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Post by commond on Jun 4, 2022 20:55:40 GMT -5
For the past few days, I've had some ideas floating around in my head about how creators should use older, existing characters in newer comics. I apologize in advance if my thoughts are messy or unclear.
It seems to me that if you're a fan of Silver Age comics, you'd be much more responsive to a love letter to the Silver Age than a deconstruction of its characters. This is something I thought Darwyn Cooke did extremely well in The New Frontier. He crafted a loving tribute to the Silver Age while still critiquing some of the social and political ills of the day. If you're not a fan of Silver Age comics, then I imagine you'd be more interested in a deconstruction of the characters and the comics themselves, ala Watchman, etc. Now that's just a generalization. You may not be a fan of either type of comic. As we know, there was a trend towards grim and gritty comics than began in the 80s, and eventually led to a push back from creators who felt that the grim and gritty era had gone too far and that comics needed to be fun again. I can't say for certain whether this is true or not, but there seems to have been a shift away from the grim and gritty towards more of a homage to older comics. I called it romantic nostalgia, but I'm sure there's a better title for it. The question I have is which is the better form of storytelling.
I get why there is a backlash towards grim and gritty comics, especially amongst people who love Golden Age and Silver Age comic books. I understand why people may be perturbed about what a modern creator has done to their favorite characters or beloved books. Certainly, they have a right to feel that way. Personally, when I encounter a grim and gritty book, the first question I ask is, "Okay, why is the story being told in this way?" Is it because the creators wanted to create something mature? Are there any influences they're drawing upon? Are there socio-political reasons for the story being darker in tone (e.g. Thatcher's England or Regan's America)? Does the creator have some sort of hang-up that they want to share with us regardless of whether we want them to share it with us, or are they simply following the market and trying to cash in on the latest trends? I'm from a generation of readers that grew up on deconstructed superheroes in both the American and British comic book markets. I never really experienced an idealized period of superhero storytelling. Even in my youth, Marvel and DC were edgier than they had been in the 60s and 70s. Reading a dark, brooding superhero story is perfectly normal for me. I've mentioned in the past that I cannot imagine Batman or Daredevil not being dark and moody. Some creators clearly do, however, because there have been numerous throwbacks to a more carefree era of storytelling where things were far less gloomy.
Now, clearly when creators take the grim and gritty approach, the characters suffer. They're twisted and turned, and dragged through the mud as some people put it. Oftentimes, they're unrecognizable from the original version. This can be upsetting. I've even encountered it myself. The other day I was reading the second Tim Truman Jonah Hex mini-series, and there was a letter from a guy who said he never read the original Johan Hex series because it came across as guys who had seen too many Cary Cooper films, and that the modern creators had captured the true essence of the West, and I was actually kind of angry... I was like, "mf-er, you never read an issue of Michael Fleischer's Jonah Hex in your life, and since when did shooting zombies capture the true essence of the West?" It would be easily to dislike Lansdale & Truman's Hex. He doesn't really talk like Hex, or act like Hex, or look like Hex (the man desperately needs a haircut), and there's all that genre-blending. I could dismiss it in five seconds flat, if I wanted to. However, accepting it for what it is, I find there's merit in it. And here's where I get to the crux of my argument... Can you really keep telling the same Jonah Hex stories over and over again, or at some point do you need to try something new? I'm a firm believer that characters need to evolve and change, and keep up with the times even if I can't do so. So, if you're bringing characters back from the past, aren't you doing a disservice if you don't try to modernize them somehow? Granted, you could always leave them in the past and try to create original characters of your own, but let's say, that you're trying to resurrect a cancelled series, shouldn't you try to put a new spin on it?
When the British Invasion happened in the 80s, I'm not sure if it was through design or because the British writers were a bit quirky, but they tended to resurrect minor Silver Age characters and had a field day with them, as opposed to the big name American creators who were busy rebooting the A-list characters. I don't know if it makes it any less of a crime if you mess with a D-list character from the 60s, if you're a huge fan of said character, but it made sense in the same way that covering another artist's B-sides makes more sense than trying to cover their hits. Of course, other creators tried to latch onto the same thing and it came across as posturing after a certain point, but the very best of those British Invasion comics seem to have an even mix of homage and deconstruction. It's clear that the British writers were big fans of the DC Silver Age. They simply felt that superhero comics hadn't reached their potential.
I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on this if they have any. Do you believe in pushing the medium forward, or do you just want to read well crafted adventure stories? Do you think older characters, especially the cancelled variety, should be left to rest in their graves, or do you think they're fair game for modern creators? Can you still enjoy the older stories while ignoring the modern takes, or are the modern takes an affront to the characters? Did the likes of Miller and Co. hurt the business? What is the ideal why to use older characters in new books? If people hated Chaykin's Twilight, for example, what would be a better way to use those 50s and 60s Sci-fi characters? Some kind of loving, modern day reprisal that looks back on the era fondly like The Rocketeer?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2022 5:44:21 GMT -5
Well...I'll sound very old-fashioned in my comments, so this is just personal preferences and not meant to slight others' tastes by any means.
I find a lot of "mature" comics mostly immature. Profanity and violence and endless deconstructions don't really advance Silver Age characters in my opinion. And you have to remember, again this will sound old-fashioned, but some of the beauty of those idealized characters, hokey as they may have often been seen in their storytelling, was that they were escapism from the not so happy realities of the real world. In their own way, and perhaps especially to impressionable younger children that were originally more the target age, they could become this wonderful escape. Escape from bullies at school, parents fighting, sad things happening in the news, etc.
In a make-believe world where Superman was this ideal of "do the right thing", it gave this overwhelming message of positivity that you would not often see in real life itself. Or Spider-Man not finding life so easy, but somehow always coming around to likewise doing the right things versus fully giving into selfishness, much as he wishes he could at times. That latter example actually feels pretty darn mature to me in the true sense.
To repurpose these types of characters for "grim and gritty" of the 80's British and later "mature" styles of storytelling, well, it feels like the bad kids on the schoolground had a naughty joke to tell. And on the flip side, let's be honest...some of them have been masterful storytellers in their own ways and those "naughty jokes" can be quite entertaining to some. But do they really "advance" the characters as something more to be inspired by, draw positivity from, etc.? If you eschew that aspect, I think you deny a major element of what made them so great in the first place.
That doesn't mean I don't believe there aren't meaningful ways storytelling can't move forward, and everything has to be a blatant love letter to the past even though some of them have been delightful and appeal greatly to fans such as myself. I just don't think "grim and gritty" is the only way to get there, I would rather see some postive ideals still core to the storytelling. I also think the world could use more of that.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 5, 2022 6:46:01 GMT -5
I think I mostly agree with Supercat.. but only to a point. In alot of cases, adding violence and/or profanity doesn't mean anything to the story, it's there simply to make the comic 'adult'... in those cases, I'm generally not very amused... I agree it seems more like an immature person trying to pretend to be mature.
That said, you CAN certainly write great comics that are filled with violence.. either for humor, or serious ones, but it has to have a logical reason, not just being thrown in to make the comic 'mature'
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Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2022 6:54:05 GMT -5
Do you believe in pushing the medium forward, or do you just want to read well crafted adventure stories? I'd like to also address this question, because I think it brings up another important aspect. When I think of more "mature" storytelling historically speaking when it comes to the world of adventure, I think of a lot of classic novels: Treasure Island 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea / Mysterious Island Three Musketeers Moby Dick Mutiny on the Bounty And so on. Yes, these are definitely again in the "old-fashioned" tastes category, but I refer to them here as examples of where I think the storyelling is more mature in terms of complexity of plots, depth of characterizations, etc. compared to say typical Silver Age comic books. So yes, personally I prefer well crafted adventure stories, and would rather use these as reference points to what more sophisticated storytelling could look like. Or said another way...Supercat is an old fuddy duddy
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Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2022 6:55:56 GMT -5
That said, you CAN certainly write great comics that are filled with violence.. either for humor, or serious ones, but it has to have a logical reason, not just being thrown in to make the comic 'mature' I agree with you on that point even though it's not normally what I seek out (again, just personal tastes). Done well though it can add to the story for sure. Watchmen as an ever classic example had a good story to tell, and all the grit in it made complete sense based on the setting and events. But then it became "grim and gritty" sells, and that's when I think it became less of a "tool in the toolkit" when it made sense but rather more the norm.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2022 7:25:52 GMT -5
Does the creator have some sort of hang-up that they want to share with us regardless of whether we want them to share it with us, or are they simply following the market and trying to cash in on the latest trends? Following the latest trends, perhaps? We see it all the time in wrestling. Certainly in North America, the hardcore style of ECW begat the Attitude Era in the WWF. WCW, under Vince Russo, tried to copy that (badly). Sometimes, I hate “photocopies”. At least now with wrestling, it seems companies are trying to have their own identity rather than following the crowd. I don’t necessarily want (and this is just a personal, subjective view) trends. I understand the business reasons why, but I’d rather we lived in a world where people didn’t try and make everything “the next Wolverine”.
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Post by commond on Jun 5, 2022 17:10:26 GMT -5
James Robinson's Starman seemed to get the balance right by creating something that was wholly original while still paying respect to not only the Golden Age Starman but all of the previous incarnations of the character. And that was a series that did a lot of retconning of minor or obscure DC characters. Of course, that required a tremendous amount of imagination on Robinson's part, and perhaps that's what it really boils down to -- talent.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 5, 2022 20:00:41 GMT -5
I agree about Robinson; and, I think a large part of that specific example was that Robinson was bringing a lot of literary influences to his work, not just comics. A lot of writers had grown up with comics and movies and could swipe plots and characters from movies, but couldn't pull much from a literary environment, like their predecessors. I mean, look at Robinson's Firearm, in the Ultraverse. In most hands, it would have been yet another gun-toting vigilante, ala the Punisher and his ilk. Robinson took the idea (not sure if it was his or someone else as there was a core team of writers developing the universe) and turned it into a mixture of a hardboiled detective and an espionage thriller. His character had worked for a secret British government department that dealt with paranormal threats. There were elements of Hammett and Chandler and John Le Carre, as he was soured on the whole black ops world. Robinson talked books, constantly, on the letters pages and mystery writers were a common group. With Grendel: Four Devils, One Hell, he mixed in several influences, from westerns to samurai films and lore. The Golden Age took what had been done before and applied the real post-War paranoia and conservative backlash to Roosevelt and the influence of the Left on social agendas. He mixes in McCarthyism and Atomic Bomb experiments and a bit of brain swapping, to create a wonderful paranoid world that kind of mirrored what happened to comics, in the post-War era.
Talent is definitely there; but also applying influences beyond comics. Too many of his contemporaries seemed to lack other influences.
I was a fan of both the nostalgic update of the Silver Age and the deconstructionist style, when done well. That is the kicker; when done well. I enjoy a good sci-fi story; but, there are few things worse than bad sci-fi. Same in comics. Deconstruction has to have a point, to say something about the world around you and some of the things resented in the past. The original "steampunk" stories were deconstructionists, turning the old Victorian scientific adventures on their head an pulling back on the idea that science would save mankind and use the same style to comment on how science was used to maintain an unequal status quo. Michael Moorcock did that brilliantly in his Oswald Bastable stories and the earliest steampunk writers picked up on that and there was a level of social commentary to their work. The problem is that element was lost on the groups that followed and just imitated those old Victorian adventures (which often had social commentary, in the hands of Verne and Wells) and substituted steam and clockwork technology for modern devices. Difference engines instead of micro-processors. They just wanted to do The Wild Wild West and have more modern dialogue and a lot of Victorian Emma peels in fetishy corsets, because they had seen Rebecca Fogg, on The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne (where the idea was original and not a 5th generation copy).
Watchman was a good deconstruction, as it explores the rather reactionary and even fascist nature of vigilantism, where a person takes the law into their own hands, because only they know how to change the situation. It also showed that the psychological make-up of people drawn to be in the public eye isn't necessarily healthy. look at the performing arts, especially popular music and Hollywood. Far more seek adulation than practicing a craft and a system feeds them into a machine and drains whatever money it can through and from them and spits them out, at the end. Substance abuse, depression, relationship problems and even sexual deviancy are rampant, as you have a large section of the performing population that has deep psychological pain that they crave the adulation to give them worth. It is rarer to find the real artisan, who develops their craft and has a real point of view to express and builds a long, sustained career of quality, because they aren't as damaged going into things. To me, that is the problem of too many "deconstructionist. works.
For ever Watchman or The One or even The New Statesmen, there is an Ultimates, or Snyder Man of Steel that just does things for shock value, with no real commentary on the present or the past. There are some that fall between, like the Authority (in my opinion), where I think Ellis had a few ideas; but, tended to just pull a reversal at the climax out of the blue and Millar just went for shock value. What social commentary Millar had in Ultimates is buried under a lot of hamfisted violence, pop culture wanking, and shocking ideas, solely for the sake of getting a reaction from the reader. Wanda and Pietro as an implied incestuous duo, Hank Pym as a serial wife abuser, Captain America as a reactionary, etc. The good god lost in the pointless, to me.
Darwyn Cooke is a good example of looking lovingly on the period; but also pulling back the curtain. He uses Hal Jordan to adulate the test pilots who became the Mercury Seven and the foundation of the space program, while never missing sight that a lot of politics went into the space program, as much as idealism. He shows the darker underbelly of society, with the McCarthyist background for the JSA quitting and the institutional racism that murders John Henry. Jonn Jonnz, much like the paranoid sci-fi films of the 50s is a metaphor for anti-Communist hysteria. Wonder Woman highlights that women have been getting the shaft under both opposing ideologies and is willing to fight to change it. It felt both in step with the past and the child yelling out that "The emperor has no clothes!"
So much of the so-called "grim & gritty" of the 90s was just cheap pandering and copying for a quick buck, much like Hollywood aping a trend, or designers jumping on the latest fad. It is reflected in all of the Harry Potter rip-offs that popped up when the series became a massive mainstream phenomena, in the media (the kids were already reading it; that's what made it special). It was the old Martin Goodman formula: see what is selling, copy it and flood the market, and then move on. Repeat.
Guys like Robinson want to bring in different ideas, guys like Mark Waid or Geoff Johns just want to repeat the comics of their youth, often, with varying levels of talent. The former creates more interesting results, but the latter can be entertaining and occasionally come up with an interesting twist, on an old idea. Someone like a Kurt Busiek does a bit of both, mixing the nostalgia with a more meta commentary.
I personally am not big on ultra-violent comics, as there is too much violence in the real world. I don't seek that in my entertainment; I seek an escape from it. However, one of my favorite series is Pat Mills & Kevin O'Neil's Marshall Law. It is ridiculously violent (and long before things like The Boys jumped on the bandwagon). Mills has a POV; he hates superheroes and suggests they are a twisted idea that is harmful. He then takes that premise and pushes it to the extreme, to get your attention for his arguments, which play out in the middle of the violence and dirty jokes (often in the backgrounds and graffiti spread throughout). There is some wicked satire among all the blood and depraved behavior. On the surface, it seems gratuitous, but there is a subversive philosophy going on there. Compare that to Bendis et al and stuff like The Sentry and the Dark Avengers and you can see just a cynical have the bad guys be a bad as I can get away with, since there is no Code. The Code wasn't always a bad thing, as it often forced people to be more creative in their expression.
Swearing, sex and violence gets attention but isn't mature. Swearing to emphasize a real and logical emotional response to a situation, sex that serves the point of the story and, similarly, violence has a place in mature comics. Just like a single profanity in a film will have more impact than 90 minutes of Tarantino F-bombs, the real art is knowing when to use it and how much.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jun 6, 2022 8:08:44 GMT -5
I'm not as well articulated as others here on subjects, but the discussion reminds me of reading Starman vs Preacher around the same time. I haven't finished either yet, for very different reasons. I've read the first three Omnibus of Starman and the first three volumes of Preacher HC. Both, for my tastes, seem to be the polar opposites of said discussion in the OP. While I really enjoyed the start of Preacher (in particular Jesse's backstory) I felt it pushed the "adult" envelope more, the less interested in it I got. (Didn't help Glenn Fabry did almost too well in conveying the carnage.) By the time I had bought and read the third HC, I was quickly loosing interest in it, as I felt it was doing what it was doing for the sake of shock value, and gave up on it. I know it is highly regarded by many and I admit to not going through with it and giving it a chance. So there's that.
Now Starman, I originally bought the first three Omnibus at a drastically reduced price. I've since wanted to finish it, but I've wanted to do it in the same format but Omnibus prices have been more than I am willing to pay. (So I may have to take an alternate route.) But Starman I found surprisingly mature it the writing just in the content of story and less in what is considered "adult" elements. Especially in the 90's when everyone was trying too hard to make comics "adult" instead of embracing the medium in which they were creating content in.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 6, 2022 9:44:54 GMT -5
I'm not as well articulated as others here on subjects, but the discussion reminds me of reading Starman vs Preacher around the same time. I haven't finished either yet, for very different reasons. I've read the first three Omnibus of Starman and the first three volumes of Preacher HC. Both, for my tastes, seem to be the polar opposites of said discussion in the OP. While I really enjoyed the start of Preacher (in particular Jesse's backstory) I felt it pushed the "adult" envelope more, the less interested in it I got. (Didn't help Glenn Fabry did almost too well in conveying the carnage.) By the time I had bought and read the third HC, I was quickly loosing interest in it, as I felt it was doing what it was doing for the sake of shock value, and gave up on it. I know it is highly regarded by many and I admit to not going through with it and giving it a chance. So there's that. Preacher went full speed ahead with its absurd treatment of violence and profanity, true, but that's not what made it mature in my opinion (quite the opposite, in fact... those bits were juvenile comic relief). What made it stand out as an adult title was how it took polarizing issues and did not treat them in a polarizing way, respecting the readers' intelligence. Concepts like masculinity, for example, or issues like gun control, would get fair treatment and not end up with Garth Ennis making some kind of moralizing speech one way or the other. Preacher, as a series, acknowledged and even embraced the fact that life is complicated. It took me a long while to give the book a chance, especially when the LCS owner said "oh, this is a great book! It's hyper-violent!" (definitely a turn off for me). But when I did start it, I couldn't stop. And the longer it went, the more mature it was; less gore, fewer fights, and more actual human drama. It would be fair that it was a bit tamer in its old days, generally speaking, but it was even better for it. The term "for mature readers" is an ambiguous one. Sometimes, it means "children should not have access to this material unsupervised"; other times, it means "children would probably not understand what the deal with this is". (The latter category is what I would call an actual adult comic, but that's a personal view). Preacher was a bit of both: younger readers would doubtless enjoy the potty jokes and Road Runner-like violence, but themes like responsibility, selfishness and dependence might well fly over their head. See what you've done Adam? Now I want to read it again!!!
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Post by mikelmidnight on Jun 6, 2022 11:34:40 GMT -5
James Robinson's Starman seemed to get the balance right by creating something that was wholly original while still paying respect to not only the Golden Age Starman but all of the previous incarnations of the character. And that was a series that did a lot of retconning of minor or obscure DC characters. Of course, that required a tremendous amount of imagination on Robinson's part, and perhaps that's what it really boils down to -- talent.
I will throw in here that James Robinson's Airboy sounded on paper like everything I dislike about modern comics, but I found it absolutely hilarious.
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Post by Professor Echo on Jun 6, 2022 13:19:34 GMT -5
Using BATMAN as an example, the "grim and gritty" has become just as much of a cliché and filled with exhausted concepts as all the post-code "Batman Vs. Sock Drawer" stories of the 1950's-60's. To me the problems are not so much the ideas in and of themselves, but the over proliferation of the same ideas by the major publishers who never want to be the first ones to risk anything too far from the prevailing trend. They would say you can't argue with success, but such repetition breeds a general monotony that ultimately will turn against you. Would visionaries like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby stand a chance now with trying to introduce new ideas en route to game changers? Would someone like Frank Miller be allowed to change the industry in such a revolutionary way as he did in the late 80's? I don't know, it doesn't seem likely now with the industry mired in the same old same old for over 30 years. Good comics have been, are now and always will be around, but the dragged out on fumes exploitation of a general trend just might finally spell its doom one of these days.
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Post by tonebone on Jun 6, 2022 13:56:44 GMT -5
Well...I'll sound very old-fashioned in my comments, so this is just personal preferences and not meant to slight others' tastes by any means. I find a lot of "mature" comics mostly immature. Profanity and violence and endless deconstructions don't really advance Silver Age characters in my opinion. And you have to remember, again this will sound old-fashioned, but some of the beauty of those idealized characters, hokey as they may have often been seen in their storytelling, was that they were escapism from the not so happy realities of the real world. In their own way, and perhaps especially to impressionable younger children that were originally more the target age, they could become this wonderful escape. Escape from bullies at school, parents fighting, sad things happening in the news, etc. In a make-believe world where Superman was this ideal of "do the right thing", it gave this overwhelming message of positivity that you would not often see in real life itself. Or Spider-Man not finding life so easy, but somehow always coming around to likewise doing the right things versus fully giving into selfishness, much as he wishes he could at times. That latter example actually feels pretty darn mature to me in the true sense. To repurpose these types of characters for "grim and gritty" of the 80's British and later "mature" styles of storytelling, well, it feels like the bad kids on the schoolground had a naughty joke to tell. And on the flip side, let's be honest...some of them have been masterful storytellers in their own ways and those "naughty jokes" can be quite entertaining to some. But do they really "advance" the characters as something more to be inspired by, draw positivity from, etc.? If you eschew that aspect, I think you deny a major element of what made them so great in the first place. That doesn't mean I don't believe there aren't meaningful ways storytelling can't move forward, and everything has to be a blatant love letter to the past even though some of them have been delightful and appeal greatly to fans such as myself. I just don't think "grim and gritty" is the only way to get there, I would rather see some postive ideals still core to the storytelling. I also think the world could use more of that. This is the perfect meshing of modern (for the 90's, anyway) sensibilities, but paying homage to the wonder of the Silver Age. Moore had a way (when he wanted to) of really lovingly recreating and at the same time dissecting those old stories. With Supreme, it's such a sweet homage.
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Post by commond on Jun 6, 2022 19:27:45 GMT -5
I'm not as well articulated as others here on subjects, but the discussion reminds me of reading Starman vs Preacher around the same time. I haven't finished either yet, for very different reasons. I've read the first three Omnibus of Starman and the first three volumes of Preacher HC. Both, for my tastes, seem to be the polar opposites of said discussion in the OP. While I really enjoyed the start of Preacher (in particular Jesse's backstory) I felt it pushed the "adult" envelope more, the less interested in it I got. (Didn't help Glenn Fabry did almost too well in conveying the carnage.) By the time I had bought and read the third HC, I was quickly loosing interest in it, as I felt it was doing what it was doing for the sake of shock value, and gave up on it. I know it is highly regarded by many and I admit to not going through with it and giving it a chance. So there's that. Preacher is a great series. If I have any objection to it, it's the crass humour, but that's more than offset by the strong character relationships. However, Preacher was a series that was written for a mature readers line, and used entirely original characters. I know that Ennis doesn't particularly care for superheroes, but imagine if Ennis had taken over from Grell on Green Arrow and done the Preacher as Green Arrow, or better yet, used some other character like the Huntress or The Phantom Stranger. How would people have reacted? I find this topic fascinating. In theory, there could have been fanzine opposition to what Marvel was doing in the 60s with their characters (I'm not sure if there was, I'm just saying in theory there could have been), or fan opposition to late 70s-early 80s titles like Uncanny X-Men and New Teen Titans that introduced a lot of sex, for one thing. We know that you can't tell Golden Age stories in the Silver Age, or Silver Age stories in the Bronze Age, and so on, so what kind of stories do you tell? We also know that comics are not unique in terms of this changing landscape. We saw how New Hollywood rejected classic Hollywood and the studio system just as the French New Wave had rejected the Golden Age of French cinema a decade earlier, and we saw all sorts of movements in music from punk to post-punk to new wave, etc. If things remained static, would we been having this current Golden Age of Television that we're currently enjoying? Not everyone enjoys dark, cynical, pessimistic, ironic, nihilistic, or fatalistic storytelling. Not everyone wants to stories depressing. A lot of people I talk to about TV shows don't enjoy watching shows that are too violent. I completely understand. Fortunately, there is a ton of light hearted entertainment out there. Arguably, more than critically acclaimed grim and gritty shows, as I'd argue that the vast majority of people prefer more wholesome entertainment. I just wonder how you can tell modern Batman or Daredevil stories, for example, that capture that aesthetic. Especially stories that aren't set in the past and don't have a retro aspect to them. Someone told me recently that there was a short Cary Nord/Karl Kessel run on Daredevil that returned him to his swashbuckling roots. I'm curious to see how that worked. As much as I love Busiek's Astro City, which may be one of the most perfect superhero stories ever written, I have struggled to get into Busiek's Marvel work as he seems to be trying too hard to recreate the 70s Avengers, etc. If I want the 70s Avengers, I'll read the 70s Avengers. But then, what kind of Avengers do I want? What little I have seen of the direction 00s creators took them in has kind of blown my mind in terms of how different is from what I'm used to. The only conclusion I can draw from all this rambling is that it's really difficult to write good stories with older characters. I loved what Brubaker did with Captain America at least in the original series, but even he ran out of steam after a while. Perhaps creators would be better off coming up with new characters, but that's equally as tough. Or perhaps new readers are enjoying all of the modern books and there's simply a jumping off point for all of us.
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Post by berkley on Jun 6, 2022 21:11:15 GMT -5
I agree with those who don't see the question in terms of grim & gritty vs romantic nostalgia: those are just two of many different approaches that creators could take with established characters and each of those approaches will have its own advantages and disadvantages. Mostly it depends on the skill and execution of the creators and the tastes of the reader and everything has to be judged on a case by case basis. What works with one character might not work with another; and what works with one set of creators might not work with another.
For me, I've found that I've lost my taste for seeing new versions of my old favourites, even when they're done well, with or without drastic changes. I'm pretty sure I'd still enjoy re-reading most of the things I liked back in the day - though I haven't done a lot of that the last few years, so I can't be absolutely certain in each and every case - but whenever I look at a new Thor or Dr. Strange or Daredevil or whatever the case may be, I don't seem to feel any urge to pick it up, no matter what it looks like.
I'm trying to think if there have been any exceptions ... the only thing that comes to mind right now is Warren Ellis's Moon Knight, which pretty much nailed how I see the character and yet felt modern and up to date in style and sensibility. So it seems that in theory I could find myself enjoying a new series of other characters I like.
It's possible there could be more along these lines than I'm aware of, but if so, I haven't been seeing them. So for me, any new comics I'm interested in are almost exclusively new characters and stories, which means independent from the shared universes of DC and Marvel.
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