More of this please

Less "Dark Heroes", more "Lighter Villains". [Link]

Of course, we’re not speaking practically.  We’re talking about a fictional world in which the rules are changing.  That’s the problem, I think.  The subject matter of comics has gotten more dark, the shock-tactics more extreme.  We went from bank robbers, muggers, and invading starfish to villains burning pregnant women to death, murdering people’s families, and trying to blow up the entire earth.  Meanwhile, the heroes are less flexible than the situations they find themselves in.  The bad guys can do anything, the good guys are constricted.  Not killing has almost become a talisman that lets us know the heroes are still heroes.  (And of course, the heroes are bound by the fact that we need the villains to return for more stories.)

This pull between the truly evil villain and the curiously rigid hero causes a lot of fans frustration, and I can certainly understand it.  However, I don’t think the solution to that is more killing, even if it is well-written.  I think we should go the other way.

More bank robbers.  More drug runners.  More art smugglers.  More mad scientists with misunderstood but rampaging creations.  More nuisance criminals like the early Riddler.  More money launderers.  More bizarre (and non-sexual) kidnappers.

Less brutality.  Less parodic violence.  Less sexual assault.  Less ‘this time it’s personal’.  Less crimes that need to be resolved with a death.

More Batman doing detective work.  Less Batman beating up snitches for information.  More Wonder Woman dealing with mythological fantasies and modern-day mindsets.  Less Wonder Woman snapping necks to save the world.

The comic book world doesn’t need heroes that are darker, it needs villains that are lighter.  I don’t want the heroes to be heroes because they refuse to kill, even when someone has tortured their entire family to death in front of their eyes.  I want the heroes to be heroes because they go out into the greater world, find all different kinds of crime, and figure out ways to stop it.