Quote:
I'm Not Mister Mxypltk said:
The "dark" comics by people like Moore, Morrison, Gaiman and (sometimes) Miller are dark only in the surface. They use the "darkness" as a vehicle to touch deeper topics, as opposed to the people that followed Moore and Miller, that wrote comics with a dark surface and nothing under it. People who read Watchmen and DKR and say "wow, how dark" are missing the real point of those comics.


Well, opinions vary on that.

I think the work of Moore, Morrison, Gaiman and Miller, even from the 80's, are pretty dark.



The stories of Moore and Miller are multi-layered, and have bright moments, and redeem themselves beyond their darkness by having something meaningful to say, but are still unmistakeably dark.

Rorschach in the WATCHMEN "The Abyss Gazes Also" chapter... I don't think there's a bright way to interpret that.
Alan Moore in a COMICS JOURNAL interview (issue 138) said it depressed him deeply to crawl inside the mind of Rorschach to fully flesh out the character in this chapter.



And as I said on the previous page, Moore said in a COMIC BOOK ARTIST interview that himself and others had unwittingly brought about a Dark Age in comics with their 1980's work, and that he was attempting to bring back an optimism and upbeat heroism that had been lost, when he created new titles like TOM STRONG and other ABC titles.

[ COMIC BOOK ARTIST # 9, August 2000, in an issue on Charleton characters and creators, pages 108-109. ]
http://twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/09moore.html
  • CBA: But you were able to purge yourself pretty quick, right? You didn't write that many, maybe four or five Superman stories?
    Alan: And that was enough. Those were ones I wanted to write, but since then, most characters have changed so much that they no longer feel to me like the characters I knew. So, I wouldn't have that kind of nostalgic interest in those sort of characters anymore. At the time, I was also saying I didn't feel that if there was some strong political message I wanted to get over, probably super-hero comics were not the best place to do it. If I wanted to do stuff about the environment, that there didn't need to be a swamp monster there, for instance. When I did Brought to Light, about the CIA activities in World War II, that story would not have been greatly enhanced by a guy with his underwear outside his trousers, you know. And also, there did seem to be a rash of quite heavy, frankly depressing and overtly pretentious super-hero comics that came out in the wake of Watchmen, and I felt to some degree responsible for bringing in a fairly morbid Dark Age...



Miller's work, from RONIN forward, is deeply cynical, and arguably paranoid in its portrayal of government. DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, DARK KNIGHT STRIKES BACK, GIVE ME LIBERTY, SIN CITY, ELECKTRA:ASSASSIN and HARD BOILED being prime examples.



I could find a few stories in Gaiman's SANDMAN that are upbeat (issue 50 in particular) but mostly I just found it very somber and morose. I read the first four trades and scattered issues after, and fail to see what people rave about. It's not horrible, but it's far from the best I've seen in comics.



I personally despise Morrison's works, although there are a few Morrison stories I somewhat like conceptually, although I find his work likewise pretentious, and (Gaiman-like ) full of quickie references to literature characters without really fleshing them out in his stories beyond the slightest cameo-reference, so I constantly envision Morrison musing to himself (and Gaiman as well) : Ah, look how clever I am to know this !
I'm not impressed.



All that said, if I were to recommend to someone some of the best written and illustrated comic series of the last 40 years, I would name at the top of the list Moore's SWAMP THING, MIRACLEMAN, V FOR VENDETTA, WATCHMEN, and SUPERMAN: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW.

And also Miller's DAREDEVIL, BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, and BATMAN: YEAR ONE.

Nothing by Morrison or Gaiman, despite some decent stories, would make my list though.

But because these above series are dark works, I have a much greater fondness for:

  • Wein/Wrightson SWAMP THING 1-10 (DARK GENESIS trade)
  • Joe Kubert's TARZAN 207-235
  • Goodwin/Simonson MANHUNTER
  • Jack Kirby's FOREVER PEOPLE, NEW GODS, MISTER MIRACLE, JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, and O.M.A.C.
  • O'Neil/Adams DETECTIVE (just out in hardcover) and BATMAN
  • O'Neil/Kaluta THE SHADOW
  • Englehart/Perez and Shooter/Perez AVENGERS 141-178, and Michelinie/Byrne AVENGERS 181-191
  • Englehart/Rogers Batman in DETECTIVE 471-476 (reprinted in the BATMAN:STRANGE APPARITIONS trade)
  • Michelinie/Romita Jr/Layton IRON MAN 115-156
  • McGregor/Russell/etc.'s AMAZING ADVENTURES/Killraven 18-39
  • Bruce Jones/Brent Anderson/Ron Frenz KA-ZAR 1-27
  • Levitz/Giffen LEGION 285-306
  • Stern/Romita Jr AMAZING SPIDERMAN 224-250


And many other series.





While I've re-read the Moore and Miller stuff many times, I've re-read these latter books and other series far more often.
They're a heck of a lot more fun.

I'm impressed by the brilliance of Moore's and Miller's prose, and find that exciting as well.

But the humor, warmth and heroism of the latter series I listed are what I more often prefer.

I'd agree that the ones, as you say, Mxy, "who followed Moore and Miller" imitated the dark surface elements without replicating the enduring quality and complexity of Moore and Miller's 80's works.
Which is why these 80's works are still regarded as the high-water mark of comics storytelling, and the works that have followed are regarded as pretentious, derivative, and inferior by comparison.



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