Ooh! Dark!
I wish I could concentrate.
There’s a post I’m dying to write about how utterly laughable “dark” comics have become. I have this vision of a villain who skins his victims alive, debones them, shatters the bones and uses the splinters as toothpicks with which to eat their eyeballs as hors d’oeuvres while reclining in his epidermally upholstered Barcalounger. Oh yeah, and he wears Dr. Martens.
I can’t help it. I read these comics that try so hard to be so cool and edgy and grim, and I just laugh my ass off. No, no. Wait! I *hack* my ass off with a dull hatchet and feed it to my cats, who upchuck it in the park where innocent children play…
This would be a lot funnier if I could think coherently.
July 29th, 2005 at 8:16 AM
It’s funny, because I’m pitching a series right now to a top independent publisher that is a real throwback to classic, golden-age type heroes and values and he responded by saying that (even though he really likes it) he doesn’t think it will sell well in today’s market. Maybe I should make the lead character a heroin addict and throw in a sodomizing sidekick.
July 29th, 2005 at 12:04 PM
You know, Ryan, I’m almost as sick of this culture’s focus on sodomy as I am of “Dark” comics.
Your sidekick should gomorrahize, instead.
July 29th, 2005 at 12:54 PM
I’ve come to believe–and this will sound preposterous–that comics are the only medium that ever benefited from censorship. Now, I hate censorship, I hate snoops, busybodies, snitches and censors, blah blah, but… I don’t think we would have had the Flash strapped to a giant boomerang, the bottle city of Kandor, Jonah Jameson’s robot, or any of a million ideas I really love if the creators had been allowed to kick back and rely on time-tested stabbings and rapes. So, as much as it pains me to say it… way to go, Wertham!
July 29th, 2005 at 3:06 PM
Tom, I wouldn’t say comics were the only medium to experience that paradoxical effect; film and television both had creative peaks coinciding with overt restrictions on content. The difference today is that while censorship was once explicitly spelled out — by the Comics Code or the Hays department — there are now no defined rules to which one can refer, and creative people have to self-censor because they never know what will bring the wrath of the FCC or the Christian Right upon them. So in that sense, it would almost be preferable to have a written list of “dos and don’ts” to go by.
July 30th, 2005 at 4:47 AM
Heh – I gotta say, I agree with Steve 100% on this one. DC’s current “Dark Age”, a prime example being the once-foppish Max Lord blowing away Blue Bettle & in turn, getting whacked by Wonder Woman… I mean, the whole thing is, well… comical.
I understand DC’s motive to make their overcrowded universe more “realistic”, but having everyone seriously pissed off at one another (with the occassional murder thrown in) is NOT character development: It’s the same sort of inept, lazy, shock-value storytelling that made 90’s Marvel so incredibly unreadable.
Listen: The best thing DC could do with this Infinite Crisis nonsense is REALLY get rid of all the dead wood this time & start fresh. If you’re gonna kill off some characters, then don’t do it half-assed by sorta killing an icon & half a dozen second-stringers… REALLY clean house! One of the main reasons the DCU so bland is that there’s more superbeings than regular folk walking around. And it’s so continuity-heavy from 20 years of x-over “events” that no one off the street can come in and read any of their books without a friggin’ 4-year history course.
Excluding the X-books, at least Marvel is more streamlined.
July 30th, 2005 at 5:43 AM
Just so I’m not misunderstood: I’m not commenting from a wistful, nostalgic, or reactionary point of view. I just think it’s possible for *anything* to become laughable once it becomes a formula. Neo-perverto comics are just the latest example.
July 30th, 2005 at 5:51 AM
No, Mark, because they’ve already tried that. The problem is, the characters come back. And, I feel, they come back weaker than their previous incarnation. There’s something less appealing about a “Flash” whose previous version was an ax murderer, or whatever…
It’s better to deal with continuity this way: characters are who they are (Supes is a hero, with such-and-so personality.) They generally acknowledge what happens in each other’s book +/- 6 months. They don’t worry about continuity minutia, and especially, don’t use same as the sole basis of stories… $0.02.
July 30th, 2005 at 12:02 PM
But it’s all gonna be nice and shiny when they’re done! They just have to rape and kill a few folks before they get there. Isn’t that how it works in the real world? Sure it is.
August 1st, 2005 at 1:01 PM
Barcalounger…Doc Martens…
I’m seeing this drawn in the style of Don Martin.
>SQUOIP!
August 1st, 2005 at 1:48 PM
Now I’m having visions of grim’n’gritty Don Martin.
Probably would be worth it for the sound effects alone.
August 8th, 2005 at 12:38 PM
“there are now no defined rules to which one can refer, and creative people have to self-censor because they never know what will bring the wrath of the FCC or the Christian Right upon them. So in that sense, it would almost be preferable to have a written list of “dos and don’ts†to go by.”
I’m inclined to think that, for every artist who self-censored in the form of toning a piece down, there have probably been artists who have self-censored in the form of making a piece even darker, or sexier, to suit the demands of the investors and managers.