Do Spoilers Really ‘Spoil’ Your Enjoyment of Comics?

There's been all kinds of h-e-double-hockey-sticks afoot in the world of mainstream comics, according to this interesting piece by R.J. Carter on The Trades. Overzealous posters who've garnered some Net fame and notoriety by posting spoilers of DC's weekly series 52 and Countdown lit a firestorm in the superpowered blogosphere after details of the "last" issue of Flash #13, wherein some guy wearing a red suit who runs really fast... No, I'm not going to "spoil" it for you.

In fact, one reader got angry enough to find a spoiler poster's IP address, Carter reports, which set off a hasty retreat by said poster, igniting more Net conversations about a reader's right to post spoilers at all and the true value of cyber-vigilantism.

Carter calls it nothing more than a teapot tempest, an opinion I happen to share, based, in part, on my early fanboy days thumbing through borrowed mimeographed copies of The Comic Reader for bits of spoiler news back in the day before the Internet...

Besides, if the early version of the Flash #13 cover posted on the DC Comics site didn't give you a clue about the final outcome, the final version -- Bart Allen carried by a streaking Marvel Zombies version of his alter-ego -- should've done the trick.

One more important factoid to consider: A Google search of blogs using the search terms Flash #13 and spoilers generated some 5,500 links alone. A mere Web search using the term Flash #13 found 196,000 links.

Getting back to the question at the top, do spoilers circulating the Internets about your favorites comics, movies or TVs really bother you? Or does the fanboy/fangirl spirit within tempt you to take a look anyway?

Full disclosure: I look more often than not...