I suspect Marvel will brighten up long before DC does.

I doubt it - Marvel's been the darker company since they started - it's relatively new for DC, with the exception of Vertigo.

EXACTLY.

Greg is dead right about the state of modern Big Two comics AND Roadhouse.

On the other hand, in the DC Universe there's no singular cause for all the grimness; it just happens because the writers (and editors) want it so. It will only end with a new editorial mandate. Which is why so many people were ecstatic about the rumor of Didio being fired (which sadly was false.) I suspect Marvel will brighten up long before DC does.

On the subject of badly-collected series, DC really dropped the ball with the recent JLI hardcover collection... Not on the colouring, but on the text... Some of it is so badly printed that it's actually illegible... to add to the irony, the orginal softcover collection of the same issues (minus the Suicide Squad issues) "The Secret Gospel of Maxwell Lord" from over a decade ago still reads much clearer and sharper...

The quality of the paper is much lower as well...

You'll probably get to see what I'm talking about next year!

If you read JLI of course...

They were fun before. Marvel had to make them not fun for two years in order to set up the Satanic divorce.

And they're only fun now if you really, really like leftovers.

Don’t you think think you might be painting with a pretty broad brush there about some people you don’t know who wrote some comics you didn’t like?

He gave specific examples, so I don't see how it can be a broad brush - read the issues he's talking about, and it's pretty clear what he's talking about.

And one of the writers he name checks - Judd Winnick - said that after he'd Captain Marvel 'No one will be calling him the big red cheese'.
He wanted Captain 'Holey Moley' Marvel to grow up.

Of course, there are some bright spots. After years of misery and a Satanic divorce, Spider-Man comics are fun again, reportedly (haven't read them, just going by internet reviews). Even if Hulk isn't your thing, it tries to be fun, in its own way. Incredible Herc, Iron Fist, & Capt. Britain seem more lighthearted than your average 2008 super-hero book.

I think the overall tone of the Marvel Universe remains more negative than positive. DC's decent into darkness seems more desperate, however, and their brighter books (Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, sometimes Superman) are fewer and farther between.

But the Waid-Busiek-Ross-Morrison moment got overtaken by the Meltzer moment, and Geoff Johns started playing both sides of the line. JLA got driven into a ditch; we had the long countdown to Infinite Crisis with a regular promise that this was the dark before the dawn; the OYL dawn had some moments, especially with Superman and Batman-- and then it was time for decapitations, limb-ripping, Bart-killing torture-porning morose-o-rama to start in full.

Comics should be good. Although I'm kind of glad they're not because a large selection of bad comics makes choosing where to put my money and time easier, but, I suppose if all comics were good I could just read the top books and not worry if a book I like was going to get canceled. Hmm.

All I was really saying was the perpetrators of said bad comics might not all be the emotionally stunted adults that Greg was painting. Some of them might just be inept. Or evil.

They're not necessarily used; I've picked up hardcovers still in the shrinkwrap for $2 there.

If the brush fits, paint with it!

It may be companies who mandate "dark" or "gritty" approaches, but it's the creators who are responsible for the quality of the storytelling. I say the brush isn't broad enough: is this criticism or isn't it? Should comics be Good, or shouldn't they?

They do, however, raise a story to the level of one of the definitions of adult content, but I will say the words "Suitable for mature audiences," might be misused quite a bit.

Don't you think think you might be painting with a pretty broad brush there about some people you don't know who wrote some comics you didn't like?

I'm not saying you're wrong to do so. I'm just saying.