Whatever happened to fun?

[gwalla]

There was a time, not so long ago, when comic books could actually be light and fun. But for more than a decade now, they've been dominated by the grim, gritty, and X-TREEM. Just look at DC's "Identity Crisis" crossover, which involved the forced lobotmoization of an old villain, mind-wiping heroes (including Batman!) who didn't agree with it, and the separate rape and murder of the Elongated Man's pregnant wife. Or their latest clusterfuck crossover, Identity Crisis, which seems to be based almost entirely on the heroes being assholes.

Reviewer Paul O'Brien takes on Countdown to Infinite Crisis, which sets up the whole mess, and finally takes the entire comic book industry to task for getting "depressing" confused with "deep". As a bonus, he's written a good capsule review of Villains United #1 (the brightest spot in the Infinite Crisis morass), which takes a swipe at all the Crisis tie-in miniseries.

Comments

[frustratedpilot]

It was like this between Watergate and the Bicentennial in the comics world too...depressing stories with lots of death and injustice and disaster and heroes who couldn't get themselves together. Blame it on the times. This stuff goes in cycles.

[goulo.livejournal.com]

There are other genres besides superhero, you know. :) But for some fun superhero stuff, I would say a lot of Alan Moore's latest stuff like Tom Strong has been non-depressing and dare I say fun.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

That's true. I think a lot of America's Best Comics was Alan Moore trying to fix what he broke with Watchmen.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

In five years, when DC and Marvel catch up, every comic will be giant apes on the moon! And suck just as bad, but in new ways.

But it'll be a nice change. Cripes.