Twilight of the Heroes

[ctc]

So....

Here's one I didn't know about:

Alan Moores Twilight of the Superheroes

And it got me wondering.... if this HAD come out, what would people's opinion have been? It contains all the stuff that people currently COMPLAIN about in superhero books, but Moore is one of them guys that superhero fans seem to NEVER critique. Would the same people currently poo-pooing DC's books have hailed this as the greatest thing ever?

"Oh, I'm sure of MOORE was doing it, it'd be done with insight and wit...."

And I found a good quote by Moore about Crisis:

>Firstly, by establishing the precedent of altering time, you are establishing an unconscious context for all stories that take place in the future, as well as for those which took place (or rather didn’t take place) in the past. The readers of long standing, somewhere along the line, are going to have some slight feeling that all the stories that they followed avidly during their years of involvement with the book have been in some way invalidated, that all those countless plotlines weren’t leading to anything more than what is in some respects an arbitrary cut-off point. By extension, the readers of today might well be left with the sensation that the stories they are currently reading are of less significance or moment because, after all, at some point ten years in the future some comic book omnipotent, be it an editor or the Spectre, can go back in time and erase the whole slate, ready to start again.

So everyone jumped on his violent superhero with sexual hangups thing in a hurry.... but something he said that made SENSE and everyone ignored it. (And this was like, TWENTY YEARS ago.)

*sigh*

Don C.

[misterdroid]

Wow. I have never heard of that. Sounds like it would have been something special... and DC passed on it. Sad day.
This little detail is my fave:The Batman and The Shadow have teamed up and are leading a “normal hero” brigade that hopes to rid the world of the oppressive superhero Houses. Their team will include Tarzan and Doc Savage if the licenses are available.
Now that's a team I can get behind!

[Earth 2 Chris]

I never heard of this until Comicology's Kingdom Come Companion. A lot of people feel Kingdom Come borrowed heavily from Twilight, but Ross says he never heard of Twilight until well after he had started on KC. You can't really blame DC for rejecting some of Twilight's more radical notions (Captain Marvel and Mary's incestious relationship being one). Years later though they'd give in to Frank Miller's wildest notions in DK2 and All-Star Batman though.

It's ironic that an obvious Silver Age fan like more is to blame for modern comic writers obsession with the deconstruction of super heroes. Projects like Twilight and Watchmen were obviously meant to be stand-alone, deeper explorations of the super hero concept, not affecting the monthly continuity, but the idea of writing the next ground-breaking opus is too much for today's creators and the readers to some extent. Once the genie was let out of the bottle...

Chris

[ctc]

>Once the genie was let out of the bottle...

DEFINITELY. And I've seen this sort of thing happen before....

For sake of discussion; I thought stuff like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns were okay; but definitely NOT the super-chocolatey uber-comics most fans seem to think they were. What REALLY bugs me about these books is that apparently the fans, and consequently the next gen of cartoonists responded to the most BASIC aspects of these works.

>deeper explorations of the super hero concept,

No; blood and boobs are KEWELLLL!!!!! So we get the current stuff that's a really watered down version of this sort of thing. (Or dare I say; market friendly version?) And the old guard fans hate it. BUT do they hate it 'cos it's bad, or do they hate it 'cos it's not what they've been TOLD was good?

People (as a collective) tend to respond to things in the most coarse of ways.

>(Captain Marvel and Mary's incestious relationship being one).

....which I could see the older fans complaining a blue streak about, EVEN THOUGH a lot of 'em thought it was brilliant when they did something similar in Swamp Thing.

Did the bronze age fans see Dark Knight as a travesty?

THIS is what I wonder: is it the message or the messsenger that fans love or hate? Would this have been heralded as a masterwork with Moore's name on it, and panned if Winnick had done the exact same story?

Don C.

[ThatBatmanGuy]

After reading through the link; I have to say no way in Hell Alex Ross came up with Kingdom Come. Anyone that says "great minds think alike" is full of it too. I'm sure DC liked alot of the stuff, but with Alan Moore gone, what better way for them to rub his nose in it. Than by reworking the story somewhat and giving it to the #1 guy at the time. There are some dead give-aways all through the story.

I know this isn't what you asked Don, but Alex Ross believes his own hype too much of the time IMHO.

Bob

[Bo8a_Fett]

I've known about this for years.....was an interesting idea at the time and certainly Kingdom Come has benifitted from word of mouth about it at the dc offices. Reguardless of Ross knowing of it or not the similarities are there to see. Maybe he was told to curtail his idea into a friendlier version of Twilight...we'll never know for sure.

[jwyblejr]

It sounds very similar to not only Kingdom Come but Armageddon as well. With maybe Marvel "borrowing" a small bit for House of M.

[palitoy]

THIS is what I wonder: is it the message or the messsenger that fans love or hate? Would this have been heralded as a masterwork with Moore's name on it, and panned if Winnick had done the exact same story?

Like anything, there are people who can get away with writing this stuff and those who really shouldn't. I like Moore, not everything he writes but "V" and "Watchmen" are excellent works, "Whatever Happened to the man of Tomorrow" is a classic IMO. I don't find his repect undeserved although everything is overblown in the "smelly paper world".

Is he worth the endless barrage of "whiz kids" who came after trying to ape he and Miller's style? That's a good debate. Quentin Tarentino's arrival in Hollywood spawned hundreds of imitators and bad copies, we live in a capitalist society, I voted by not purchasing.

"Grim and Gritty" is difficult to maintain, the further you go to shock your audience, the more you must go to maintain. Then you take yourself too seriously and it comes off as almost satire, go watch the HBO Spawn series nowadays. It's all a question of challenging your audience or pandering to it.

Escapism entertainment attracts all different walks, one of the more obvious demographics is the emotionally immature. Some enjoy the violence because they've got misdirected rage at life and they don't have healthy outlets. I mean look at Wolverine, he's the "bad boy" who nobody can touch, I've seen guys quoting him who can't make direct eye contact with people. The sex is another thing, I've watched 40 year old virgins talking about "Lady Death" being a skank.

Somewhere, this demographic became the one a lot of comic companies being businesses, largely cater to. We're left with a lot of meaningless violence, gratitous gore and oodles of misogyny. Not the entire industry but it's still glaring.

I haven't kept up with Moore these days but he seems to be in different places now. The last book I read from him was more fun than anything. Miller is a parody of himself IMO, I hope he continues to get worse because his cartoonish actions make the whole scene he created look passe.

[ctc]

>"Grim and Gritty" is difficult to maintain, the further you go to shock your audience, the more you must go to maintain.

THIS is an interesting point. "Grim and Gritty" covers a lot of ground as a concept. I think a big part of the problem is that people really only attach themselves to the most blatant aspects. So we get an increasing amount of stuff featuring death scenes; BUT we get increasingly less of the emotional and character sides of the idea. Most of the "film noir" sources of inspiration for this style had little death. The impact came from the characters struggling with hopeless odds and making decisions against no-win situations.

But that sort of thing is hard. Showing the bad guy chopping the limbs off of the hero is easy.

>one of the more obvious demographics is the emotionally immature.

Sadly, yes. And comics in particular started catering to this crowd during the 80's. And look where it got us.

>The sex is another thing,

What there is of it. Mainstream comics; even the "adult" ones have a real problem with sex and sexuality. It's there... but it isn't. My favourite (LEAST favourite?) example was "Identity Crisis," which had a rape in it; sort of.... Nobody ever CALLED it that, it was depicted ina VERY vague way, and it was kinda spuriously tacked on to the story. "The Dark Knight Returns" had the same problem. (If you pay CLOSE attention you can figure out that the head of the Mutants is a pedophile. Not that it really matters....) Even the Watchmen dances around the issue. The Comedian attacking Silk Spectre is dealt with; but it's a fairly big part of the story. Shilouette's orientation is THERE; but REALLY worked into the background. You know the rest of the team turned their backs on her for some reason, and I think there's only one really vague line (refrencing "her partner" or somesuch) that alludes to it.

Comics don't want to touch the issue; but they do want to include it so's they can wave the "no; comics is GROWN UP!!!!" banner.

>We're left with a lot of meaningless violence, gratitous gore and oodles of misogyny

...which I'm not inherently AGAINST; being a big fan of the old undergrounds, but I think if you're gonna throw in sex and violence you should have the stones to accept the consequences. Nobody does that any more.

>Miller is a parody of himself IMO

Y'know; I never thought he was a real big deal. But I grew up with 2000AD, Heavy Metal and a whole schload of European comics.

Don C.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Just FYI, Comic Books Should Be Good recently ran a little bit on this. There's some pretty interesting info here:

Comics Should Be Good! Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #162

Chris

[palitoy]

Y'know; I never thought he was a real big deal. But I grew up with 2000AD, Heavy Metal and a whole schload of European comics.

I never saw the big deal either, in fact, I don't like his style. He seems to borrow heavily from Dashiell Hammett and everybody thinks he's a genius.

What there is of it. Mainstream comics; even the "adult" ones have a real problem with sex and sexuality. It's there... but it isn't. My favourite (LEAST favourite?) example was "Identity Crisis," which had a rape in it; sort of.... Nobody ever CALLED it that, it was depicted ina VERY vague way, and it was kinda spuriously tacked on to the story. "The Dark Knight Returns" had the same problem. (If you pay CLOSE attention you can figure out that the head of the Mutants is a pedophile. Not that it really matters....) Even the Watchmen dances around the issue. The Comedian attacking Silk Spectre is dealt with; but it's a fairly big part of the story. Shilouette's orientation is THERE; but REALLY worked into the background. You know the rest of the team turned their backs on her for some reason, and I think there's only one really vague line (refrencing "her partner" or somesuch) that alludes to it.

Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen over 20 years old, at the time, that was going pretty far for a mainstream comic. Today's media makes it look pale but hey, stuff like the Lesbian scene in "Camelot 3000" was pretty damn racy in the Reagan era.

I'm OK with Rape not being forefront personally, I'm not sure we need that to be part of "The Justice League", Identity Crisis didn't do much for me and now when they show Dr. Light he's often talking about viagra or something, so it's a big joke. Har!

The big difference with Watchmen and Dark Knight is they're separate to the regular universe, if it's not your trip, it's not a big deal. Somewhere, the big publishers decided to copy it and give it out every month. It's wears thin, gets overused and becomes cliche.

[ctc]

>Comic Books Should Be Good recently ran a little bit on this.

That's whre I'd first heard of it.

>Today's media makes it look pale

Hmmmm.... I think if you're discussing Marvel/DC and sometimes Image I'd hafta disagree. For the most part the big two and a half haven't really gone beyond these works. If anything they've regressed; watering down the "grown up" content. (At least the Comedian was shown pulling his pants up; even though he didn't complete the deed... Dr Light apparently has a flap or something in his uniform....)

Other companies have gone further; but really it's tough to go further than guys like Crumb, Cruise and Spain did back in the 60's and 70's. So I guess if anything comics in general haven't gone further... or maybe ANYWHERE.... as compared to years aho.

>I'm OK with Rape not being forefront personally,

It's not the sort of thing most stories need; and even "Identity Crisis" could have been done just as well without it. My contention is: if you're gonna put questionable stuff into your story you should own up to it, and accept the consequences. Don't half-heart it so's to be able to advertise "no, we're controversial!!!" but not present it in a way that'd really alienate potential readers. Sex, violence, doing horrid things to the characters.... this should all be done for a reason. Besides exciting the 14 year olds....

>The big difference with Watchmen and Dark Knight is they're separate to the regular universe,

Sort of. Wasn't "Dark Knight" set in the old 50's DC continuity? (Earth 2 or somesuch?)

>It's wears thin, gets overused and becomes cliche.

Oh, HELL yeah! Part of the problem with doing the "event" story is that your story really SHOULD be an event. Nowadays they're not. They'll be undone in 6 months. SOONER if they're not popular. I think that's a part of why they wear thin. "THIS story will be more consequential for Batman than ANY story of the last 70 YEARS!!!"

For a couple of months. And we all know it.

Don C.

[The Toyroom]

>>The big difference with Watchmen and Dark Knight is they're separate to the regular universe,

Sort of. Wasn't "Dark Knight" set in the old 50's DC continuity? (Earth 2 or somesuch?)

Nope...Dark Knight has always been a stand-alone universe. If anything it's based off of Earth-1 (as Batman comments that "Jason [Todd] was a good soldier"). The Earth-2 Batman bit the dust (in '79) a few years before "The Dark Knight" came around (in '86). And to be really geeky about it, the Two-Face in "The Dark Knight Returns" is Harvey Dent (whereas the Earth-2 version is Harvey Kent).