It's Fan-tastic

In his answerman column, Roger Ebert responds to comics fans who have queried his review of "Fantastic Four." Not because they disagree with it, but because Ebert revealed an insufficient (to them) knowledge of the characters' mythos and history.

He writes:

What I learned while reading dozens of messages is that comics fans have made enormous psychic investments in their favorite characters, and follow their origins, adventures, opponents and character changes with an attention bordering on obsession. I saw a bad movie. Many of them saw a movie whose goodness or badness was secondary, since whatever happened on the screen was linked in their imaginations with an extensive pre-history.

Welcome to my world, Roger. Visions of debating with "Buffy" and/or "Star Wars" fans (often one and the same, and comics fans to boot) dance in my head. I don't know what it is that makes fandom, for some people, about a combination of loss of objectivity and a willingness to be exploited.