Cranky Old Man Who Made Superhero Comics For Adults Hates Superhero Comics For Adults

They say that you should never meet your heroes, and I am okay with that proposition. Because they also say that you must separate the artist from the art, and I have been forced to do that for my entire adult life. Not only ephemerally – I could read Hunter Thompson all day long, but there is no doubt he was a violent, drugsucking monstrosity, and I could enjoy reading Harlan Ellison stories for a thousand years without having to hear the man calling me a dullard – but professionally. I have worked with comedians – comedians you have heard of – who were the worst kind of arrogant and selfish scumbags, and people in the music industry who would pretend you never even existed if it meant another case of comp’ed CDs to sell to local record stores at a discount, like a common mafioso.

So while I consider several comics writers from the 1980s to be heroes of mine, I am okay if I never meet them. The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One are a couple of the greatest comic stories I’ve ever read, I think I can go to my grave without having Frank Miller chase me around while shrieking, “hippie!” and trying to cut my ponytail off with a replica switchblade from the set of Sin City. Miller’s political beliefs or behavior doesn’t take away a word or line of Dark Knight, but I don’t think it’s something I want to witness firsthand.

And then there’s Alan Moore. My copies of Miracleman are amongst my most prized possessions, and I have both Watchmen and V For Vendetta as not only the original issues, but as the big ol’ Absolute hardcover editions. Those stories taught me, as a teenager, that the superhero stories I loved as a child didn’t need to be put aside, but could be enjoyed as I moved into adulthood. The man basically invented the idea of the superhero written maturely for adults.

And once again, Moore has gone on record saying that he hates the idea of the superhero written maturely for adults.

In an interview with The Guardian last weekend, Moore talked about his opinion on superhero comics:

I haven’t read any superhero comics since I finished with Watchmen. I hate superheroes. I think they’re abominations. They don’t mean what they used to mean. They were originally in the hands of writers who would actively expand the imagination of their nine- to 13-year-old audience. That was completely what they were meant to do and they were doing it excellently. These days, superhero comics think the audience is certainly not nine to 13, it’s nothing to do with them. It’s an audience largely of 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-year old men, usually men. Someone came up with the term graphic novel. These readers latched on to it; they were simply interested in a way that could validate their continued love of Green Lantern or Spider-Man without appearing in some way emotionally subnormal. This is a significant rump of the superhero-addicted, mainstream-addicted audience. I don’t think the superhero stands for anything good. I think it’s a rather alarming sign if we’ve got audiences of adults going to see the Avengers movie and delighting in concepts and characters meant to entertain the 12-year-old boys of the 1950s.

Well hell, Alan, you’ve got a point. Most of the comics I read when I was a young child back in the 70s were probably meant to entertain someone of my age. And as I got older, for a while I read fewer comics because I was outgrowing a lot of what I read. But by the time I became a teenager, a few books didn’t seem to be for kids, and they kept a love of the genre in me.

For example, when I read Miracleman and saw a supervillain, motivated by sublimated rage over being raped, destroy a major European metropolis in as gory a manner as I’ve ever seen in a non-Avatar comic (where you currently publish work, by the way), it didn’t seem like a superhero story for kids.

When I read about a masked avenger overthrowing a government with gelignite, forced kidnapping and torture, innovative forms of murder, and all of it motivated by a stay in a concentration camp, it didn’t seem like a superhero story for kids.

And when I read about a vigilante who would kill based on moral relativism bourne of serious child abuse and the witnessed butchery of children, and his partner who can only get it up when he wears a costume, it didn’t seem like a superhero story for kids.

Look Alan, I got news for you: when it comes to superhero stories meant to be read by adults? You pretty much invented the Goddamned things. And they were glorious stories, that not only have stood the test of time, but which changed the course of comics storytelling. And if we older readers, who are now in our 40s, found a reason to continue to read superhero comic books past our adolescence? That reason probably came from you, dude.

And if your argument was that the more modern “superhero comics for adults” aren’t as good or as literary as your stuff, well, you might have a point, but denigrating superhero comics as being written too much for adults is a ridiculous and disingenuous on a good fucking day. These kind of stories were your Goddamned idea, champ! You inspired a generation or two of creators who tried to pick up the torch that you lit… and make no mistake: you’re pretty much the guy who lit it.

And hell, maybe you regret doing it. After all, you’ve requested that your name be taken off of the upcoming Miracleman reprints by Marvel, and for all I know you’re chucking your royalty checks for Watchmen and V For Vendetta into your local church’s poorbox rather than cashing them. In which case, good for you, and I respect your integrity. But please don’t sit there and pretend that the concept of superhero comics for adults is something endemically abhorrent to you.

If you want to say that you wish you never wrote Watchmen and those other stories? That’s fine. But if you want to take the position that superhero comics written for adults is a bad thing? You’d better say that it’s your fault, buddy. Because you’re the one who gave most of us the first taste that got us hooked in the first place.

Now if you’ll excuse me, as an adult, I think I’m gonna crack a beer and read Watchmen again. Yeah, it’s that good.