At the end of May, it was revealed that DC Comics would be putting Twix ads on story pages in all of their June comics, which earned the ire of the comics community and created the hashtag of a lifetime, #TwixGate. Ads have been part of comics since the beginning, and it's not uncommon for 10 full-page ads to be found in your standard Marvel or DC comic these days, but for many, putting the ads on the same page as the story crossed a line.

"I'm getting a stomach ache!" Batman artist Greg Capullo joked when we asked him about it. After some fans expressed that they didn't want to buy DC's comics because of the ads, Capullo tweeted that readers shouldn't punish the creators because of ads that are out of their control. Capullo also tweeted how the ads were a " throat cut " to DC's artists. [Editor's Note: this paragraph was updated to better clarify Capullo's statements after he corrected us on Twitter .]Capullo told us he knew about the ads in advance, but that didn't help matters."[Batman writer Scott Snyder] wrote [Batman #41] in such a way that when you go and truncate my work, we can assemble it, and it won't look off when we reassemble it for the trades," he said before cutting himself off. "I really shouldn't talk about this thing... because, yeah, it's not something that sits very well with me at all."Snyder, who was on the phone along with Capullo, said that he did his best to maintain the integrity of Capullo's art while still getting in a jab at DC's ads, Batman-style."I think we pride ourselves a little bit on Batman as being not necessarily always towing the party line. Batman is an outlaw after all, right? You have to have a little fun in the book. So we tried to have a bit of fun with that page in a way that I hope you guys enjoy...I think you'll see we kind of got in our little dig," Snyder said.The main argument against the ads is twofold.One point is that it feels intrusive to the reader. Normally a page is read top-to-bottom, but now an ad will appear halfway through a page, which can feel jarring and break the rhythm of the story. Like a TV commercial popping up in the middle of a scene instead of at a proper break.The other point is the one that has Capullo unhappy -- it restricts the artist's ability to tell the story by making them conform to certain requirements, all so the page can be cut in half to place the ad and then reassembled for the collection. It was one thing for the ads to be on other pages, but sharing the same real estate makes the ad feel like the art is part of a billboard advertisement and not a story.But advertising is how the comics are made possible, and so on the other side of the coin is DC Comics Co-Pubilsher Dan Didio, who we talked to in a different interview. He thinks the on-page ads are a compliment to the material and they will help DC monetize the steadily-growing digital market."The idea that we have ads in our print books is a testament to the strength of our material. The fact that so much of advertising has migrated out of print over to digital and the fact that we're able to rebuild some of that back in our books I think is a strength of what we do," Didio said.This is a curious statement given that the infamous Twix ads do not appear in any DC digital comics out in June so far -- the non-intrusive "DC You" ads at the end are the only ones to be found. It's possible that the print version was an experiment that, if successful, will mean ads in your digital books, too. Indeed, when we asked if DC would continue on-page advertising, his answer was a tad ambiguous but read as a yes."We are in the business to have ads in our books," he said. "We've always been the best with ads in our books, and now we have companies interested in buying ads in books. So I think that's a good thing."Didio understands that ads can be annoying, but he has faith that the stories DC produces will make it worth it to readers."I think that what's exciting for me is the fact that ads have always been a part of everything. Nobody stops reading or visiting a website because of a popup or anything like that. As far as I'm concerned, it's the story that matters. If somebody's worried about an ad, then we might not be doing our best stories. We just have to make our stories so compelling that everything's worth reading, and just quick pages to turn to to get to," he said.

Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Game of Thrones, Green Lantern, or Super Smash Bros. are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter and IGN