Geoff Johns is the best comic book writer ever.

Since Countdown to Final Crisis made money, that means it was really well written.

Todd McFarlane is an exceptional artist.

Anything a fanboy can't understand right away is "deep." See also: Grant Morrison.

At any moment, you might be accused of oversimplifying things. Even if you just wrote a nine-paragraph rant where you used the arguments of three different French philosophers to explain why you won't be buying those political comics by Judd Winick.

If you assume that your fellow posters can understand why you just brought up Descartes, you're pretending to be smart. If you explain the reference in simple terms, you're oversimplifying things again.

Stating an opinion "like it's fact" is bad. Unless I'm the one doing it.

If you say you're gay, you can spend about two years constantly violating the user agreement before the moderators finally start doing something about it. So, feel free to start flame wars, post inappropriate sexual content, troll people, whatever.

If you say anything critical about Geoff Johns... It'll be about a month before people start constantly reporting you to the moderators and trying to get you banned. Other posters will start devoting a lot of their time to talking about how awful you are and trying to turn everyone they know against you.

Rob Liefield wasn't that bad, really. His stuff made money, right?

And he was totally hot in that Levi's commercial.

I'm gay, just so you know. That way you can't attack anything I say about anything.

I once got banned for a week for telling a gay guy he had bad taste in music.

I don't care who you are. If you admit to liking Cher, Dio and Daughtry, you better expect to not be taken seriously on a message board.

I don't think Daughtry admits to liking Daughtry on the Internet.

I don't see why liking certain musicians means you can't be taken seriously.

I would imagine that's akin to saying grown men who admit to still reading comic books shouldn't expect to be taken seriously on the internet.

And Todd McFarlane IS an exceptional artist.

But the DC message boards suck. For the site of a big ol' multimedia conglomerate you'd think they'd have a good forum set up, like here or CBR.

I personally believe the DC boards vary enormously from area to area. In many parts (e.g. DC archives, those parts of the Batman boards dealing with old comics) there is a wealth of helpful and knowledge-able geezers. Plenty of people who are happy to argue in a friendly spirit, and who realize tastes differ.

In other areas a strange political correctness holds sway. Just one example. Dumas posted in one thread that to be able to write alien races as convincingly alien was one mark of a good writer. To me that seems just common sense.... yet it triggered off several desperately defensive postings.

From a technical point of view I think the site is the best comic site I visit. Its much easier than others I use to keep track of the threads I post to.

Anyway, Dumas, sympathy on the weeks ban... but when I was banned from another site (just for saying I disagreed with a site rule) the ban saved me an inordinate amount of time.

I think I'm permanently banned this time. And that thread you mentioned is partly why it happened.

It got deleted, and I really don't know why. Sure, a couple of guys started a flame war with me. But we have all said worse things about each other on threads that didn't get deleted.

So... that just leaves the anti-Johns content as the only plausible reason why that thread would be deemed offensive to anybody (other than me, the guy being ganged up on by several posters who have been picking on me for at least two years).

I guess I shouldn't have pointed out that orange and indigo are only part of the traditional visible light spectrum because Sir Isaac Newton wanted seven colors. They didn't like that either.

That seemed to be what set them off--me using basic science to explain part of why I don't like the idea of lanterns in more colors.

I got all these "Well... it's really awesome in the actual comics... you BASTARD!!!"-type responses for pointing out that it's kind of dumb to have blue power rings that represent hope and indigo staff gizmos that stand for something else. Because indigo is just a darker blue.

Sure, it's nitpicky. But from the reactions, it was like I made a post extolling the virtues of Osama Bin Laden.

Anyway... Thanks for the sympathy.

I saw where, at the San Diego Comic-Con, Dan DiDio joked with the audience about how nobody understood what was happening in the first two issues of Morrison's FINAL CRISIS.

Thing is, that's true. Two issues into this Major Event Crossover Project that will forever redefine and blah-blah-blah, and it's a puzzle what the hell Morrison is on about. But that doesn't intrigue me, it just makes me lose any interest in the project.

I understand that stories are slowly revealed as they progress, but too often, Morrison is one of those writers who likes to just toss a bunch of odd scenes together and call it a story.

If anyone read all 32 parts of his sprawling "Seven Soldiers" epic a couple years ago and knows what that was supposed to be, feel free to let me know.

Permanent ban? Some one at DC must at least regard you as a man of honor.

How long does it take to set up a new e-mail address, and re-register as Samud? Longer than it'd take to resurrect the Martian Manhunter admittedly, so 5 mins say? So by considering a permanent ban, they are heavily relying on your integrity.

But maybe time for a 4 week break before returning to the consternation of your arch foes?? ( The "Todays DC are perfect gang". What would they make of Lawson??)

In all my years of online ranting, I think I've checked out the official DC Comics Inc. message board two or three times, and I've never registered or posted.

Why bother? It's a company-owned message board. It's not there to promote open discussion, encourage criticism or foster a true sense of community. It's there to promote DC Comics Inc., a subsidiary of the Time Warner media empire. I always assumed that any comments contrary to the promotion of DC Comics Inc. would not be welcome, and people who posted such comments repeatedly would be banned. Dumas' experience tells me I was right.

The DC boards used to be more fun than they are now. There used to be a lot more people posting, and you got a wider range of opinions.

Now, a lot of the people I used to like hanging out with over there have lives now or something. A few of them still post occasionally, but you can tell it's not as fun for them as it used to be. Most of them just stopped for one reason or another.

Meanwhile, the trolls have won. There's a contingent of people who believe that Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns can do absolutely no wrong and they try to make life miserable for anybody who says otherwise.

There's some overlap there with people who just enjoy starting fights. Somehow, none of those guys ever seem to get banned. They might get some posts deleted once in a while, but that's about it.

I knew it was time for me to start weaning myself off my DC board addiction when I found myself reporting people a lot in the hope that some of the worst offenders would get banned and give the cooler people a break.