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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 5, 2022 19:10:48 GMT -5
I personally couldn’t imagine Daredevil or Batman any other way except for perhaps Batman being more of a detective than a masked vigilante. I know a lot of creators copied the Frank Miller model, but characters need to grow and evolve, and they also need to change with the times. If you can do that successfully then that’s good comic book writing in my book. It won’t be for everyone, but it will speak loudly to the readers it does resonate with. Where a lot of it failed was in the art. Trying too hard to create that 90s superhero look. Fortunately, Daredevil and Batman have iconic costumes. There's a difference, though, in evolving and stripping away facets of a character. The alleged idea is that the characters are presented in a more mature manner. However, when the characters only show a couple of emotions and are forever being put through the ringer, it ceases to be mature and just becomes lazy. real human beings have multiple facets to their personalities and go through trials & tribulations; but, also through triumphs and happy moments. Unless they are sociopaths. Prior to Dark Knight and Year One, Batman was treated seriously; but, he still smiled once in a while. He could enjoy a joke. He had romances, as Bruce Wayne. He also travelled around the world, chasing criminals. The early 70s had him as a superhero James Bond, after a fashion, as he dealt with Ra's al Ghul and others in foreign lands, as well as Gotham. He was serious and deadly and even scary; but, he was also kind, hopeful, and working to make a difference, with the Wayne Foundation. In the mid-late 70s, Englehart & Rogers had him face discovery and deception, love and loss, corruption, murderers and psychopaths; but, still let him be a more rounded human being. He fell in love with Silver St Cloud and had to face the fact that she figured out he was Batman and it terrified her. To me, their interpretations were far more mature and evolved than what followed Miller. Miller took his cues from that and from the earliest stuff, with the pulpy trappings, and added a layer of crime fiction, in terms of Year One. With Dark Knight, he is an old man, forced out of his role, who watched Gotham descend into chaos until he can't stand aside any longer. The real hook, though, was not the grim attitude and violence; it was the old man, whose body was worn down, having to face even deadlier psychopaths and still win the day. That's what those that followed Miller missed. They just made Batman a brooding, obsessive, mentally unstable vigilante, incapable of maintaining human relationships and crapping on those who had been his friends. Daredevil had been through hard times, lost ground to corruption, loved and lost; but, there had always been a sense of optimism and a true love of what he was doing. He reveled in what he could do, how alive he felt. He was the natural born fighter in the big prize fight, every time he donned his costume and went after criminals. Miller gave him a more permanent adversary and a more deadly one. He turned the Kingpin into a real crime boss, a Corleone or Luciano, a Gambino.......He took his cues from the writings of Mickey Spillane, James M Cain and Jim Thompson (and even swiped some of their prose) and added that to Daredevil, to where he is busting heads in dive bars, looking for information, becoming more Marlowe than de la Vega. Elektra was a riff on Eisner's femme fatales, in The Spirit, taken to more murderous extremes, and then with heapings of Eric Van Lustbader ninja thrillers and Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima epic battles. He followed that up with having the Kingpin learn who DD is and putting him through the ringer, trying to destroy him. However, Miller had him climb out of that hole and reaffirm his faith. Problem is, that was ignored by those that followed and now Matt wasn't allowed to have fun anymore. Everything had to be noir and corrupt and Matt couldn't crack jokes anymore. You don't just lose that side of your personality, if you are a healthy adult. Even going through grief and tribulations, eventually you learn to cope. That is human development; but, he wasn't allowed that. That's what I'm talking about. To me, the less talented people who followed on DD and Batman missed the point and only focused on violence and obsession a devolved the characters, rather than letting them evolve. It was sales driven, certainly; but, it was also the same reductive focus that ignored a wider audience for the sake of continuing to cater to a narrower and narrower audience who would obsessively buy the comics. Too many bad editors weren't willing on taking a chance at letting the characters lighten up once in a while, just as a breath of fresh air. Even the X-Men got to have a ballgame, once in a while. |
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Post by commond on Mar 5, 2022 20:54:20 GMT -5
I am far from an expert on the Batman and Daredevil books that followed post-Miller, but it seems to me that a lot of writers focus on the psychology behind Batman's origins and his obsession with fighting crime, and Daredevil having his identity revealed and his life ruined. Once you take the characters to those sort of places, it's hard to go back to the philanthropist playboy and the swashbuckler. I appreciate the idea of making Batman less grim, but can a person who went through the trauma that Batman suffered really be a James Bond type? As for Daredevil, I am fairly certain his book would have been cancelled if he'd remained a second-rate Spider-Man. It's my understanding that there have been acclaimed runs on both Batman and Daredevil post-Miller. Aside from Waid's run, are there any runs that return either character to pre-Miller roots?
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 6, 2022 0:00:22 GMT -5
I am far from an expert on the Batman and Daredevil books that followed post-Miller, but it seems to me that a lot of writers focus on the psychology behind Batman's origins and his obsession with fighting crime, and Daredevil having his identity revealed and his life ruined. Once you take the characters to those sort of places, it's hard to go back to the philanthropist playboy and the swashbuckler. I appreciate the idea of making Batman less grim, but can a person who went through the trauma that Batman suffered really be a James Bond type? As for Daredevil, I am fairly certain his book would have been cancelled if he'd remained a second-rate Spider-Man. It's my understanding that there have been acclaimed runs on both Batman and Daredevil post-Miller. Aside from Waid's run, are there any runs that return either character to pre-Miller roots? One incident does not determine the psychological make-up of a person, though something like that can have a significant effect. However, someone that screwed up could not learn all the skills necessary to carry out his war and employ strategy, not without other influences that would offset some of the trauma. Instead of being the sum of influences, too many writers reduced him to one influence. For my money, Batman the Animated Series struck the right balance. Batman/Bruce was scarred, but people along the way helped him heal enough to turn his grief and anger into a more positive path. Leslie Tompkins, Zatara, his martial arts sensei, Alfred, Jim Gordon, Robin, Batgirl. He was driven, but more balanced. He wasn't perfect. He couldn't foresee every contingency, but did the best he could to put together a plan and execute it, but was still able to improvise and adapt to the situation. The writers on that series (especially Paul Dini), along with the producers, directors, animators, voice artists & voice director crafted a fine synthesis of the best elements and made a more satisfying whole. I liked the Burton Batman and Nolan's initial outing, but also liked Adam West and the first season and a half (or so). BTAS captured what was good about those, but also avoided the pitfalls. burton focused too much on the freakish nature of things, to the point of illogic. Nolan was too obsessed with coming up for real world rationales for every minute detail that he couldn't let the characters have fun or do any actual detective work that didn't require wonder technology. Within the comics, post-Miller, outside of Legends of the Dark Knight, I found the Bat books to be rather repetitive and one dimensional, until Batman Adventures came along. Since they didn't get bogged down in only the psychological trauma and obsession, there was a wider variety to their stories, which sustained my interest longer. With Daredevil, after Miller, I found it to be rather less and not really keeping my interest and spent more time going back and collecting the earlier material, when he had more fun. I prefer the pre-Miller run of Gil Kane and Jim Shooter (and a few others) more interesting than what I sampled of post-Miller DD. A place where I saw greater maturity and real character growth was with James Robinson's handling of Golden Age characters, in JSA: The Golden Age, Starman, and the subsequent JSA series (the one with those initials), especially compared to what earlier fan/writers, like Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas had done with the characters. Robinson kept some of their pulpier roots, fleshed out their personalities, gave them foibles, had them engage in brief affairs (Ted Knight and the original Black Canary, briefly), have families, become elder statesmen, but also depicted their professionalism and the same kind of drive that he compared to Tom Wolfe's depiction of the Mercury 7. By the same token, Kurt Busiek engaged in more of that in Astro City, though he could craft his characters from the ground up. However, he took those classic archetypes and gave them greater depth, gave us pastiches who felt more real, gave us an alternative viewpoint on old tropes. I'm a firm believer in the Light standing in contrast to the Dark, as they each give form to the other. If you have a dark environment, someone needs to stand apart, or the environment just eats the characters. That's where I feel that the whole "grim n' gritty" trend set comics back and why, in particular, I felt Batman and Daredevil devolved, in that time frame. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Mar 6, 2022 9:02:13 GMT -5
Aside from Waid's run, are there any runs that return either character to pre-Miller roots? I think the run by Karl Kesel and Cary Nord was a bit of a throwback to pre-Miller DD. |
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Post by tonebone on Mar 7, 2022 11:37:02 GMT -5
Every Marvel and DC character, in the last 20 years.
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Post by MDG on Mar 7, 2022 11:55:32 GMT -5
It's probably inevitable with characters around for 40+ years, multiple creators, spotty editorial oversight, and a constant imperative to "shake things up."
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Post by berkley on Mar 7, 2022 15:45:45 GMT -5
It's probably inevitable with characters around for 40+ years, multiple creators, spotty editorial oversight, and a constant imperative to "shake things up." Of course. But some are particularly bad or difficult to defend, especially those that make a character less interesting (mostly a subjective judgement) or that mess around with the core concept (less subjective). Unless there is no core concept - in which case there isn't a character either, just a name and a costume, and sometimes not even both of those. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 7, 2022 16:12:23 GMT -5
 Spidey certainly appears to have taken a wrong turn here. |
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 7, 2022 16:38:49 GMT -5
Every Marvel and DC character, in the last 20 years. Pull up a chair. The next session of the Grumpy Old Man Club was just about to start. President (me) presiding.  |
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Post by tonebone on Mar 7, 2022 17:03:53 GMT -5
Every Marvel and DC character, in the last 20 years. Pull up a chair. The next session of the Grumpy Old Man Club was just about to start. President (me) presiding. Hi. I'm Tonebone. I'm a curmudgeon. |
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Post by tonebone on Mar 7, 2022 17:30:11 GMT -5
But seriously folks... comics used to generate interest with a new exciting villain, with romantic interest or troubles, with work/life balance issues...
But in the past 20 or so years, the wrong turn playbook has been:
Hero is killed ("for reals", I'm sure)
Hero's secret identity exposed
Hero gets a kid (that's some real escapist entertainment right there)
supporting character brutally murdered/raped/replaced by alien
hero is succeeded by awful teenage version (I call this the Poochie effect, and it keeps on giving)
hero is neutered to have "cutesey wootsie" adventures, or hang out at Starbucks instead of kicking ass
Hero ALMOST gets married (not as much of a wrong turn as a fan fake-out)
Hero becomes different sex, age (I'm looking at you, Thor)
Hero has secretly been EVIL for the past 8 decades without anyone knowing (sort of a master-stroke wrong turn, where it taints all 80 years of previous stories... well done!)
It used to be that plot twists and such gimmicks were minor course corrections, but this kind of stuff has really driven things off the rails, sometimes permanently damaging the characters, in my opinion.
I mean, I couldn't even tell you right now if Iron Man is Tony Stark, or if it's a teenage girl, or if Stark is dead, or a god, or a ghost, or revealed to be a Skrull. Meanwhile, little Johnny's mom takes him to the comics store to try to find an Iron Man comic that's like the movies. No luck there.
So, yeah, that's what really grinds my gears.
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Post by spoon on Mar 7, 2022 18:35:38 GMT -5
Aside from Waid's run, are there any runs that return either character to pre-Miller roots? I think the run by Karl Kesel and Cary Nord was a bit of a throwback to pre-Miller DD. I agree with this, except the rule is you must refer to it as the Kesel Run. But seriously, I like both the Kesel run and the Waid/Samnee run (and I'm "meh" on other Waid stuff I've read). I think it's good for Daredevil (and many other characters) to have a mix of good and bad experiences. If his life was just totally hopeless all the time, how could he get up in the morning? Don't forget: Born Again has a happy ending. I love how the Kesel run subverts expectations regarding how bleak things can be in the Daredevil book. If I recall correctly, they drop some hints that maybe Karen is a drug-addicted hooker again, and it turns out . . . she's just hosting a late night radio show! Such a brilliant, hilarious swerve. |
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Post by james on Mar 7, 2022 18:44:56 GMT -5
Personally when it comes to DD My favorite run is the Roger Mackenzie 152-161. To be they were just great DD stories and 157-161 were Miller’s first, and in my opinion the best Miller art of his entire run.
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Post by berkley on Mar 7, 2022 23:26:32 GMT -5
Personally when it comes to DD My favorite run is the Roger Mackenzie 152-161. To be they were just great DD stories and 157-161 were Miller’s first, and in my opinion the best Miller art of his entire run.
Agreed, especially in regard to Miller's DD artwork, which became sketchier and sketchier as his run continued - the layouts were great, but that's about all they were, just layouts, after a while. As far as the writing goes, there were some great moments in Miller's stint as writer but it never felt like Daredevil to me: I think my favourite individual story is the famous one where Bullseye kills Elektra. From memory, that was the most effective marriage of the kind of hard-boiled crime writing Miller obviously wanted to do with the world of long-standing Marvel superhero Daredevil, and it's no coincidence IMO that the story had to be told from Bullseye's POV - even narrated by him.
So yeah, on the whole, I prefer those earlier stories written by MacKenzie, where you had Miller doing more finished artwork and Daredevil more like the character he'd been for pretty much all his existence up to then.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2022 23:59:20 GMT -5
feh. .  |
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