More superheroes, not superhumans

This really resonates with me. More morally clear heroes please. There is enough gray in the real world. [Link]

Those are but two examples of the slow but steady degradation of the American superhero over the years. The ’super’ is still there, more so than ever, but there seems to be a slow leak in the ‘hero’ part. There’s even a term for it, coined by (I’m not sure who, but it might have been one of two respected comics journalists) either Dirk Deppey or Tom Spurgeon. Folks, we’re smack dab in the midst of the Age of Superhero Decadence. Old fashioned ideals of courage and patriotism, backed by a deep virtue and unshakable code, seem to be… well, old fashioned.

Full disclosure time. I’m at least partially to blame for this steady chipping away of the goodness of our comic book heroes. In my very first comic series Elementals, first published close to thirty years ago, I was eager to update old superhero tropes, making my characters more real, edgier, darker — less heroic and a good deal more vulgar than the (then) current standard. Elementals was one of the first of what was later dubbed the ‘grim and gritty’ movement in comic books. And to complicate my confession, I’m still proud of much of that early work. At least my crass and corrupted Elemental heroes still fought, albeit imperfectly, for the clear good, against the clear evil.

A comment from James Hudnall on the article:

I think a lot of comics writers can write heroes because they don’t believe in them anymore or don’t even understand them. There are some creators who seem to take a sick kind of glee making them into depraved loons, or creating left wing super-proxies to spout some kind of puerile version of watered down Chomsky while they beat up right-wing straw men.

The things that made Captain America, Batman, Superman popular for so many years isn’t just their abilities. It’s their moral clarity. For the same reason that Rorschach in Watchmen was popular in his own way. He was supposed to be some kind of crazed loon, yet he was the character who was proven right by the story. He was the one who really got what was going on.

People like the idea of characters who know what they are doing and have a purpose that’s positive. Too much of what left wing writers do is based on doubt, self loathing and a loss of faith in anything. No wonder comics sales are down.

Part of the point of superheroes is that they are better than we are. They are something to aspire to. I'm not against giving them flaws, but the flaws seem to dominate and the heroism gets left behind.