Grant's arguement seems to boil down to "silver age villains did too kill."
He's correct to a certain extent. However, I think his argument fails to take into consideration the following:
- Sure, Silver Age villains sometimes killed people. But the deaths were often implied and definitely not as graphically portrayed. That's an important difference. Using what appears to be Grant's logic, there's no difference between an implied sex scene in a classic Hollywood film such as "Gone with the Wind" and a hardcore fuck session in a direct to video porn film since both films' narratives involve people have sex. Of course, there is a difference and Grant should be able to realize that.
- Perhaps more importantly a lot of [if not a major basis for] the knock on modern comics is not about the actions of the villains. It's about the actions of the heroes. Silver age heroes were clearly that: the good guys, and they acted accordingly. In the silver age, Spider-man might battle the Green Goblin, GG might kill someone but Spider-man sure as hell didn't make a deal with Satan to resolve the issue. Similarly, Reed Richards would fight like hell to keep someone from destroying the earth, but he didn't lock his friends in a negative zone gulag to accomplish it.
- Most of us recognize that the silver age was flawed and most of old time fans don't really want a return to that era. We don't want a Batman who acts like Adam West. We don't want simplistic stories that only last eight pages. But we do like the idea of taking what works in a modern age (better characterization, better logic, better art) and maybe, just maybe, making more comics that are, like the ones in the Silver Age, fun to read and even capable of attracting new readers, instead of catering to an ever shrinking readership that needs to be exposed to even more "shocking" moments to rouse themselves from their comics reading ennui
