Jesus Christ, DC, these are comic books. Try writing for an audience other than Rain Man.

Without actually bothering to read comics, I had always been a bigger fan of DC than Marvel. You can thank Christopher Reeve and Michael Keaton for this. Superman and Batman were the only worthwhile superheroes in my eyes (the only other superhero who was even on my radar was Spider-Man because of the 60s cartoon with the funky backgrounds).

When I actually started reading comics about 12 years ago, I shied away from anything that carried too much continuity baggage. I wanted to start out on the ground floor as much as possible so that my enjoyment wouldn't be outweighed by my confusion. I ended up by-passing all the mainstream DC titles and opted mostly for self-contained Batman mini-series or stuff that was entirely new.

But now we're living in the glorious information age! Wikipedia is a gold-mine for explaining the esoteric and unnecessarily bloated minutiae that is comic book continuity. I no longer had reason to be intimidated by backstory because a quick scan on the Interweb would educate me right quick. So, after reading some positive stuff on a recent Green Lantern storyline, I decided to take the plunge.

"... Who the fuck are these guys and what the fuck are they doing?" I wondered, after reading every single fucking page. So, 2 hours of googling and wikipedying later, I had some idea of who most of the main players were. I liked what I read, but it required a lot more work than I was expecting.

But I was now getting the lay of the land and so I kept with it and bought the next issue: "Ok, now who the fuck is this? Where the fuck are those blue guys going? What the fuck?!" Back to wikipedia for an hour. Rinse. Repeat.

I do like reading Green Lantern. And, about 20 issues later, I've got a pretty decent grasp of the cast of characters' history (and the cast involves dozens of characters) to not be completely lost while I'm reading it.

This summer, with tentative confidence, I decided to try swimming in the deep end and, for the first time, read one of the big comics summer events -- DC's Final Crisis -- complete with specials and tie-ins. It's the third (or arguably fourth) segment of a trilogy of Crisis stories / retcons that has been told over the course of decades. My confusion with Green Lantern? That was nothing. There is no way I can be brought up to speed with this ridiculous mess. It involves numerous parallel universes and a cast of thousands. And it's being written by Grant Morrison -- an incomprehensible, drug-addled, writer-of-complete-nonsense who's famous for utilizing the most obscure characters and plot-lines from DC's history and providing the audience with no clue of how to put his incompatible puzzle pieces together. He's like David Lynch, if David Lynch was an asshole who wrote Batman comics.

I don't understand why DC would allow their major storyines and premier characters to be made so inaccessible to their readers. Don't they have any interest in expanding their audience beyond those with encyclopedic knowledge or Asperger syndrome? No wonder comics is such a niche medium that, if anything, has shown negative growth over the decades. Marvel, though, seems to get it better than DC. I can read most Marvel comics and not feel like a fucking idiot.

But I don't want to read Marvel. That brand has no nostalgic value for me. I want to read Superman and recapture that feeling I used to get when I'd hear John William's score during the opening credits. And I'm trying to read Superman. But when I read an issue that involves two versions of Superman, three versions of the League of Superheroes, the League of Super-Villains, the Fatal Five, the Green Lanterns, and a bunch of other dudes -- literally, like a hundred actual characters crammed into 22 pages -- I want to tell them that it's not worth my effort. I'd rather just pop in the DVD and watch the movie for a 20th time.