Entertainment Weekly ticks me off...Again!

EW 081007

Yes, I know how this one-sided war with EW makes me look. It makes me look like a petulant child, stamping my feet and holding my breath, screaming over and over "I am not a geek!"

I really should let this go. Basically, EW bringing out the word "geek" every time it covers comic books or the San Diego Comic-Con is really minor. Inconsequential, really.

But the fact that they do it over and over again really irks me. I get the feeling that they are doing it on purpose just to piss me off.

The August 10th issue is another example. The issue features a four page article on the convention, advertised with a colorful blurb on the cover.

This should make me happy. A major weekly mainstream magazine devoting that much space to Comic-Con means that it and comics in general have become more legitimate. (And also is in line with my thoughts that next year, Comic-Con will grace EW's cover).

But EW seems to have a distainful look on comics, their readers and the fact that they are forced to cover things like Comic-Con. This might just seem like crazy talk. But this issue gives me evidence to back this up. All involving, you guessed it, the word geek.

The first issuance of the word geek comes in the opening tagline. "Join EW on Four Days of Geek-tastic Gorging as Hollywood's Heavyweights Decend on San Diego to Court Their Fanboy Fan Base". Yes, besides the excessive use of alliteration, one of my least favorite literary techniques, the bastardize "geek" to become an adjective. Groan.

But the worse case of this comes on the opposite page. Here is the pull quote as it appears in EW:

EW snyder pull quote

Wait a minute? Did Zack Snyder just call me a geek? EW sure does make it look like he did! But here is the actuall quote, taken from the text immediately to the left of the big, red lettered, pull quote (I circled it to help you out):

EW actual Snyder quote

Notice a difference? A word missing perhaps? The "looking for the good in all people" Bill is trying to convince the pessimistic Bill that "So-called" was just left out as a composing issue. A way to make the pull quote line up on the page better. The pessimistic Bill thinks they had to do it on purpose. Removing one phrase changes the whole meaning of the text. Instead of it being "You may call them losers, but they wield power in the entertainment industry", it became "These Losers? They wield power in the entertainment industry. Can you believe that? Crazy!"

At the very least, it borders on shoddy journalism. Snyder didn't say what it seems he said in the pull quote. It is a textbook case of what he said being taken out of context and spun. All by having one phrase plucked out.

Of course, it doesn't stop there. Anytime you see a regular fan, they are wearing a costume. Okay, that's not true. The guy wearing the goofy Ghost Rider costume has about 50 normal looking fans behind him. I guess EW thought that the costume was so lame that it would counter act the visual evidence that all comic fans are not costume wearing weirdos.