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• Series: Fables

Bill Willingham and the Age of Superhero Decadence

NO FLY ZONE: Superhero Decadence (slideshow)
© Mania

Over at the conservative film blog Big Hollywood, Fables scribe Bill Willingham wrote an editorial about the state of superhero comics in which he decried their increasingly amoral and “gray” tone. He calls it an “age of superhero decadence.” You know the drill—grim and gritty heroes that cross the line, that sometimes appear indistinguishable from the villains they fight, that have to do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and otherwise subvert the Comics-Code-approved notion of superheroes as unfailing moral beacons. Willingham points to a few recent examples in which Superman and Captain America have appeared, well, less than excited about the American way. Willingham decries the trend, yet allows for moral ambiguity, grit, and unsavory behavior in other genres, including his own Fables. And, though many other bloggers and self-anointed pundits have accused him of dictating to other writers, he mostly just announces that all superhero comics of his own will now present the capes-and-tights set as unwaveringly good and for those virtues we consider our most American—truth, justice, and freedom. He politely asks other creators to do the same. Needless to say, fans are pissed. Comic Book Resources, The Onion AV Club, and a few other sites have seen a lot of scorn heaped upon Willingham for suggesting that comics should promote American values.

Cover art for THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS #2 by Frank Miller has Batman bloody, bruised, battered and ready for round 2.

© DC Comics

The comics industry—both fans and creators—is overwhelmingly liberal. Willingham must have known that such a piece practically begs for scorn and controversy. These are cynical times. And, fans long ago voted with their wallets for grim and gritty antiheroes over shining moral beacons. The tone of Willingham’s piece practically shouts “Look at me! I’m conservative!” It’s inflammatory. But outside of the old argument about politics in comics, it also invokes a couple of other points that the industry should acknowledge. Grim and gritty heroes have practically become the order of the day since Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns ascended into mainstream respectability. Almost every hero faces more realistic moral dilemmas than their Golden and Silver Age counterparts ever did. Most readers seem to like that, but a few don’t. DC’s Identity Crisis served as a pretty important signpost in the journey from idealism to realism. While DC always had its share of grit and darkness, Identity Crisis really dirtied some of the publisher’s most recognizable heroes and villains and seemed to shrug off the last of the genre’s innocence. Dr. Light raped Sue Dibney. Zatanna mind-wiped a bunch of criminals and then Batman. Jean Loring actually killed Sue. Later, we learned that Batman has been spying on everyone. A lot of longtime DC fans cried foul, but it was really a case of the publisher shedding the last vestiges of the Silver Age. Some have argued that Identity Crisis didn’t change anything because, well, you know, read The Longbow Hunters, or the issue of Green Lantern where they killed the gay guy, or whatever. But, former DC assistant editor Valerie D’Orazio described the manner in which DC editors decided to one-up Marvel for violent content with Identity Crisis. It seems pretty clear what happened.

Michael Turner's cover art for IDENTITY CRISIS #7 captures a sense of loss and shame.

© DC Comics

Now, everyone—Marvel and DC’s characters alike—is dirty and some of the heroes are almost as bad as the villains. Some of them kill and torture people, like Wolverine and the Punisher. Bill Willingham doesn’t like it and he thinks the heroes need to straighten up and fly right. By all means, Mr. Willingham should write whatever kind of comics he wants. If he wants to show his heroes fighting for the most cherished ideals of the United States of America, then he should have at it. He’s right in that mainstream comics have taken on an overwhelmingly cynical tone. It would be nice to read something that varies the whole “Bush sucks” theme that’s become so popular. I know that’s a lot to ask of people that are delighted every time George W. Bush mispronounces a word, but it can be done. However, it is every writer’s prerogative to create the comics they choose, regardless of their politics. This is a free country, and you can dislike it and criticize it in works of art. But for all the venom Willingham has received, he merely stated his intentions and politely suggested others come aboard. He never called anyone a communist or a terrorist, and he made it clear that he saw room for moral ambiguity and grit in other genres—just not superheroes. Here at The No-Fly Zone, we try not to focus on mainstream superhero comics. Willingham’s editorial addresses just that, which makes it an odd subject for this column. But, it brings up an interesting notion of genre boundaries. We have to ask what, if any, responsibilities a superhero comic has to genre tropes, and at one point does it become something else entirely.

A heroine gets arrested for murder on the cover of WONDER WOMAN #220 by J.G. Jones

© DC Comics

Superheroes have long served as moral beacons and modern folklore. We have long looked at them as comforting signs of the unwavering stand that good should take against evil. But yes, post-Watchmen and post-Dark Knight Returns, that has changed. Superhero comics have taken on a more postmodern sensibility, in which they don’t just show do-gooder vigilantes thwarting bank robberies and triumphing over evil. To some, that’s evidence of the genre maturing. To others—Willingham, apparently—it’s a sign of decadence. More than anything, though, it shows that as a genre of any medium matures, it often moves outside of genre confines to become something greater. “Genre fiction” is a byword for trash fiction in literary circles, because it refers to works that usually just revel in clichés. Pick up a Dragonlance novel or something else spun out of a role-playing game or a 30-year-old space opera. And at one point, showing heroes as morally ambiguous, anti-heroic, and even mentally unbalanced constituted a fresh approach. Writing superhero comics like that meant breaking genre boundaries, because a lot of characters didn’t act way. Now, it’s the norm—and arguably as cliché as simple morality tales once were in their own time. On the one hand, it’s arguably a good thing because adults want stories that do more than simply offer a comforting worldview. Life is hard. Life is full of moral complications. We want to read about characters that experience similar woes. Whether “grim and gritty” has become the new cliché, at least its closer to real life and the kind of world we know.

Cover art for PUNISHER MAX #10 by Tim Bradstreet evokes a pulp crime novel.

© Marvel Entertainment

Willingham and a lot of other readers want to see a return to superheroes as super-examples for how things—and how we—should be, rather than how they actually are. Arguably, that approach leads to superhero fiction in its purest form. If it strays from Willingham’s sort of Platonic form of super-heroism, then it may step outside of genre boundaries to become something else. But, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, would anyone really call Ghost Rider a superhero comic? Would you want to? Jason Aaron has reconfigured it as a grindhouse horror flick on paper, and it’s better for it. What about The Punisher? That’s simply crime fiction with a crazed vigilante as the protagonist, making it no more super-heroic than Death Wish. Though it’s a different medium entirely, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight really drives home the point by working more as a modern noir picture a la Michal Mann’s Heat, but one that happens to have a costumed vigilante for a protagonist. Granted, all of those examples prove Willingham’s point about the predominance of antiheroes. But, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other possibilities outside of those walls. We all like the comic equivalent of comfort food, but at some point, superheroes—or any other genre—mature and move so far outside of what defines them that they become something else entirely—literary, original, and worthy of study and consideration.

What Willingham suggests is a return to genre form that might serve those that want their heroes a little more super. That’s a nice idea on paper and “grim and gritty” has admittedly become tired in its own right. But, the sign of a mature piece of fiction is the inability to pigeonhole it. If you can categorize something easily, it’s probably because it goes through familiar motions—the hero gets his powers in a lab accident, he fights a villain, he saves a girl, he becomes the city’s protector, and set up for the next story. “Grim and gritty” and cynicism may have become the tired norm, but it’s really not a good idea to subvert a newer set of clichés with an older one. We don’t need another easily understood and recognized superhero story—neither shiny and moral, nor grim and gritty—anymore than we need another romantic comedy at the cinema. Those same broken genre boundaries that Willingham decries made the mainstream media and literary establishment sit up and notice both superheroes and the comics medium. Without that humanizing dose of cynicism that comics needed in the 1980s, publishers would still be churning out Code-Approved morality plays that often deserved the scorn heaped upon them by the mainstream.

Willingham’s conservativism is not at issue here. What he proposes is a new direction for a genre fenced in by clichés of anti-heroic behavior, cynicism, and moral ambiguity. But, his proposal means going back behind another fence in the same yard. Superhero comics need to leave the yard entirely to find new relevance. Where they go is the purview of creators. But, we don’t need to regress to solve a new problem. We just need to do something even better.

You are now exiting The No-Fly Zone.