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Not your fault, Dick. The problem is not that there are grim-and-gritty stories; the problem is the people who think that all stories should be like that. (Or even just some stories for which it's a bad fit.)

Wow. Just wow.Is that like the look-out on the Titanic apologizing for not seeing the iceberg until it was too late? While I enjoyed both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, they're uniqueness is slightly diminished by imitators. Of course, flawed, realistic heroes are much more interesting than the two-dimensional stoic heroes of the Silver Age. It was bound to happen sooner or later...

Ummm... it's not his fault. Or Moore's or Miller's. It's the hacks that suddenly found superheroes cool again trying to be as dark and as violent as Watchmen and DKR. However, they missed the point. No one was as nuanced or satirical. Both Moore and Miller were essentially trying to put the last nail in the coffin of superheroes but they actually re-lit the fire for a generation suddenly obsessed with Punisher and Wolverine.

Also, Girodiano's comments are 5-10 years late. The Dark Age of comics are over. Respectable cartoonists like Gilbert Hernandez Chris Ware are now in book stores everywhere. We are getting brilliant comics new comics from people like Gabriel be and Fabio Moon. Not to even mention All-Star Superman.

Hey, it's a business and when Batman and Wolverine made more money being crazy and dark and Daredevil briefly became A-list with Elektra getting pierced through the heart, that was direction business dictated. If Superman kissing babies and drinking milk started selling 100K a month, you'd see every book become like that too.

When is Rob Liefeld going to apologize for the whole leg-pouch / big-gun trend?

Ugh, not this again. I hate it when people who were involved with those comics, come back and say sorry for it all. Alan Moore has said sorry and now Dick Giordano. Next, it'll be Karen Berger.

I'm never quite sure what they mean when they say comics are still grim and gritty. There isn't any art style like there was back then and most superheroes are morally good. What are these people talking about?

"What are these people talking about?"

*sigh* It's ingrained. You don't even understand what it is so you don't know what you're reading is sad, depressing and often nihilistic (NOSING LEBOWSKI) copy of a copy.

Use of murder as cliche? Graphic, bloody violence making up for actual drama?

That's what they're talking about.

And I'm not some Silver Age Fanboy. I have no problem with things being realistic, but when you kick things off with multiple murders often graphically depicted or when your big idea for a character is having him gobbled up in a lovingly detailed drawings for a couple pages, it's no longer, y'know, fun.

What's really interesting aside from the handful of murders committed by some of the Dark Avengers Marvel has toned down the violence while creating a thoroughly dark version of it's universe where a psychopath is running things. It's as if they remembered DC's pointless Lex Luthor as President stunt and trumped it, Norman Osborn has power and he's been menacing everyone with it, few have died yet, but it's pure terror for anyone who understands who Osborn is., the heroes are running scared trying to learn how to be pro-active instead of reactive, they've got to stop Osborn before he actually does something BIG with all his clout. He's just playing at being a hero for now, putting on a show, no one knows what his plans really are, it's becoming clear it involves massive amounts of power, godlike power, but he's all sleight of hand as it stands.

Meanwhile, DC's kicked off it's new Batman & Robin title with quite literally, a painfully murderous freakshow. Grant Morrison doesn't do anything but offer up pointless violence and obtuse motivations in the name of post modernism. I point to this because it's DC's flagship title, it's new hotness. I read that first arc and I have no clue what the point of it was. It was a jumble of nightmarish images and lame attempts to justify them. I got no problem with horror, but this isn't what I want from a super hero book.

I don't particularly care for either as a line wide ideal, but of the two, Marvel's Dark Reign is far more palatable and well executed, it's got a body count, but it's rarely showing me things that I wish I could unsee.

All that said, DC's killing it with the Superman books, aside from the perpetual crossover, it's quite fun. I'm not gonna play favorites, if I could only read one line right now, I'd go with the Superman stuff. Usually above average art, some great writing, and while I can't wait for Robinson to have some more time with Supes in his traditional form, it's okay for another few months.

And Black Lanterns don't bother me as much because quite obviously some of that stuff will be rest once all that's over, they're killing off people left and right and it's obviously going to end with a lot of them coming back, altered maybe, but you can't kill all those characters off like that and not rescind some of them.

And the best part of the Black Lanterns is the understanding of Zombies as a dramatic element, few seem to get it's as much about the emotional connection one had to the person in the body as it is simply that "the dead have risen". No, it's that that dead guy is your favorite uncle or your mom or your brother.

^

Shaddup already, willya?!

You know what, it IS kinda his fault. He was in charge at the time when the turn towards darkness happened, and he was in a place to to approve or reject new storylines and characters.

On the other hand, this is also the time of Giffen's JLA, so maybe he can be forgiven.

And there was about a decade and a half between the end of the Silver Age and Watchmen. If you look at some of the storytelling in the 70s and early 80s, there really was a balance between the goofiness of the 60s and the hyper-violence of the late 80s and 90s.

The problem is this.......It was laudable to try to market comics for adults....the mistake was ONLY marketing "super hero" comics for adults.

You then lost the kids...which is ironic as the outside world thinks of comics as a kids medium. We wish!

Hey dick, want some cheese with that whine?

I just don't get it. This isn't Sesame Street we're talking about. Comics have always had edgy topics going back to the Golden Age. Sex and violence were so prevalent at one point that a "Comics Code" was adopted.

Our society is gradually abandoning the "traditional" Judeo-Christian model of shame and it's reflected in every aspect of the media. Sex and violence are here to stay and I'd hardly blame comic books for that fact. More often than not, comics reflect the world around us, not the reverse.

Funny, Giordano should bring this up.

Check out this relevent commentary, "The Super-Hero’s American Exceptionalism"

*Part 1:

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtodd/2009/11/10/part-1-the-super-heros-american-exceptionalism/

*Part 2:

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtodd/2009/11/11/part-2-the-super-heros-american-exceptionalism-by-mort-todd/