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Underground > Comic Books >

Making superhero comics all...icky

  
 
eddie thirteen
21:28 / 14.10.04
Okay -- maybe I'm just a hater. I'll say that right up front. With very few exceptions, I loathe contemporary superhero comics; have loathed them since I was a teenager. So it could be that I'm just missing the appeal. But.

Having skimmed over a thread in which I learned that -- yes -- JMS has introduced a bizarre, American Beauty-stylee Gwen Stacy/Norman Osborn retcon into his Spider-Man series, I am surprised to find that my reaction in neither horror nor indifference, but amusement. Is it just me? Or does anyone think that trying to introduce "whoa, man...heavy darkness" into the story of a man in red and blue tights who has spider powers is kinda...silly? Misguided, at the very least. Like, okay, let's say you really wanted to write a story about a guy who discovers that his teen sweetheart was actually not as pure as she seemed to be, etc. ...is Spider-Man really the appropriate vehicle for something like this? By attempting to make Spider-Man "grow up" in this fashion, is the writer in fact not underscoring his own immaturity by trying to make a children's story over into a sordid soap opera? I guess what I'm saying is, when you have things that work perfectly well as morality plays intended for young adults and you convert them into grim n' sleazy comic books intended for...um...old adults, or possibly old children, is it the character who needs to "grow up," or is it the creator?

Maybe strangely, maybe not, I don't have reactions like this to, say, the Morrison/Case Doom Patrol, or the Wagner/Seagle/Davis Sandman Mystery Theater, and especially not the Robinson/Harris Starman. Yeah, these are books that monkeyed around with and "darkened" older properties. In the case of Doom Patrol, though, you have Morrison at once expressing affection for superhero comics and ironizing them; there's the sense of a creator who is simultaneously a little embarrassed that he still likes this stuff and eager to use its pre-existing tropes to explore implicit ideas in the original series premise. It doesn't take itself too seriously, is what I guess I'm saying here, but it also doesn't dumb itself down. There's a similar thing happening in both SMT and Starman. In both cases, I get the feeling that the creators asked themselves what was good about the original subject matter, and how they could adapt that to what a contemporary audience wants in order not to feel condescended to -- without losing what made the ideas appeal in the first place. That itself kinda IS the premise of Starman: how does one apply a heroic ideal from the 1940s to contemporary life? (Given the heavy "Greatest Generation" buzz of the early '90s, it wasn't a bad question.) With SMT, it's more like, okay, we have this guy in a pre-noir setting, fighting nasty but human menaces...what does mean to today's reader? So you do that, but without changing the basic concept. If it "grows up," it's only because that potential was inherent in the concept in the first place.

Now, though -- as superhero comics seem to be mirroring the grim n' gritty revisionism of the late '80s -- it seems to me that what's happening is that characters wildly ill-suited to such treatment are getting it (with an ass-raped and butchered Sue Dibny evidently on the way to treating us to the h@rdk0r3 new Elongated Man, who I guess will crush his enemies' tracheae with a grotesquely-swollen hardon of death or something, can an unshaven, death-dealing Blue Beetle be far behind?), and the result doesn't rile me at all. I actually think it's kind of embarrassing. Is it just me, or is this shit all kinda...silly? Like, if you're at a point where you're exposing relatively innocuous children's characters to the terrible, sordid underbelly of American society or whatever, wouldn't it be a better idea to just...I dunno...write about the terrible, sordid underbelly of American society, and leave superpowered men and women in tights out of it? Doesn't their presence put the lie to your unblindered, unflinching gaze into the abyss, even a *little* bit? In essence, doesn't using such a vehicle as a medium for the exploration of these ideas hint that maybe you yourself lack the maturity and interface with contemporary life to grasp their full implications?

Or...y'know...am I myself just still too fanboyish at heart to appreciate this stuff?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
07:49 / 15.10.04
So Warren Ellis discovers that you can create a very loyal following of old and Nu fanboys by cramming your comics with chainsmoking, talking about drugs, talking about sex, and talking about punching straight through people and eating people's eyeballs and violating their corpses (and having people do the above sometimes, but the talking about it seems more important). What Ellis also discovers is that what a lot of these fans want more than anything is for him to transfer that approach over to their favourite Marvel/DC superheroes, and the more 'inappropriate' the clash between the character and the tone of this approach, the better. Now Ellis, to his credit, never really exploited this (y'never know, his run on Iron Man might, but so far the Marvel stuff he's done has been pretty restrained). In fact, anyone who hung around his forum a couple of years ago will remember there were countless threads on which people said "I'd love to see you write Spiderman and maybe the Black Cat could claw the Vulture's face apart!" and Ellis explained that he wasn't interested, or that he wouldn't do it quite like that, etc...

The problem being that once it was established that there was a market for that kind of thing, there were always going to be writers who were willing to do it. Chiefly - if not solely - Mark Millar.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
10:10 / 15.10.04
I don't mind a bit of the old ultra-violence in comics (a 2000ad childhood, alas) but generally, yeah, the grimmification of super-comics at the mo' all seems a bit late 80's. 'Identity Crisis' (as discussed AT LENGTH elsewhere) seems like a reprehensible headline grabber, but worryingly there seems to be a new audience for this shit, who maybe can't remember the bad old days of characters whose sole purpose was to maim and kill with the aid of hookschainsclawsandguns. I guess as you said eddie, it depends of the quality of the writing. A shock-jock like Millar has revealed himself to be a thouroughly one trick pony. Ellis to his credit seems to have chilled slightly on the chain-smoking bastard heroes (Pete Wysdom...ugh) and improved his storytelling in general. Generally thogh hacks will provide hack-work.

'Mature' has to be one of the most maligned words in comics doesn't it?
 
 
John Octave
16:52 / 15.10.04
Glad to see someone else who fondly remembers SMT (the "other" Vertigo Sandman). Actually, that's something they should bring back and put Meltzer on. Sandman was a good vehicle for DCU mystery because he's essentially a normal guy with a hint of the strange about him and a dynamic (yet understated and eerie) visual. But, you know, in Identity Crisis as soon as I see Hawkman involved in a murder mystery, I kind of have to laugh.

IC isn't a BAD comic, per se, it's just chosen a poor vehicle in the mainstream Justice League.
 
 
eddie thirteen
17:35 / 15.10.04
Yeah, I don't mean to blame all the ills of contemporary comics on Brad Meltzer, who *is* a good writer (and a very nice guy; I met him while working at a chain bookstore at the time his first novel, The Tenth Justice, was released, and -- given that the dude was my age, AND a lawyer, AND a bestselling novelist, and I was basically just, y'know, some dork working retail, he had no reason at all to engage me in warm conversation for twenty minutes, which he in fact did...all of which I say to say, while I wanna be ticked at him for IC, I just kinda...can't be), at least when he's working on something appropriate to his abilities. He himself has made it pretty clear that the direction of IC was more or less determined by the editorial department, so criticizing him for the book's content (aside from the actual scripting, which is solid, from what I've seen) is a bit unfair. However, it's definitely *somebody's* fault, and it seems like it's part of an overall regressive trend.

And...damn, SMT was a cool comic.
 
 
Benny the Ball
18:31 / 15.10.04
Shade was a great Mature comic which certainly didn't rely on grim and gritty.

I vaguely remember a debate between Peter David and Heir Byrne about grim and gritty in comics, how most writers mistook shock tactics for realistic and mature story telling, and how the constant need to have a hero shatterd by horrific events in his life tarnished the idea of the hero for heros sake. But I don't remember it that well, so I'll shut up now.

I'm a bit JMD/Giffen Justice League fan, and they managed to make that book great fun and very mature at the same time, just by imbuing realism in the characters and not having them stand on shurch roofs in the rain swearing revenge every ten minutes.
 
 
Krug
07:41 / 16.10.04
I kinda love Daredevil month in month out, Bendis has been there for over three years and still going very strong.

Is that "mature"? Is that "grim and gritty"?

I wish I could read all of Shade and SMT somehow. From what I've read those were brilliant books.
 
 
eddie thirteen
07:50 / 16.10.04
I don't follow Daredevil, but it seems to me that a book about an urban vigilante probably is qualified to be all "grim and gritty" in a way that, say, a JLA story is not. I suppose what bugs me about the g'n'g revival has much less to do with books being "dark" and/or "mature" in itself than with which books get that treatment, and how well it's done.

And yeah, it'd be nice if DC got on the stick a bit more with their tpb reprinting (or lack thereof) on certain titles....
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
18:13 / 16.10.04
I don't mind a "mature" super-hero book, but you have to do it in such a way that it makes seem liie you are trying to do a story that doesn't fit the characters. Identity Crisis doesn't work for me because you are trying to do a serious mystery exploring free-will and crime while people are shooting power blast and flying around fighting guys in costumes designed in 1962.

If you are going to do a mature story, you need to dress it like a mature story (like the previously mentioned Sandman Mystery Theater). Putting a mature story in a flasy fight book is like ordering a vegetarian meal in a steak house: Sure, you can do it, but it sure doesn't fit.
 
 
John Octave
16:12 / 20.10.04
Great article posted on CBR that includes an extended discussion about this very topic.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/?column=17

Not any wild departure from anything said on this thread (although there's a cracking theory about why Superman stories don't "work") but it's a well-structured discussion on the topic by respectable gents in the field.
 
 
Krug
20:02 / 20.10.04
I'm really excited about Basement Tapes. I haven't been excited about a comics column in the longest time.

I don't read any others but wish there was more intelligent columns by creators.

I suppose John Byrne qualifies.
 
 
PatrickMM
15:10 / 22.10.04
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with using superheroes in a dark and gritty way, or to address big issues. This obviously worked amazingly well with Watchmen or Miracleman, and the afforementioned Doom Patrol, but that's largely becuase the books were designed to address big issues. Particularly in Watchmen, they're aware of the absurdity of what they're doing by wearing costumes and fighting crime.

I haven't read IC, but I'd imagine that the universe is just completely accepted, when it really isn't designed for that type of story. That's not to say it can't work, but it's very tough to make a story with DC's really absurd heroes work as a serious discussion of rape, and whatever else goes on in the book. I think Morrison's X-Men is a perfect example of using a universe to discuss big issues, in a believable way, but Marvel is probably better suited for character exploration than the DCU.

However, I still think it's unfair to have this idea that the story inherently can't work in a mainstream superhero comic. As Bendis did in Daredevil, if you have someone with a vision for the character, and a consistent development of story and characters, you can do anything with any character. I mean, look at the Buffy movie, would you think that character could lead to an episode like 'The Body'?
 
 
eddie thirteen
18:17 / 22.10.04
I would argue, though, that the darkness is built into Buffy from pretty early on (leaving the movie, which had little to do with Whedon's original ideas, out of it, and ignoring the goofy-ass title), and even with that in mind, it doesn't always work. If I'm not mistaken, isn't the kid who ends up being beaten into a coma by his enraged Little League coach somewhere in the first season? That's about as grim as it gets, and that's from back when Buffy was supposedly in its "innocent" phase. Certainly by the time you have Angel wrenching Jenny Calendar's head all the way around all bets are off.

Though there's no question that "The Body" is one of the best, if not the best, episodes of the run, I think what makes it work is its complete divorce from the fantasy aspects of the show -- with the supernatural characters rendered powerless in the face of something horrible that *just happens,* that can be blamed on no boogieman, and that is irrevocable, you're reminded that these characters are intended to exist in the real world, despite the fantasy trappings. Buffy is a show that could have worked as well without all the supernatural stuff, to be honest, although it obviously would have been a very different program -- anyway, I'm rambling now, but I think you see what I'm getting at here...the contrast between "The Body" and the usual Buffy stuff makes it work, but doing the same story and tacking on the usual stuff that makes it work would have made it *not* work, because the whole point was that horrible acts of God put all of us in a defenseless position. At the same time, I think too much "realism" (i.e.: angst, much of it forced) in the sixth season made most of those episodes hard-to-watch crap, mostly because the show continued to be wildly unrealistic even as it attempted to show us that somehow endless, seemingly-arbitrary misery was an accurate portrayal of everyday life. Maybe here and there, but not every fuckin' week!

To (kinda) get back on topic, though, I think the way this dovetails with something like IC is this: Yes, rape and murder happen. But when they happen because Dr. Light did it, and the victim is a superhero's wife, and the underlying point is some kind of conspiracy to get at a group of superheroes...well, you lost me at Dr. Light. Because the story has already ceased to be about the effects of rape and murder on a victim's survivors, and turned into a story about "but what if a second-string supervillain were REALLY, REALLY bad?!" Which is a question that only children and fatbeards could possibly give a shit about. The real issue is this sort of hideous crime, and it's an issue that's trivialized in this context, and (consequently) shows the context itself as trivial.
 
 
D Terminator XXXIII
21:29 / 22.10.04
Having skimmed over a thread in which I learned that -- yes -- JMS has introduced a bizarre, American Beauty-stylee Gwen Stacy/Norman Osborn retcon into his Spider-Man series

Dude, why should you know the word "retcon." And much more portentously, why should I?

And aren't Buffy connoisseurs the third sex? The ones who can reproduce by rubbing their palms against the TV screen during DVD sessions?
 
 
eddie thirteen
02:09 / 23.10.04
Hey, what can I say -- it was a summer replete with (undesirable) downtime; hence, I now know way more about Buffy and Angel than any human being ever should, but I'm sure it'll all fall out of my brain by Christmas...I might as well use this otherwise useless information now.

And yeah -- why DO guys like us know words like "retcon?" How does this pertain to our lives, in the hunter/gatherer sense of the world? Why don't we just forget about comic books and dorky TV shows and just, I dunno, beat the shit out of each other in a parking lot somewhere...think of all we could accomplish....

No, it's not a bad question, though -- I find myself strangely caring about this stuff even though I have zero interest in actually reading it, I guess because it meant a lot to me when I was a kid, and it kinda bums me out to see modern comics turn so insular and dorky and totally inaccessible. I can't imagine that a teenager who had never read a DC comic could pick up something like IC and have even the remotest interest in it; a ten-year-old probably shouldn't even be allowed to see it. So the target audience is...what?...30-to-40-year-old men who grew up with these characters, are dissatisfied with their own lives, and so have a perverse need to see childhood heroes treated like shit, and sexually degraded whenever possible? Man, how do THEY reproduce....
 
 
PatrickMM
01:55 / 25.10.04
I would argue, though, that the darkness is built into Buffy from pretty early on (leaving the movie, which had little to do with Whedon's original ideas, out of it, and ignoring the goofy-ass title), and even with that in mind, it doesn't always work. If I'm not mistaken, isn't the kid who ends up being beaten into a coma by his enraged Little League coach somewhere in the first season? That's about as grim as it gets, and that's from back when Buffy was supposedly in its "innocent" phase. Certainly by the time you have Angel wrenching Jenny Calendar's head all the way around all bets are off.

The Little League coach episode was something I could definitely see in a traditional superhero book. It's got a nice moral message, and I could just as easily see that happening with someone like Green Arrow as it did with Buffy. The death of Jenny was the breaking point from this type of story, and I read an interview with Whedon where he said that he had Angel kill Jenny because he wanted you to know he really was evil, and the stakes were changed.

Though there's no question that "The Body" is one of the best, if not the best, episodes of the run, I think what makes it work is its complete divorce from the fantasy aspects of the show -- with the supernatural characters rendered powerless in the face of something horrible that *just happens,* that can be blamed on no boogieman, and that is irrevocable, you're reminded that these characters are intended to exist in the real world, despite the fantasy trappings. Buffy is a show that could have worked as well without all the supernatural stuff, to be honest, although it obviously would have been a very different program -- anyway, I'm rambling now, but I think you see what I'm getting at here...the contrast between "The Body" and the usual Buffy stuff makes it work, but doing the same story and tacking on the usual stuff that makes it work would have made it *not* work, because the whole point was that horrible acts of God put all of us in a defenseless position.

And that's a story that could be told with any superhero. It's the equivalent of Aunt May dying of natural causes, and Peter Parker being unable to do anything about it. Granted, I haven't read Identity Crisis, but it doesn't seem to pertain to the real world at all.

At the same time, I think too much "realism" (i.e.: angst, much of it forced) in the sixth season made most of those episodes hard-to-watch crap, mostly because the show continued to be wildly unrealistic even as it attempted to show us that somehow endless, seemingly-arbitrary misery was an accurate portrayal of everyday life. Maybe here and there, but not every fuckin' week!

I think the sixth season was actually the best of the show, but that's a completely different debate.
 
 
PatrickMM
01:58 / 25.10.04
No, it's not a bad question, though -- I find myself strangely caring about this stuff even though I have zero interest in actually reading it, I guess because it meant a lot to me when I was a kid, and it kinda bums me out to see modern comics turn so insular and dorky and totally inaccessible. I can't imagine that a teenager who had never read a DC comic could pick up something like IC and have even the remotest interest in it; a ten-year-old probably shouldn't even be allowed to see it.

I'm not so sure that this dark turn in comics is going to make them inaccessible to kids. When I was younger, I loved really dark stories, Empire was always my favorite of the Star Wars movies precisely becuase the heroes lost and went through trauma. I feel like kids are insulated from the darkness, and making really light comics is not what's going to bring them back to the comics fold. Now, IC seems to be unneccessary violence, and probably isn't the answer, but something like the Grant X-Men is something I probably would have loved as a kid. I wouldn't have gotten everything, but I think I still would have liked it.
 
 
eddie thirteen
19:07 / 25.10.04
My feeling about the inaccessibility of stuff like IC is centered around the premise, maybe off-base, that books like it are reliant upon the contrast between what has gone before and the darker stuff that's happening now. By this line of thinking, such books don't really work unless the reader has an investment in the status quo. New readers obviously don't have that. As to darkness itself being inaccessible, I definitely don't think that's the case; but if you think of a hypothetical new reader who's peeking at the comics because s/he likes, say, the Justice League cartoon, and notices a lot of the same characters on the cover of IC, I imagine such a person's reaction to actually reading the comic would either be repulsion or unintended amusement. IC appeals, if it appeals, only to the shrinking base of those who already read superhero comics, and -- when you consider that a lot of the cast is comprised of DC's most visible (in other media) characters -- that's maybe not the best marketing decision, is what I'm saying here.

...And, y'know, the season six thing...um...yeah, definitely to be continued somewhere else, 'cause...wow. To me this is a little like an argument for Godfather III as Coppola's crowning achievement, but okay....
 
 
FinderWolf
19:51 / 25.10.04
So Boomerang's son has super-speed. He asks his dear old dad, "My mother wasn't Golden Glider, was she?" (since GG didn't have super-speed)

So Boomerang had sex with a female speedster somewhere back in the day? Jesse Quick? Maybe...who else is there with super speed in the DCU who's female? Huh? There's a theory online that Barry Allen is the REAL father of Boomerang's "son" and that Barry Allen had sex with the GG.

This will likely tie into the revelations about to hit Wally West in the letter from Barry Allen he's about to read in the next issue of FLASH.
 
 
Simplist
05:22 / 26.10.04
There's a theory online that Barry Allen is the REAL father of Boomerang's "son" and that Barry Allen had sex with the GG.

I've seen various versions of this theory floating around, the most convincing being that it was Boomerang in Barry's body that fathered Owen (during the Justice League body-swapping adventure alluded to earlier in ID Crisis). By this reasoning, Barry need never have known about the incident at all. Thus Owen has Barry's genes, accounting for his speed powers, but Boomerang nevertheless feels that he's Owen's "real" father.

But I suppose this kind of thing belongs over in the ID Crisis thread...
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:16 / 26.10.04
Is it more that men-in-tights comics now have to find new ways to do old stories, seeing as even trying something as mild as , oh I don't know, replacing Green Lantern, meets with hysteria? And when you've got things like Identity Crisis, which has no relevence at all to anyone who hasn't heavily invested in the DC Universe for twenty or thirty years, or the revelations that one long dead supporting character in Spiderman slept with another long dead character, it's clear that the mainstream Marvel and DC Universes are collapsing in on themselves.

I don't think that by bringing Superrape into comics the creators really think they're being more 'relevent'. It's just a buzzword. But we're not going to be happy with just some bad guy dangling Lois Lane off of a big dipper and Superman saving her. But raping and killing Sue Dibny? Well, that's a new version of the old story. And 'relevent' and 'mature', well, no-one's going to market a book as 'mindless, plotless pap with bad artwork' even if it is, are they?
 
 
_Boboss
08:25 / 27.10.04
the superrape of super-ape!

that's how we save the world: just make sure all this tabloid grimness comes with a sensible dollop of silver-age fun. 'oh no, i won a newspaper competition to be batman for the day, and now i must find the elongated man's wife's rapist/murderer before noon!'
 
 
SiliconDream
02:08 / 28.10.04
Like, okay, let's say you really wanted to write a story about a guy who discovers that his teen sweetheart was actually not as pure as she seemed to be, etc. ...is Spider-Man really the appropriate vehicle for something like this?

From the point of view that Spider-Man's the ultimate beta male, adorable but not taken seriously, and his villains are always physically or socially dominant over him, and now he finds out that--to get all caveman--They Even Take His Woman...yes, I think it's an appropriate twist. I don't know whether it's consistent with continuity or supporting characters' personalities or anything, but I think Spider-Man's a good choice for that sort of story just because of who he is.

And surely, with all the death, misery and guilt in Spider-Man's life to date, Gwen's sleeping with the wrong guy and having to give up her kids doesn't raise the maturity level that much? I mean, we already saw her get thrown off a bridge...
 
 
FinderWolf
16:45 / 05.05.05
from All the Rage this week, the only thing we have left close to Rich Johnston's former rumor column:

>> Norman, How Could You?

J. Michael Straczynski surprised everyone and popped up at the Bendis Q&A session. He mentioned that he has completed three Fantastic Four scripts, and also dropped this interesting piece of information about the “Sins Past” storyline.

Turns out JMS wanted Peter Parker to be the father of Gwen's kids but editorial nixed the idea. The powers that be felt that it would age Peter Parker too much if he had two adult kids running around. It was then decided by the whole creative and editorial team that Norman Osborn would be the father!

This Has A "Paternity Test" Factor of Nine Out of Ten
 
 
matsya
23:53 / 05.05.05
When I was younger, I loved really dark stories, Empire was always my favorite of the Star Wars movies precisely becuase the heroes lost and went through trauma.

You just reminded me of when I was wee, only buying the bad-guys from the Masters of the Universe toys (cos they were black and purple and cooler) and acting out scenarios where they beat the crap out of He-Man before killing him (even drawing "blood" on He-Man with a red biro), as some kind of satisfying contrast to the stupidity of the cartoon, where He-Man seemed to win each week, despite being so fucking dim, because the bad-guys were just that much more fucked in the head moronic.

[/threadrot]

One of my favourite comics from around that time was an old black and white reprint of some Ross Andru-era Spiderman comics where he got the shit kicked out of him by a baddie called The Fly and then, after getting it all together and getting his mad on and going out looking for The Fly to get revenge and score the reward that the Daily Bugle has put on The Fly (perennially cash-strapped Parker is facing being kicked out of his apartment yet again, you see), he sees some cops or something capture The Fly for the reward, and all he can do is watch helplessly and take his anger out on the brick wall he's sticking to. I found the whole impotent rage thing quite intoxicating at the time, as I did the scenes where SpiderMan was losing the fight. Another fave was an old Curt Swan Superman where a bunch of Kryptonian supercriminals "killed" Superman (though not really, of course, but my favourite part was the scene where the killing blow was dealt).

So yeah, I reckon the black stuff DOES appeal to younger readers, especially teenagers. They tend to equate it with realism and hence merit, in a weird kind of way. There was a whole period of my adolescence where I thought that any movie with an ending that wasn't tragic was unrealistic. I was nineteen before I saw a happy ending film that I actually liked, and it was a revelation, like a window had opened in my mind. But before that, bring on the bleak. Frantic was one of my favourite films, because the pretty French girl died pointlessly right at the end.

m.
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
04:01 / 08.05.05
I think the problem is that some of the people working in comics have forgotten the basics of story structure. There is a long tradition in heroic fiction of taking the hero down to their worst point so that they can rise up, making the victory mean more.

However, more and more, I see super-hero comics slipping from the standard meodrama structure (one problem ends as another begins) to almost a relentless pounding of the hero without the eventual rise and triumph. Identity Crisis is the best example of that...the heroes just get punded down over and over in a lot of different ways, and in the end, there is no triumph, just the fact that they found out part of what was going on. That's why the ending didn't work for me, and the fact that they are spinning about 10 different stories out of it don't give me a feeling that eventually the heroes will win. It will just keep going on and on.

I don't mind the hero getting beaten down. One of the best super-hero stories of the past 30 years was Daredevil: Born Again, which took everything from the hero, but he was able to triumph because he is, in the end, a hero. No, they didn't magically give Matt Murdock his house and job back, but he did defeat the forces against him and showed what made the character a hero. Another good example is Morrison's JLA where each story arc showed how the JLA were able to overcoming amazing odds because they were heroes and not just a bunch of people who can fly.

Now, we just get shock after shock with no real feeling that the heroes will show WHY they are heroes other than they wear fancy suits and have nifty powers.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
11:05 / 08.05.05
A lot of this has to do with the way a particular comic is presented. You can read the monthly Flash/Green Arrow for shits 'n' giggles, but if you don't want to see the characters being all dark you don't need to read the g'n'g Justic League Elite. Identity Crisis didn't work for me, in the larger context, because it wasn't an isolated corner of darkness (like the secret JLE) but this pivotal point for the whole Crisis thing this year, so you can't just put it to one side and say 'okay, this isn't something I want the characters I know to be dealing with'.
Oh, and if you think IC was bad, check out the current run on Teen Titans. This little corner of the DCU that was supposed to be about escapism, for the readers and characters, has grimed up post-IC, so now you have Kid Flash getting kneecapped and Speedy has AIDs. Yep, AIDs. And, as if to say 'well now we're just as hardcore as IC', Doctor Light has been splashed all over the shop.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
16:20 / 10.05.05
Speedy has AIDS

That sounds more like Meet the Feebles than it does do anything else.
 
 
Lysander Stark
13:58 / 06.09.05
I herewith offer a superficial addition to this board, which has many interesting points...

I agree that a lot of people like the dark stories, and that there remains plenty of fodder for those who do not. But one of the problems is the strange demographics that seem to skew the comic world, both in terms of creators' and readers' ages. For those who had read the Watchmen, there was no turning back, in some ways. Reading that, seeing the conventions taken to pieces, was like eating from the Tree of Knowledge, and necessarily distorted the now cynical perspective of many readers.

Myself amongst them. And so I loved Bendis' Powers, and also his amazing Alias, which looked, often with surprising compassion, at the underbelly and 'real life' of the Marvel Universe. No big conspiracies most of the time, just domestics between people who are all too human, despite being (or because of being) superhuman. It is a shame that it ended and has been succeeded by the much more anodyne The Pulse, although seeing how much that man writes, it is not surprising that the shock of originality has been dissipated.

Superhumanity and superheroes allow a writer to explore themes in an exaggerated manner, the comics equivalent of Expressionism, in a sense. They are also so much the backbone of the medium, however much quality work is created that does not include Super-themes, that their presence in a story should not really be a distraction, whether the comic itself is dark or not. Just another small and deceptively easy step to take in the suspension of disbelief! (In fact, I would argue that most comics that feature action but no superheroes are reacting againt the Super-legacy of the medium; happily, they are often successful).
 
  
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