Though not just limited to unclear shots in the rain at night, a trend in superhero media (specifically coming out of the DC cinematic garage) has been to keep it dark. Dark. Gritty. Realistic. After the success of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, subsequent filmmakers grabbed onto what felt so different from his and its campy cartoony predecessors; it was dark. Later films tried to emulate what made these superhero films special, and with that came a series of comic films that boasted swearing, blood, and conversations in the rain at night.
But like the comic book Dark Age before it, these succeeding darker stories didn’t land. As HBO’s adaptation of “Watchmen” rolls out, it’ll need to accomplish a lot to deliver on effective darkness; it will have to deconstruct the genre like its source material.
Though somewhat disputed, The Dark Age of Comics started around 1986 with books like Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” and Alan Moore’s “Watchmen”. Like the films latching onto the darkness of Nolan’s trilogy, the comics that succeeded the greats of the Dark Age got the key elements wrong; they missed what makes something dark, focusing too much on the visual tone. Comics became grittier, folding in elements of anti-heroes, sex, and violence. Comics like “Hellboy” and “Sin City” gained quick popularity, but along with those came a host of less popular financial failures leading to an industry decline.
Creators left the “big 2” and used their freedom to ride the dark wave and deliver violent stories with exaggerated and, often misogynistic, stories and art. Marvel and DC delivered grim retellings of popular stories focusing on grittier characters like Wolverine and Punisher. These books were not well received and lead to the comics collapse of the 1990s.
Alan Moore, writer of two of the seminal works, and arguably two of the most famous comics of all time, “The Killing Joke”, and “Watchmen,” regretted the trend he unintentionally set off.
“It was a disappointment to me, how ‘Watchmen’ was absorbed into the mainstream,” explained Moore. “It had originally been meant as an indication of what people could do that was new. I’d originally thought that with works like ‘Watchmen’ and ‘Marvelman’, I’d be able to say, ‘Look, this is what you can do with these stale old concepts. You can turn them on their heads. You can really wake them up. Don’t be so limited in your thinking. Use your imagination.’ And, I was naively hoping that there’d be a rush of fresh and original work by people coming up with their own. […] Instead, it became this massive stumbling block that comics can’t even really seem to get around to this day. […]. And, they’re stuck, it seems, in this kind of depressive ghetto of grimness and psychosis. I’m not too proud of being the author of that regrettable trend.”
He wasn’t the only creator to lament his own monster in the vein of Dr. Frankenstein. Dick Giordano, contributor to Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns,” said of his work:
“‘The Dark Knight Returns’ additionally helped start the ‘grim and gritty’ trends in comic storytelling that still exist today. That was an unintended result, and I am truly sorry it happened. Comics are much too dark today.”
This trend toward hollow darkness is being mirrored with the recent slate of superhero films wherein a criminal clown has grills and sloppy makeup, or maybe he smokes in on decrepit steps, all while lacking a thoughtful deconstruction of what it means to be a makeup clad baddy, or neglecting to reflect on the world’s real darkness through the eyes of a becaped hero.
To follow this trend of darkness without depth, we can explore 1992’s Dark Age darling, “The Death of Superman”. The story featured dark themes and culminated in a widely attended funeral for the superhero. The book was a massive commercial success. To ride its wave, DC killed Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, and Green Lantern, and Marvel released the “Clone Saga”. By comparison, these titles were failures and pushed DC to relaunch canon with “The New 52.” Film fans will recognize the death of Superman; he died in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. A hollow and forgettable reletting of the popular storyline as flat as rainfall.
Though we can’t assume Nolan has the same feeling of regret the dark comics ushers do, we can see the effect of his films. Films like Suicide Squad, Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice and Dark Phoenix stand as examples of attempting to latch onto the darker tone while narratively falling flat.
What worked for “Watchmen” was that it deconstructed the superhero genre, layering components of political, psychological, sexual and violent elements resulting in a feeling of darkness. For Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen series to be as narratively successful as Dark Age greats, it will have to give us more than well lit night shoots. Sure, we want dark scenes with pops of yellow and red, but to succeed, like Moore’s and Miller’s stories before it, the series must exploit the fantastical nature of superheroes as a way of telling dark stories rooted in psychological, political and violent fear. “Watchmen” took on a post cold war political environment, tackling the hazard of unchecked governments, and making the reader question the balance of goodness in masked heroes with competing political ideologies.
With two episodes of Watchmen under our belts, we’ve been asked to question authority, unchecked political extremism, and the merits of being a masked avenger.
I’d say it’s off to a good start.
