Martinex1: Well it is a brand new year, but some things stay the same. So today, being Tuesday, is the day we play Follow the Leader. Start us on a topic - any topic related to the Bronze Age - and we will all jump in with our commentary. Cheers!
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Follow the Leader: Episode 54: Dark, Too Dark, or Just Right?
Martinex1: Well it is a brand new year, but some things stay the same. So today, being Tuesday, is the day we play Follow the Leader. Start us on a topic - any topic related to the Bronze Age - and we will all jump in with our commentary. Cheers!
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12 comments:
Hello and Happy New Year! Having just come off of reading the new Batman: Metal over the weekend, I was wondering how dark is too dark?
I loved Dark Phoenix, but hated the 'Dark' Storm that followed. Some dark is good, but I was wondering if there were any characters who went dark, but you found no good reason, or had a good reason but went too far.
Feel free to discuss and shed some light on the subject!
Well, I always thought they made Batman a bit too grim Post-Crisis; they almost turned him into a machine, no emotions only logic. I don't mind a certain amount of grimdark with the Caped Crusader, but it's hard to root for him when he's more of an asshole than the bad guys.
I thought Carnage from Amazing Spider-Man was overkill; they already had Venom, who wanted to eat your brain, but they had to create Carnage, to make Venom look almost normal. I thought it was basically pointless, other than for shock value.
I have to agree with Mr Wilson. A little dark is fine, but everyone went bat-poop crazy with it in the 80's. I understand Batman being on the dark side, but if this was real life, everyone would hate him. The amount is darkness that he fell under in the 70's (O'Neil Adams/Englehart Rogers/etc....) was sufficient for me, thank you
I also liked the darker direction that Daredevil went in during the early 80's. It was done gradually and I think that's why it worked so well.
Curious which "Dark Storm" Selenarch is referring to, the brief "Rogue Storm" where Dr. Doom turned her bad, or the longer-term change into Mohawk Storm? I tolerated the former as a plot device, but was not a huge fan of Storm turning to the Mohawk-wearing girl who loves to fight, etc. I guess as an older reader I can better appreciate the move to evolve Storm a bit, but as a kid it all seemed pointless and silly, almost like trying to add another Wolverine to the team.
It's interesting how the grim n' gritty era moved Marvel and DC to normalize their brutal heroes, so characters like Punisher, Ghost Rider and Lobo, who had often been depicted as antagonists in stories, became "good guys", so that they could sell some more books (even Venom!).
I prefer when there are some stronger delineations between good and bad...for all Frank Miller made Punisher pretty darn cool in his Daredevil run, he always made it clear that Daredevil saw him as a killer first and foremost, who belonged behind bars...(of course then DD shot him...and I confess, I kind of liked that, too).
Happy New Year!
-david p.
Great question Selenarch. I too am opposed to the “dark” characters. I always felt it was fine if temporary like Yellowjacket’s first appearance in the Silver Age, or if it was a true progression of character development like Jean Grey as Dark Phoenix. There were consequences to Jean’s actions, but surely she was hardly in control.
But when “dark/ violent” was thrown in just because it was cool ... ie Wolverine, Lobo, Punisher, Ghost Rider, etc I found it more and more distasteful. Why aren’t these guys just villains? And conversely why are Venom and the rest considered as heroes?
I liked that Marvel reformed villains like Hawkeye, Black Widow, Quicksilver etc, but a character may be too dark for me when he commits murder. I just can’t shrug that off and say “oh well” the same way I might dismiss reforming a thief. I feel Wolverine is the worst because his popularity seems to diminish the meaning of “hero”. This guy may be he biggest killer in the marvel universe...right? That is a bit odd to me.
Admittedly I am stuck in the early Bronze Age...
It started with the "murder" of Gwen Stacy and the Goblin. That was too much violence and death for my taste.
Until then, my only recollection of death in comics was Harry's and Speedy's respective overdoses.
I am not a social psychologist but I suspect comics just mirror the other media. I recall that the death of children in TV was allegedly taboo but since the X-Files kids have been getting regularly being tortured / mutilated / bopped off. (I don't know where / when the reversal of this alleged taboo started, it's just my recollection.)
It would seem, for a talented writer, there are plenty of ways to tell a good story without the "realistic" violence and death. I.e., a good ole fashioned "clobering time" worked for me.
I don't mind 'dark' when it's appropriate to the character and the story. For instance, Watchmen; and some Swamp Thing books. Batman- I prefer the detective aspect as seen in Adams/Aparo/Rogers stories. The whole 'grim and gritty' trope has become as hackneyed, imo, as the campy Batman was by the late 60's. There's no imagination or creativity involved in simply showing ever increasing levels of bloody violence. And again, I'm no prude- I loved Watchmen. I just appreciate good storytelling (which I'm enjoying the past couple of days, in reading some Englehart Avengers stories)...
Not a fan of the "dark" versions for the most part.
Although I read it long after its release, the West Coast Avengers story with an evil Scarlet Witch was pretty good. But that's about it.
I'm not a fan of the dark tone that became the norm with 'Dark Knight Returns', 'Watchmen' and other series in the mid-to-late 80s.
In the case of Batman, I've always found it unnecessary. Like Graham said, Batman was plenty "dark" in the 70s. I've seen lots of commentary that points to the Adam West series and the Scooby Doo/Batman team-up in 1972 (on 'The New Scooby Doo Movies' cartoon)as low points that ruined the character, until Batman was rescued by Miller. That's ahistorical nonsense, and I'm guessing those who push that idea never read the darker Bronze Age adventures written by Englehart, Haney, O'Neill, etc.
I enjoy Miller's take on Batman (though I think it's a bit overrated) AND I also like the Scooby Doo team-up episodes because there should be room for both "Dark Batman" and "Fun Batman."
Great comments all! Thanks especially to Mike for bringing up Venom and Carnage. Reading through these it seems like there has really been a spectrum of hero, antihero and villain, with many of our favorite characters bouncing back and forth at the hands of varying creators with equally varying degrees of success and favor. There's also the doppelganger, dark or otherwise, which is maybe a whole different topic.
Wolverine and Batman seem to be interesting cases. Wolverine can't seem to find success as anything other than an antihero, and Batman appears somewhat unsettling when too firmly cemented in it.
I won't touch Punisher or Lobo, but Ghost Rider as a case got me thinking. I'm not sure how dark he's gotten. I can think of him being really dark, but maybe I haven't seen it.
Martinex also brought up the sharp counterpoint of the villains going legit and staying that way (more or less). The salient example, for me, being the Thunderbolts (again, more or less). With Doom now reformed, I think Red Skull is probably the only one who can't be rehabilitated.
Thanks all!
Just some points I'm throwing out:
Marvel delved into a "dark period" with some of the characters we know, remaking them as "supernatural" versions of their previous incarnations. Marc Spector becomes "Moon Knight The Fist Of Khonshu". Frank Castle commits suicide and returns as an "Agent of Vengeance" in "The Punisher Purgatory". Johnny Blaze, the Ghost Rider, is turned into an accountant!!! (I know! Right? How horrible.)
To me, these were all just stunts. Terrible, horrible, mishandled stunts. Looking back, I would weep, but by that time, I was no longer reading Marvel.
Speaking of things that happened when I was no longer reading Marvel, the whole House Of M storyline where the Scarlet Witch went insane and ripped apart the fabric of reality. So very glad I missed that.
Just to mention, the whole bouncing back from "bad to good to bad to good" issue, Charles Xavier turned over the X-Men to Magneto. He also turned the New Mutants over to Emma Frost, the White Queen. That ran for a while. Finally, Cable was the leader of the New Mutants. Cable, that was a hard character to figure out.
(Blues a healer, all over the world
Blues a healer, healer, all over the world, all over the world
It healed me, it can heal you
The blues can heal you, early one morning
It can heal you
The blues can heal you
Yeah, yeah
It healed me, healed me
It healed me
I was down
I was down
It healed me
Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, yes it did, yes it did
Look now
My woman left me
The blues healed me
My woman left me, left me early one morning
Hmm, hmm
The blues healed me, it healed me, healed me
Yeah, yeah!
Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord
Hmm, have mercy
The blues , the blues is a healer
Blues, blues, is a healing healer
It healed, healed, healed
Heal!
Heal, heal, heal!
All over the world, all over the world
It's a healer).
PS: Hey guys, there's no PS!!!
Hello all, great comments!
I resisted the push towards 'dark' storytelling, it seemed to this kid that comics were 'growing up' and the childlike magic of comics would disappear for good (yes, it was a clumsy metaphor!)
Slightly late for this forum, I disliked how Crisis on Infinite Earths casually killed off classic heroes, changing the very landscape of the DC universe. Definitely the end of my innocence.
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