The Return of Batman and Superman

I don't trust comic book fans who don't like superheroes. I'm referring here to the diehards-the people who read comic books like the quiet boy in your first-year suite read poetry. A blanket dislike of all things cape and cowl is a guarantee of pretension, but more than that, it shows a general unwillingness to admit that comics can become literary and challenging while remaining entertaining.

There's not much I can do for the diehards. But for the casual reader of comic books who is just a little skittish about reading anything that might get adapted into a move featuring a guy in a rubber suit, I'd like to explain how exactly the superhero comic got to where it is today.

The comic form has been dominated by superhero stories since the debut of Superman in 1938. He was wildly popular, and an untold number of copycats and variants saw publication in subsequent years. The institution of the Comic Book Code in 1954, a set of self-imposed rules governing content created by the Comic Magazine Association of America, effectively killed all horror, crime, and romance comics, and the later decline in popularity of science fiction and the western left only the superhero standing.

Perhaps more importantly, the Code made explicit what before had been only a derisive stereotype-comic books were written exclusively for children. Comic books already suffered from shoddy plotting, embarrassing dialogue, and terrible color separation, but the Code practically mandated that they stay that way. "In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds," says General Standards A(6). Not a lot of room for creative storytelling.

Fast-forward about 30 years. In 1983, DC hires a young British writer named Alan Moore to write Swamp Thing, a B-list comic book with lagging sales. Moore changes the book from a standard superhero tale to what DC will come to call "sophisticated suspense." Sales pick up, and DC realizes that a market exists for well-written comics aimed at adults.

During the second half of the decade, writers like Moore, Frank Miller (Sin City, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns), and later Grant Morrison (Animal Man, Doom Patrol) and Neil Gaiman (Sandman) reinvented the superhero genre. Their stories were darker; their characters were multi-dimensional; and they treated the subject matter with respect. For the first time since the '50s, the major publishers-DC and Marvel-were willing to print books that didn't meet Code standards.

Unfortunately, in the '90s, the entire ship almost sank. Following the darker tone of '80s comics, some writers, artists, and fans got a little carried away. For a while, any story that was "messed up" sold like gold. Superman died-and came back. Batman broke his back, but it healed. Spider-man got replaced by a clone -don't ask. It was a rough time, more about flashy covers, big guns, and bigger boobs than telling a compelling story.

On top of that, the rising value of golden- and silver-age comic books created a collector's market, and the publishers were more than happy to capitalize on it. No one needed five variant chromium holographic covers of the same issue, but they sold well. People became scared to read their comics, for fear it might degrade the resale value. The Speculative Boom, as it was called, reduced comic books to little more than baseball cards.

Eventually, the industry paid, dearly. The market became flooded, killing resale value, and scaring away speculators. Since the stories weren't good enough to keep anyone but the most dedicated fans around, there was nothing to keep people buying. Comic sales plummeted. Marvel went bankrupt.

After the collapse, the mainstream industry was forced to focus on what they should have been all along: story and character. Responding to the demands of their writers and aging readership, the publishers formally abandoned the Comic Book Code. Slowly but surely, sales are beginning to reflect quality of writing and art instead of potential resale value.

The kids who grew up reading the work of Moore and co. are now writing comics of their own. Their superhero stories are everything that they should be-smart, funny, epic, and fantastic.