up with anything.
Why does the Star Wars franchise still exist then? Well, it turns out that the kids still love it (just like we did when
we were kids back in the 70's). Not only that, those kids are growing up and ... they want to make costumes and props too. Lucasfilm : 1, legacy fan base : 0. People are still buying the merchandise and watching the shows, and they just off loaded (what is to them) a bunch of annoying loudmouth nay-sayers who seem to think the franchise belongs to them just because they grew up with it. They enjoy peace and quiet as they count their profits.
Personally, I like it here.
I like it here because nobody here has their savings "invested" in a pile of PVC and velcro. I like it here because people are interested in the stories and the artwork for their own merits as stories and artwork. I like it here because no one feels like they "wasted" 60 hours machining the perfect Boba Fett rifle blast shield (ESB version of course) only to up one day and realize that "it's just a kid's movie". (This isn't to say that people shouldn't build replicas, just that they should recognize that they're really doing it because ... it's FUN!)
Comics are a rich enough medium that there is something for everybody. If Marvel superheroes are sucking, there's a whole shop (internet or brick and mortar) filled with awesome new books by amazing new writers and artists you've never heard of. I know that this is a Nightcrawler site and I'll always think that Nightcrawler is one of the hippest most badass superheroes ever to hit bristol board regardless of what Marvel may or may not be doing with the character at this very moment.
But just because I like Nightcrawler doesn't mean I'm not leaving space in my heart for other creations. I totally miss waiting
wait-ing for the next issue of Darick's book to come out and being so stoked on Wednesdays because it was new comic day and after class I was going to go to the comic store and for at least one hour, I wasn't going to study vet-med topic du-jour but read a comic I was really invested in. I'm always looking to fall in love like that again, but you can't force that kind of thing, you have to browse.
So, kick Marvel in the way that it really matters - by giving the sales to someone making better comics than they are. Marvel doesn't seem to care if you go away, but they do care if someone else gets their money. (cue evil laughter)
I don't know how this turned into a big soapbox speech, but I guess what I'm saying is that I worry more about comics as a medium than I do about Nightcrawler. I want to keep the medium alive more than I want comics with Nightcrawler in them. (Medium alive WITH awesome Nightcrawler comics would be ideal of course...)
-e