Optimistic about the future, but still a little bitter

A columnist for Portland State University's Vanguard returns from Emerald City ComicCon feeling optimistic about the future of comic books. But that doesn't mean he's let go of his issues with the current crop of creators -- you know, the ones who are "destroying" the characters he loves:

In 2000, I went to work for Excalibur comics on Hawthorne, and learned to really hate comics. Not just the paper things either - the entire sub-culture that surrounds them. It wasn't a great time for the spandex heroes anyway; a new crop of writers who had no grasp of the heroes they were writing had filtered into the industry. Guys like Judd Winnik (from MTV's "The Real World") were writing comics with the sole agenda of making characters gay. Novelist Greg Rucka found his way into comics and started one of the worst runs on Batman that had ever been done. His current run on Wonder Woman includes some of the worst, most amateur comics published in the last decade. These guys who had been brought into the industry on a good old boys system were destroying the characters that I had loved. I quit working at the store, realizing I couldn't handle working for people who only cared about screwing people out of a buck, and left the hobby behind for good.