Waxing and Waning: When Your Love for Your Fandom Fades

You think it’ll never happen. You’ll love that show/comic/movie/band forever. You would never, ever betray them.

But it can happen. The thing that consumed so much of your life can change, can fall out of popularity, can mysteriously disappear from the forefront of your mind.

That happened to me. Twenty years ago, I was just beginning my journey into the X-Men fandom. I read every issue I could get my hands on. I watched the cartoon. I held dramatic readings of the comics with one of my best friends. I made fan art and wrote fanfic. I planned on getting a tattoo of my favorite character. Comic collection, cards, scrapbooks … I was deeply ensconced in fandom before I even knew what fandom was.

Then, about four or five years later, I stopped buying comics. It was mostly because the only comic store in the town where I was living was too far away for me to bother driving there, and the bookstore nearby just didn’t have a good selection. Sure, I’d thumb through them when I was in shopping for books, but I didn’t purchase. (Yeah, I was one of those people.) The X-Men movies came out, and though I didn’t read the comics anymore I still got excited. Yes! Live-action X-Men! The movies kind of disappointed, though, but I kept watching.

As time went on, I was less and less interested in X-Men. I dropped my idea of getting a Blink tattoo. I didn’t even display my in-box action figures or my laminated poster or my fan art. I moved to another state and, rather than selling my collection of bagged comics to that local store, I left them in a box by the curb. (Heresy, I know.) I don’t even want to watch the new Age of Apocalypse movie.

Why did this happen? Was it all because of the out-of-the-way comic store? Did I just grow out of it? How could I have been so obsessed with something, then forget it almost completely?

It could be that new obsessions took over. It could be any number of things. Time goes on, and fandoms can fade, even die-hard ones. Will my love of Doctor Who or Star Wars end up alongside the X-Men, in a box by the curb? I highly doubt it…but it can happen.