In the ever-evolving landscape of fandom, there are simply some things that should not have happened. In Retcon This!, we examine some of the more questionable aspects of our beloved geek properties.

This week: The Twilight Graphic Novel

People camped out for two days prior to the New Moon panel at last year's SDCC. Don't say a word, because you know a Star Wars fan that did the same damn thing.

As folks who attended last year’s San Diego Comic-Con know, Twilight fans are the new face of geek. At least they’re a good chunk of it. Twilight took off in ways I hadn’t seen since Harry Potter, yet I had never heard of until the movies started coming out. It’s always encouraging to me that books can get such a foothold with people even today. It really puts that whole “print is dead” thing in a questionable place. Full disclosure: I’ve never read the novels, I’ve seen the two movies, and I’ve never read the comic adaptation I’m about to tear into, but I have held it in my hands and looked through it to the point of utter disbelief.

I was unaware there was even going to be a graphic novel until I read the review from Chris Sims over at Comics Alliance. All of his points are completely valid. To summarize, the art is pretty good. It captures the manga look here and the sparse use of colors gives it a really nice style. It’s a good-looking book Young Kim (whose name sounds like a rapper) has drawn. The story is still Twilight so what are you gonna do, but it at least is presented in an attractive package. Chris’s review then dovetails into a fierce rant on the lettering in the book the likes of which I’ve never seen. Sure, I was shocked to see the examples he posted in his review of the abysmal lettering job, but I thought it couldn’t possibly be that bad.

A few weeks go by and I’m in my local Wal-Mart. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of the Twilight GN on a shelf. My initial reaction is “Wow, I don’t remember the last time I saw comics in a Wal-Mart, much less a trade of any kind. That’s kinda neat. How awesome for comics.” My immediate second thought was “Waitaminnit, isn’t this thing supposed to look like utter garbage inside?” I then gingerly trotted over, picked it up and cracked it open just before throwing up in my mouth ever so slightly. It was everything I had read about and more. The art in this book is DESTROYED by the lettering. It’s ugly. It’s messy. It’s hard to follow in some places. It obscures the art in the absolute most unforgiving of ways. It’s so bad, it wishes it could generously be called “half-assed.”

But why should I care? It’s not like I bought it. I’ve no intention of ever reading it all the way through. Why does it matter if this looks like dog crap on a Phoenix sidewalk? It matters because it’s Twilight, and Twilight is a license to print money because there is a ravenous audience for this stuff that will allow themselves to be spoon fed just about anything so long as Bella’s gaping mouth or Edward’s goofy hair is on it. Plus, since it’s Twilight, I saw the damn thing at Wal-Mart. Do you think I’m going to see the Blackest Night hardcover at Wal-Mart? Hell no, but maybe if something like this proves to be viable, one day we will see an evolution beyond the direct market and bookstores. The point is that this will absolutely be the first comic a LOT of people read, and it’s crap. It’s truly awful. It’s a terrible way to be introduced to the medium and the publisher failed miserably when they gave a 7^th grader a pirated copy of  PhotoShop and told him to go wild and letter this book.

There’s three ways this can go. So for the sake of this thought experiment, let’s create “Brooke,” “Sara” and “Lauren,” all adamant Twilight fans. If you think it’s sexist to assume girls will buy this thing, you’re out of your mind. Regardless, let’s walk through Brooke, Sara and Lauren’s respective Twilight: the Graphic Novel experiences.

I’m calling Brooke’s adventure our most unlikely. Brooke gets the book home and dives in. She recognizes the wonky lettering (though maybe she doesn’t know that’s what it’s called), but doesn’t really let it stop her and so she decides to maybe give some other comics a shot since she kind of dug this one. I’ll say Sara and Lauren’s experiences are equally likely in the real world. Sara reads her copy of the book and doesn’t give half a damn about the lettering. It could have been drawn in crayon and she still would have enjoyed it since it’s Twilight. She is completely unmoved beyond that in any way. She’s never going to buy a comic again until the New Moon GN is inevitably released. Lauren, however, has maybe been curious about comics since all the movies and whatnot have been hitting big, but never followed up on it until now. Seeing the crap presented here, she’s reassured in her decision to keep her Iron Man experience on the screen and never buys a comic again.

If even one person experienced what fake Lauren did, this book is a bigger blight on the comic world than Greg Land could ever hope to be. This is the ultimate gateway book and the folks at Yen Press completely screwed the pooch. I know that realistically the number of people who read this and then move on to The Walking Dead are far outweighed by the blind Twilight fans who could give half a damn about comics, but I also know there HAVE to be readers that were turned off completely by the amateur hour crap they saw here, and that’s unacceptable and it never should have happened. The medium, and Twilight fans, deserved better.