Well...I'll sound very old-fashioned in my comments, so this is just personal preferences and not meant to slight others' tastes by any means.

I find a lot of "mature" comics mostly immature. Profanity and violence and endless deconstructions don't really advance Silver Age characters in my opinion. And you have to remember, again this will sound old-fashioned, but some of the beauty of those idealized characters, hokey as they may have often been seen in their storytelling, was that they were escapism from the not so happy realities of the real world. In their own way, and perhaps especially to impressionable younger children that were originally more the target age, they could become this wonderful escape. Escape from bullies at school, parents fighting, sad things happening in the news, etc.

In a make-believe world where Superman was this ideal of "do the right thing", it gave this overwhelming message of positivity that you would not often see in real life itself. Or Spider-Man not finding life so easy, but somehow always coming around to likewise doing the right things versus fully giving into selfishness, much as he wishes he could at times. That latter example actually feels pretty darn mature to me in the true sense.

To repurpose these types of characters for "grim and gritty" of the 80's British and later "mature" styles of storytelling, well, it feels like the bad kids on the schoolground had a naughty joke to tell. And on the flip side, let's be honest...some of them have been masterful storytellers in their own ways and those "naughty jokes" can be quite entertaining to some. But do they really "advance" the characters as something more to be inspired by, draw positivity from, etc.? If you eschew that aspect, I think you deny a major element of what made them so great in the first place.

That doesn't mean I don't believe there aren't meaningful ways storytelling can't move forward, and everything has to be a blatant love letter to the past even though some of them have been delightful and appeal greatly to fans such as myself. I just don't think "grim and gritty" is the only way to get there, I would rather see some postive ideals still core to the storytelling. I also think the world could use more of that.

I'd like to also address this question, because I think it brings up another important aspect.

When I think of more "mature" storytelling historically speaking when it comes to the world of adventure, I think of a lot of classic novels:

Treasure Island
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea / Mysterious Island
Three Musketeers
Moby Dick
Mutiny on the Bounty

And so on. Yes, these are definitely again in the "old-fashioned" tastes category, but I refer to them here as examples of where I think the storyelling is more mature in terms of complexity of plots, depth of characterizations, etc. compared to say typical Silver Age comic books. So yes, personally I prefer well crafted adventure stories, and would rather use these as reference points to what more sophisticated storytelling could look like.

Or said another way...Supercat is an old fuddy duddy 

Following the latest trends, perhaps?

We see it all the time in wrestling. Certainly in North America, the hardcore style of ECW begat the Attitude Era in the WWF. WCW, under Vince Russo, tried to copy that (badly). Sometimes, I hate “photocopies”.

At least now with wrestling, it seems companies are trying to have their own identity rather than following the crowd.

I don’t necessarily want (and this is just a personal, subjective view) trends. I understand the business reasons why, but I’d rather we lived in a world where people didn’t try and make everything “the next Wolverine”.

I agree about Robinson; and, I think a large part of that specific example was that Robinson was bringing a lot of literary influences to his work, not just comics. A lot of writers had grown up with comics and movies and could swipe plots and characters from movies, but couldn't pull much from a literary environment, like their predecessors. I mean, look at Robinson's Firearm, in the Ultraverse. In most hands, it would have been yet another gun-toting vigilante, ala the Punisher and his ilk. Robinson took the idea (not sure if it was his or someone else as there was a core team of writers developing the universe) and turned it into a mixture of a hardboiled detective and an espionage thriller. His character had worked for a secret British government department that dealt with paranormal threats. There were elements of Hammett and Chandler and John Le Carre, as he was soured on the whole black ops world. Robinson talked books, constantly, on the letters pages and mystery writers were a common group. With Grendel: Four Devils, One Hell, he mixed in several influences, from westerns to samurai films and lore. The Golden Age took what had been done before and applied the real post-War paranoia and conservative backlash to Roosevelt and the influence of the Left on social agendas. He mixes in McCarthyism and Atomic Bomb experiments and a bit of brain swapping, to create a wonderful paranoid world that kind of mirrored what happened to comics, in the post-War era.

Talent is definitely there; but also applying influences beyond comics. Too many of his contemporaries seemed to lack other influences.

I was a fan of both the nostalgic update of the Silver Age and the deconstructionist style, when done well. That is the kicker; when done well. I enjoy a good sci-fi story; but, there are few things worse than bad sci-fi. Same in comics. Deconstruction has to have a point, to say something about the world around you and some of the things resented in the past. The original "steampunk" stories were deconstructionists, turning the old Victorian scientific adventures on their head an pulling back on the idea that science would save mankind and use the same style to comment on how science was used to maintain an unequal status quo. Michael Moorcock did that brilliantly in his Oswald Bastable stories and the earliest steampunk writers picked up on that and there was a level of social commentary to their work. The problem is that element was lost on the groups that followed and just imitated those old Victorian adventures (which often had social commentary, in the hands of Verne and Wells) and substituted steam and clockwork technology for modern devices. Difference engines instead of micro-processors. They just wanted to do The Wild Wild West and have more modern dialogue and a lot of Victorian Emma peels in fetishy corsets, because they had seen Rebecca Fogg, on The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne (where the idea was original and not a 5th generation copy).

Watchman was a good deconstruction, as it explores the rather reactionary and even fascist nature of vigilantism, where a person takes the law into their own hands, because only they know how to change the situation. It also showed that the psychological make-up of people drawn to be in the public eye isn't necessarily healthy. look at the performing arts, especially popular music and Hollywood. Far more seek adulation than practicing a craft and a system feeds them into a machine and drains whatever money it can through and from them and spits them out, at the end. Substance abuse, depression, relationship problems and even sexual deviancy are rampant, as you have a large section of the performing population that has deep psychological pain that they crave the adulation to give them worth. It is rarer to find the real artisan, who develops their craft and has a real point of view to express and builds a long, sustained career of quality, because they aren't as damaged going into things. To me, that is the problem of too many "deconstructionist. works.

For ever Watchman or The One or even The New Statesmen, there is an Ultimates, or Snyder Man of Steel that just does things for shock value, with no real commentary on the present or the past. There are some that fall between, like the Authority (in my opinion), where I think Ellis had a few ideas; but, tended to just pull a reversal at the climax out of the blue and Millar just went for shock value. What social commentary Millar had in Ultimates is buried under a lot of hamfisted violence, pop culture wanking, and shocking ideas, solely for the sake of getting a reaction from the reader. Wanda and Pietro as an implied incestuous duo, Hank Pym as a serial wife abuser, Captain America as a reactionary, etc. The good god lost in the pointless, to me.

Darwyn Cooke is a good example of looking lovingly on the period; but also pulling back the curtain. He uses Hal Jordan to adulate the test pilots who became the Mercury Seven and the foundation of the space program, while never missing sight that a lot of politics went into the space program, as much as idealism. He shows the darker underbelly of society, with the McCarthyist background for the JSA quitting and the institutional racism that murders John Henry. Jonn Jonnz, much like the paranoid sci-fi films of the 50s is a metaphor for anti-Communist hysteria. Wonder Woman highlights that women have been getting the shaft under both opposing ideologies and is willing to fight to change it. It felt both in step with the past and the child yelling out that "The emperor has no clothes!"

So much of the so-called "grim & gritty" of the 90s was just cheap pandering and copying for a quick buck, much like Hollywood aping a trend, or designers jumping on the latest fad. It is reflected in all of the Harry Potter rip-offs that popped up when the series became a massive mainstream phenomena, in the media (the kids were already reading it; that's what made it special). It was the old Martin Goodman formula: see what is selling, copy it and flood the market, and then move on. Repeat.

Guys like Robinson want to bring in different ideas, guys like Mark Waid or Geoff Johns just want to repeat the comics of their youth, often, with varying levels of talent. The former creates more interesting results, but the latter can be entertaining and occasionally come up with an interesting twist, on an old idea. Someone like a Kurt Busiek does a bit of both, mixing the nostalgia with a more meta commentary.

I personally am not big on ultra-violent comics, as there is too much violence in the real world. I don't seek that in my entertainment; I seek an escape from it. However, one of my favorite series is Pat Mills & Kevin O'Neil's Marshall Law. It is ridiculously violent (and long before things like The Boys jumped on the bandwagon). Mills has a POV; he hates superheroes and suggests they are a twisted idea that is harmful. He then takes that premise and pushes it to the extreme, to get your attention for his arguments, which play out in the middle of the violence and dirty jokes (often in the backgrounds and graffiti spread throughout). There is some wicked satire among all the blood and depraved behavior. On the surface, it seems gratuitous, but there is a subversive philosophy going on there. Compare that to Bendis et al and stuff like The Sentry and the Dark Avengers and you can see just a cynical have the bad guys be a bad as I can get away with, since there is no Code. The Code wasn't always a bad thing, as it often forced people to be more creative in their expression.

Swearing, sex and violence gets attention but isn't mature. Swearing to emphasize a real and logical emotional response to a situation, sex that serves the point of the story and, similarly, violence has a place in mature comics. Just like a single profanity in a film will have more impact than 90 minutes of Tarantino F-bombs, the real art is knowing when to use it and how much.

Preacher went full speed ahead with its absurd treatment of violence and profanity, true, but that's not what made it mature in my opinion (quite the opposite, in fact... those bits were juvenile comic relief). What made it stand out as an adult title was how it took polarizing issues and did not treat them in a polarizing way, respecting the readers' intelligence. Concepts like masculinity, for example, or issues like gun control, would get fair treatment and not end up with Garth Ennis making some kind of moralizing speech one way or the other. Preacher, as a series, acknowledged and even embraced the fact that life is complicated.

It took me a long while to give the book a chance, especially when the LCS owner said "oh, this is a great book! It's hyper-violent!" (definitely a turn off for me). But when I did start it, I couldn't stop. And the longer it went, the more mature it was; less gore, fewer fights, and more actual human drama. It would be fair that it was a bit tamer in its old days, generally speaking, but it was even better for it.

The term "for mature readers" is an ambiguous one. Sometimes, it means "children should not have access to this material unsupervised"; other times, it means "children would probably not understand what the deal with this is". (The latter category is what I would call an actual adult comic, but that's a personal view). Preacher was a bit of both: younger readers would doubtless enjoy the potty jokes and Road Runner-like violence, but themes like responsibility, selfishness and dependence might well fly over their head.

See what you've done Adam? Now I want to read it again!!!

Using BATMAN as an example, the "grim and gritty" has become just as much of a cliché and filled with exhausted concepts as all the post-code "Batman Vs. Sock Drawer" stories of the 1950's-60's. To me the problems are not so much the ideas in and of themselves, but the over proliferation of the same ideas by the major  publishers who never want to be the first ones to risk anything too far from the prevailing trend. They would say you can't argue with success, but such repetition breeds a general monotony that ultimately will turn against you. Would visionaries like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby stand a chance now with trying to introduce new ideas en route to game changers? Would someone like Frank Miller be allowed to change the industry in such a revolutionary way as he did in the late 80's? I don't know, it doesn't seem likely now with the industry mired in the same old same old for over 30 years. Good comics have been, are now and always will be around, but the dragged out on fumes exploitation of a general trend just might finally spell its doom one of these days. 

Preacher is a great series. If I have any objection to it, it's the crass humour, but that's more than offset by the strong character relationships. However, Preacher was a series that was written for a mature readers line, and used entirely original characters. I know that Ennis doesn't particularly care for superheroes, but imagine if Ennis had taken over from Grell on Green Arrow and done the Preacher as Green Arrow, or better yet, used some other character like the Huntress or The Phantom Stranger. How would people have reacted? 

I find this topic fascinating. In theory, there could have been fanzine opposition to what Marvel was doing in the 60s with their characters (I'm not sure if there was, I'm just saying in theory there could have been), or fan opposition to late 70s-early 80s titles like Uncanny X-Men and New Teen Titans that introduced a lot of sex, for one thing. We know that you can't tell Golden Age stories in the Silver Age, or Silver Age stories in the Bronze Age, and so on, so what kind of stories do you tell? We also know that comics are not unique in terms of this changing landscape. We saw how New Hollywood rejected classic Hollywood and the studio system just as the French New Wave had rejected the Golden Age of French cinema a decade earlier, and we saw all sorts of movements in music from punk to post-punk to new wave, etc. If things remained static, would we been having this current Golden Age of Television that we're currently enjoying? 

Not everyone enjoys dark, cynical, pessimistic, ironic, nihilistic, or fatalistic storytelling. Not everyone wants to stories depressing. A lot of people I talk to about TV shows don't enjoy watching shows that are too violent. I completely understand. Fortunately, there is a ton of light hearted entertainment out there. Arguably, more than critically acclaimed grim and gritty shows, as I'd argue that the vast majority of people prefer more wholesome entertainment. I just wonder how you can tell modern Batman or Daredevil stories, for example, that capture that aesthetic. Especially stories that aren't set in the past and don't have a retro aspect to them. Someone told me recently that there was a short Cary Nord/Karl Kessel run on Daredevil that returned him to his swashbuckling roots. I'm curious to see how that worked. As much as I love Busiek's Astro City, which may be one of the most perfect superhero stories ever written, I have struggled to get into Busiek's Marvel work as he seems to be trying too hard to recreate the 70s Avengers, etc. If I want the 70s Avengers, I'll read the 70s Avengers. But then, what kind of Avengers do I want? What little I have seen of the direction 00s creators took them in has kind of blown my mind in terms of how different is from what I'm used to. The only conclusion I can draw from all this rambling is that it's really difficult to write good stories with older characters. I loved what Brubaker did with Captain America at least in the original series, but even he ran out of steam after a while. Perhaps creators would be better off coming up with new characters, but that's equally as tough. Or perhaps new readers are enjoying all of the modern books and there's simply a jumping off point for all of us.