And for once in my life, I got the answer to his quiz, and I did it without the clue.

Let me state a couple of things: First, I’m *not* just a superhero fan. I’ve enjoyed many genres, from realistic ones to even some horror. It all depends on my mood at the time; sometimes I feel like watching an examination of the underbelly of humanity, and sometimes I feel like escaping into a world where the good guys always win. I’m sure many of you feel the same way. But every genre has conventions, and for a reason: we expect certain things about them, that’s why we buy them. If I’m depressed after hearing about how much worse the world has gotten on the News, then the LAST thing I want to do is read a comic featuring rape or murder at that moment. Which is why I buy superhero comic instead.

I’m not saying that DC has ruined all of its comics. There’s still (from what I hear, in places like CBR) a lot of talent working for them, and producing some great comics. What DC did from, for me, was to state that horrible things could happen, in ANY of their titles, at ANY time. Is that realistic? Yes. Do I WANT that in the superhero comics I buy? NO. Worse, it’s pretty apparent they’re doing it as a cheap sales gimmick. “Is X title selling well? No? Kill somebody off. In as graphic a detail as you can. Eaten alive, even.” And don’t assume I came to this conclusion overnight; it took me years, of having shocking scenes pop up in all kinds of series, and of reading the comments made by Dan Didio and his cohorts. This is no accident; DC has “gone Hollywood.” Worse, it seems unnecessary. Marvel is (for the most part) free of such things (even Civil War was not nearly as bloody as DC’s current Big Events) yet they continue to sell as well as DC. Their really bad stuff (Marvel Zombies, Punisher Max, etc.) is easy to avoid (or seek out, if that’s what you want..) Dc won’t give us that luxury, and until I feel they do, I won’t buy any of their titles regularly. (And I know I may miss on some good stuff in the process. But I’d rather not take the chance. Your opinion of course, can vary.)

Well said. I was trying to say the same thing, and it took me three times as long to say it.

And honestly, I didn’t like a lot of the 80s stuff from either of the big two, Justice Leage International being the exception to that rule (and the early issues of that have been reprinted recently in HC and trade-might be good stuff for Sijo to pick up, but it IS kinda a comedy….).

It WOULD be nice to see more trades of 80s stuff for you lot who dig on it though, and for those of us needing to bridge gaps in runs of certain books.

Sijo isn’t arguing for a “middle ground”. He is arguing for the nothing-bad-ever-happens, all-nice extreme.

If these creators want to do schlock and gore DC should just have a horror line for that and then let superhero comics be more of the middle ground that can engage young and old alike. I think this is actually more effective than having super titles divided into overly watered-down childrens lines and utterly classless adult ones.

“furthest thing from the torture porn and graphic violence … that Sijo’s talking about”

But THAT’S not what Sijo’s talking about. He said “I’m here to watch heroes fight super-bad guys and ALWAYS WIN.” Heroes can lose and there can still be NO torture porn. I haven’t read Sgt. Rock but did he ALWAYS win? If he didn’t then Sijo CANNOT read the comic. If he does always win then I would say it is pretty silly, and certain says nothing about war.

Sijo said he didn’t want to read about “mayhem or sexual crimes”. Is WAR mayhem? I would say so. So again Sijo CANNOT read the comic.

“I don’t WANT to take the super-villains seriously.”

Yeah, but who were the bad guys in Sgt. Rock? If I am not mistaken, and I may be, they were Nazi Germany. The only way I would not take Nazi Germany was if they were treated in a silly fashion. But you said Sgt. Rock was “the furthest thing you can imagine from silly” so I have to imagine you DID take the villains seriously.

“I’m not saying super-hero comics can’t address serious issues.”

But Sijo IS. If superheroes can NEVER lose then what issues can be explored. You raise Green Lantern and Green Arrow, but they did LOSE in that comic, sometimes (i.e. Speedy becoming addicted, Hal not caring about Black people, etc.) As far as I can tell Sijo CANNOT read that comic either.

Sijo doesn’t just want to get rid of “torture porn and graphic violence”. He wants to get rid of all risk, of all possibility of questions of power, grief and morality, of all serious issues at all. Sijo, and perhaps you too, only want to read fairytales. And there is a place for fairytales, but I don’t think it is in the Marvel U or DCU.

Two words: Sgt. Rock.

I was just reading the second Showcase volume last night, and it’s the furthest thing you can imagine from silly. But it’s also the furthest thing from the torture porn and graphic violence that many current superhero comics partake in for the sake of “realism” that Sijo’s talking about. I put this kind of stuff in the same category as the recent trend of super-villains killing secondary heroes, just so the reader will take them more seriously.

I don’t WANT to take the super-villains seriously. I want them to have ridiculous plans to take over the world by cornering the market on pudding pops. I want them to rob Fort Knox with a flute. I want them to use a red rock to turn the most powerful man on the planet into a cat.

Think about it. Do you really want realism in a story where a bored billionaire beats up clowns? Do you want really want realism in a story about a psychic gorilla goes up against a guy who runs really really fast? Do you want realism in a story where the universe’s most powerful weapon is a piece of jewelry?

I’m not saying super-hero comics can’t address serious issues. Green Lantern and Green Arrow did that each month in 8 pages. But the level of violence we’ve seen since Identity Crisis or thereabouts is gratuitous. It’s torture porn. It’s not necessary to the visceral enjoyment of believing a man can fly. And that’s all I want from my super-hero comics.

@Sijo: While I don’t necessarily agree, I Do see where you’re coming from. Think on it like this-the money you will save by passing on modern monthly titles could be put towards volumes of the DC archives HCs. There’s enough silver age reprinted between those and the much more affordable Showcases to keep you in the type of superhero reading you enjoy (hey, I enjoy reading silver age stuff too, even if a lot of it IS painfully silly at times.)

I’m not trying to nitpick or single you out, but this point you make is one of my pet peeves. Why do people always think that if you don’t want excessive gore and sex and gruesomeness popping up randomly in your superhero comics you automatically must want painfully silly Silver Age stuff? Once again, not targeting you specifically but I do see this inability on the internet to acknowledge a possible middle ground. The 70s and 80s had a ton of books that perfectly tread this middle ground.

I’m sorry Sijo, but maybe your delicate sensibilities would be best served by reading the children’s line. Because basically it seems like all you want to read is fairytales.

“All I know is, I don’t *care* for cheap shock tactics on my superhero books.”

Sure, but are we talking about ‘cheap shock tactics’ or what you see when you “turn on The News”? Because ‘the News’ isn’t cheap, its true. While it is clear that you would rather comforting lies rather than the truth, does that make it “quality”? Is your thesis basically that Cinderella and Snow White are better than Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now because the earlier would make you *feel* better.

Are you really talking about GOOD comics, or just NICE comics?

New Avengers is a trainwreck, it’s just a slower-moving train wreck. Massive chunks of the plot — rogue SHIELD agents resurrecting supervillains and mining Vibranium illegally; Maria Hill learning about House of M by ripping open Spider-Man’s mind — go unbremarked upon or undeveloped for years, and then become the basis of other books and New Avengers itself forgets all about them.

In the meantime, the New Avengers themselves have,s o far as I can tell, achieved absolutely nothing since Civil War, with the villains either winning or being thwarted by elements that would’ve turned up even without the team’s involvement. And that’s not mentioning stuff like the Hood ‘s supervillain syndicate being utterly ignored so the book can meander about with a Dormammu plot and give us Doctor Voodoo and his cancel-me-please spinoff title, all while the ostensible protagonists manage to do jack to affect matters.

Think about it this way: the Avenegrs books were able to completely suspend their plotlines for several months running to give Secret Invasion flashback infodumps.

Which is fair, as it’s all been a mess from what I’ve heard (I was waiting to read McDuffie’s, but not doing so seems the wiser option) – just thought it was odd to pick on one franchise and not point out that the other, despite being less interfered with – is just as full of the same complaints.

But if you just mean Cry For Justice, then fair enough.

Yeah, Avengers really has gone off the rails.

Avengers is definitely lacking direction and focus these days and riddled with cliches, but you can’t seriously believe it’s in the same category of awful as Robinson’s Justice League can you?

It’s a combination of so many cliches that we’ve been subjected to repeatedly for the past few years, from whiny petulant dick heroes to heroes going dark to bad purple/pulp/badass narration to the proactive superteam vision that never lasts that it’s become the breaking point that people are using to vent all their frustrations at about the past few years of comic cliches. It’s like any cliche that’s been annoying you from the past 5 years, here’s a one stop shopping book you can use to bitch about it. It’s almost like therapy.

Yeah, Avengers really has gone off the rails.