Looking at the latest comics that have been coming out; especially from the DC side, I'm starting to wish the Comics Code Authority still had juridiction. So the real reason the Multiverse was reinstated was so they could engage in wholesale slaughter? The rate they're going 52 universes aren't enough.
If the writing was of any decent quality I might think differently, unfortunately it feels like hacks indulging their secret fantasies. You get the feeling they were writing these with one hand while their other hand was busy with something else. One particularly unpleasant scene was with a Wolverine knockoff slaughtering an eleven year old girl because he was manipulated by faceless scientists to do so. Then there are other throw away scenes of characters like Ultra Man brutalizing and apparently preparing to slaughter helpless women. Scenes that are never addressed again.
I think it's getting out of hand personally. You'd think that once in a while we might get a good old fashioned storyline where the bad guy actually pays for the wrongs that are committed.
I don't even want to get started on the atrocity that is Monarch. What a garbage thing to do to Captain Atom.

Lets not go back to the camp. It's almost as bad as the 90s.

I think you touched on the real issue, and that's the poor writing. I don't believe censorship is beneficial to an artform, however, when you've got untalented folks creating it then that's even worse.

Yeah, I'm not pro censorship by any means. I preferred not to rent from Blockbuster because they seemed to think they were qualified to tell me what I should be watching.
But these comics, they just seem to be a source of titillation for people who are into extreme violence. There's no growth in reading about supermen tearing heads off.
They need to cool it with the cheap thrills and realise that comics are an art form or it won't be long before the medium winds up being the source of disrespect it used to be.

To be fair, all your examples come from countdown and offshoots, which are widly held as garbage.

I tend to agree. I'm not interested in returning to the code, but if the comics code could have prevented even 10% of the nonsense in Countdown then they could call that a victory. Superboy/man Prime slaughtering everyone in sight for entire issues is not exactly truth, justice and the American way. I'm getting tierd of watching people die by heat vision.

Censorship is necessary. Just because you have the right to express yourself freely, doesn't mean you have the right to force taboo topics you approve of, on those who don't. There are boundaries for a reason.

The Comics Code Authority wasn't really "censorship" per se, as in outside censorship. It was a set of guidelines which the major comic companies agreed to follow in order to avoid outside (i.e. governmental) censorship. Basically, the CCA meant that the comics companies would police themselves. Only if something flagrantly outside the guidelines was set to be published (i.e. the now-legendary Marvel "drug abuse" Spider-Man issue) would it be submitted for outside approval. If it failed to pass muster, it could still be published, albeit with the famous "CCA stamp" missing from the upper righthand corner of the cover. After some point (c. mid-1970's) the CCA became less and less of an issue; their "stamp" subsequently became literally smaller and smaller on the covers until it eventually disappeared entirely.

The main point of this little history lesson is this: at one time the comic industry was policing itself, until a couple of artists/writers with some pull decided to "buck the Code". That's all well and good, because you're talking in this case about people who have a) talent and b) a mature level of judgement disregarding the Code to be able to tell an important and/or powerful story. The problem is that once somebody does it, everybody decides to do it, and everything goes to the Infernal Regions in a handbasket.

A good TV analogy is NYPD Blue. You had some pretty talented creative people taking language and sex to a level never before seen on network TV, but doing it with maturity and judgement (you got a sex scene once every few episodes in the first season, and maybe once an episode you'd hear a word not used before on network TV -- in other words, the writers didn't beat you over the head with it). The problem is that for every Bochco or Milch who has the tools and talent to use these elements wisely and not overdo them or use them gratuitously, you've got seventeen hacks lining up to throw T&A and foul language at the audience once a minute instead of once an episode "just because we can". And you wind up with what Comedy Central and Spike TV have become (not to mention MTV, and a host of others).

So for every Frank Miller in the comic world, you've got a dozen hacks who are deliberately trying to shock or offend the audience, the kind of guys who make fun of someone like Alex Ross who deliberately (and vocally) avoids that sort of thing. And the sad part is that many of these guys can't write/draw their way out of a wet paper bag.

That's allegedly one reason (among many) why comics companies have editors who are supposed to oversee the work. So why aren't they doing so? Because #### sells, and they're just as afraid for their jobs as any other middle managers in other fields of endeavor.

And, realistically, you have a whole generation of comic fans who never knew it to be any other way (I have several younger friends who want to know why I read "that old ####" from the 1940's through the 1980's, but have never taken the trouble to even look at the material before passing judgement). They never knew a time when a character dying in a comic was a major event -- now if somebody doesn't die in a monthly book, it's blown off as an "unimportant filler issue". A hero who isn't drinking, on drugs, experimenting with "alternative sexuality", a former criminal, or who isn't harboring some other Dark Secret(tm) isn't a "hero" at all -- he/she's derided as a "goody-two-shoes" (which, at one time, was what comics were all about).

So what do you do? Beats me. There's a place for "gritty real-life realism" in comics (my two favorite books are Jonah Hex and Loveless). But does it have to be so in every issue of every book? Does every single book on the market absolutely have to read like a Quentin Tarentino movie? Have we fallen so far as a society that the real purpose of comic book heroes is to be such a bunch of miserable please don't bypass the swear filters that we feel good about ourselves by comparison, instead of the way it used to be: that heroes were people to be admired, people one would try to pattern oneself after? Are we so desperate for an "easy out" regarding our own behavior that seeing "perfect" heroes like Superman and Captain America are no good anymore because they make us "feel bad" about ourselves? Those are a couple of valid questions, which were explored in books like Kingdom Come (and, to a lesser extent, Infinite Crisis).

But on a more earthy "business" level, where's the comic industry at today when the circulation of the top-selling book in 2007 would have been resulted in the book being cancelled in 1976 due to poor sales? Have comics become such a "niche thing" that the publishers are happy with their aging and declining audience, and are making no effort to build their audience by appealing to a younger crowd? (I've read some pretty derogatory comments from people involved with DC Comics toward their own "Johnny DC" line, based on popular DC animated series, as though they felt it was somehow "beneath" them to be publishing such a thing).

Maybe a new CCA might be necessary in order to save the comic industry.

I don't know. Just some things to think about...

Good post.

While a nice long read, a lot of the hyperbole really discredits his post.

"Does every single book on the market absolutely have to read like a Quentin Tarentino movie? " No, and it isn't.


"now if somebody doesn't die in a monthly book, it's blown off as an "unimportant filler issue"." Really? Who thinks this?

"Have we fallen so far as a society that the real purpose of comic book heroes is to be such a bunch of miserable please don't bypass the swear filters that we feel good about ourselves by comparison, instead of the way it used to be: that heroes were people to be admired, people one would try to pattern oneself after?" Have we fallen so far that we read for the pure sense of escapism instead of simple entertainement?

"A hero who isn't drinking, on drugs, experimenting with "alternative sexuality", a former criminal, or who isn't harboring some other Dark Secret(tm) isn't a "hero" at all -- he/she's derided as a "goody-two-shoes" (which, at one time, was what comics were all about)." I've never talked with anyone with this opinion.

Quite a few people I've talked to at comic shops and Clix venues. I frequently hear that the latest issue of _____ was "boring" because "nobody died".

I hear this all the time, and the scary part is that it's most often coming from twenty-somethings, not the adolescents you'd expect it from. In fact, if I had a buck for every time over the last fifteen years I've heard someone say they "hate" Superman and Captain America for being "boy scouts", "goody two-shoes", or "too perfect", I'd be lying on a beach somewhere drinking a beer instead of screwing around on message boards.

Apparently we're running with two different crowds.

One more thing:

Please elaborate. I'm not sure I see a distinction between a "pure sense of escapism" and "simple entertainement".

ah, the good ole days. How I miss them.
Blame Stan Lee for being first to break with the CCA.

I don't know as I'd blame Stan at all. The general "Dark Ages" of comics ("dark" heroes becoming more or less the norm) seems to have started in the mid-80's with books like The Dark Knight Returns and The Watchmen (both of which qualify as bona fide graphic novel masterpieces), but really became more or less standard practice in the mid-90's when much of the Marvel creative staff broke to form Image.

double post -- sorry