Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

The writer inserts a character who uses meta devices to take down usual comic book tropes, and to do so lovingly.   It simply teases, without suggesting that this is wrong.   Every genre has its tropes, like the HEA (Happily Ever After) in romances.   I bring this up in particular to illustrated a point: romance readers want the HEA.   Trope, expected, whatever you want to call it.   It's a standard, the standard because people expect it.   Even fans can point this out, even using satire, without actually complaining about it: it's what they wanted, but, well, you can poke a little fun at it! 

I come for a lot of the tropes.   And tropes don't mean conformity, not on all fronts.  This comic book points out that comics as a whole use their own form of redshirts, and that action happens around the main characters - who are almost guaranteed to come out alive, or be revived.   I come for that.   I come for all of that!   That doesn't mean that the way the characters interact, or the statements about the real world, all have to be exactly the same.   If they were, I wouldn't keep coming back.  

And so I'm not opposed to one comic book fan having a gentle tease about some of the tropes that I come for.   Yeah, yeah, I know they're there.   I know.   And I laughed my ass off when it was pointed out in this way.