The Superhero Cycle of Despair
Posted at Big Hollywood in response to Bill Willingham’s post on Superhero Decadence:
Superhero Decadence. What a sadly necessary phrase to add to our lexicon. As someone who’s written the kid-friendly animated Batman comics and has designs on writing a fairly adult in its themes and presentation superhero project down the line, I certainly believe there’s room for any and all interpretations of the characters. They contain multitudes, as do we all.
The problem is in making the “adult” version the dominant version and on insisting that your ongoing adventure serials reflect that darkened world view. The current crop of creators on “Amazing Spider-Man” have been doing some of the most light-hearted and entertaining takes on Spider-Man in years. Only here’s the problem — eventually fans will demand drama. The villain is going to have to truly “hurt” the hero. Spider-Man will win the end as he always does, but we all know the bad guy will come back. They always do (Marvel has action figures and licensing deals to think of, after all). Only next time, the villain will have to raise the stakes or else why bring him back?
In contemporary mainstream comics, the heroes ALWAYS lose… even when they win. When the villain comes back, someone has to die (and then the next character to die has to get eaten by the Blob on panel), or get raped (but we don’t show the actual penetration, so it’s still tasteful). And that’s just the villains. The heroes fare little better.
It’s as if every episode of “Law & Order” ended with the convicted defendant vowing vengeance on Jack McCoy — and then next episode he breaks out of prison, murders McCoy’s beloved niece and then stuffs her dismembered corpse into, say, a refrigerator. Does anyone think that would actually make “Law & Order” more realistic? More relevant or interesting or adult? It certainly wouldn’t make it more popular.
I guess my problem comes down to the fact that most so-called “adult” takes on superheroes are adult in the same way that a late night movie on Cinemax is “adult.” They have pretensions to sophistication and sneer at the “kid’s stuff” while reveling in their gratuitous sex, violence and “shocking” subject matter. That’s not adult, that’s juvenile.
And Superman, Batman, Spidey… they deserve better than that.