WARNING: Some imagery in this editorial is violent and explicit.
I’ve been reading Batman lately. Turns out I’d been missing out on one of the best story arcs in recent history for Batman. Batman has been written for the last couple of years by Tom King, a rapidly rising star in comics. He’s actually been around for quite some time, but honestly I only started really hearing about him in the last few years. Anyway, he’s amazing. And his run of Batman, starting with issue 1 in 2016 is utterly without peer. My local comic book shop ended up giving away some extra issues of Batman #51-53, the Cold Days story arc and it was sublime. I’ve rarely seen a grasp on the character of Bruce Wayne as deep and interesting as King manages, and I bought up all the back issues that I could find that he’d written afterward. But that’s where things get interesting.
Now, King might be the best Batman writer in over a decade (at least in my estimation), but his scripts are also some of the most violent I’ve ever seen. Batman is vicious, his foes slaughter civilians indiscriminately, and every few issues, some sort of ultra violence or bloodbath ensues. Somewhat to be expected, I suppose, by an former CIA operative/author clearly steeped in the mythos of Batman. Normally, I wouldn’t have a problem with this, but I happened to leave a copy of Batman #62 lying about in the living room and my wife saw the cover. She was a bit taken aback at the sight of this particularly gruesome image, especially considering we have a three year old son who knows who Batman is (sort of). It made me think.
What happened to Batman? And by way of association, comics in general? If you’ve been reading comics over the last 5 years or so, you’ve likely noticed they’ve become outrageously violent with extreme content being the norm rather than the exception. Sure, sex and violence sells, but books like Preacher and The Boys are becoming mainstream and if you don’t know what they are and haven’t read them, they’re both amazing and pretty much destroy the boundaries of propriety and taste on every level. Garth Ennis is a fantastic writer, one of the best in comics today, but he’s definitely got a dark, violent, and sexual side to his work. And both of those books are TV shows now (toned down a hair of course…I don’t think they could manage The Boys as it was written anyway). But this is normal in comics now. I just bought a new book from Ennis called A Walk Through Hell and it was so disturbing, I actually returned it to the comic book store. I’ve never done that before.
But back to Batman. I grew up reading Batman. I had Batman Book and Record comics as a kid, and stacks of Detective Comics, World’s Finest, Batman, and lots more. He was the World’s Greatest Detective, especially since I was too young to read Sherlock Holmes. He was a rich man who fought for truth and justice for average folks and gave back. The stories were interesting, the characters were vibrant, and you walked away with moral lessons about right and wrong from reading those comics. That was pretty much most comics up until the early 2000s, when comic companies started ignoring the Comics Code Authority. Even then, that was fine. We didn’t need anyone to regulate comics, right? Make sure the content was approved and kid friendly with warnings for the rough stuff? Nah. The industry can regulate itself.
And it did for about a decade or so. But then the adult ratings slipped by the wayside. Marvel and DC used to have imprints like Max and Vertigo to warn that they were more adult-styled comics. Those are mostly gone, replaced by tiny indicators that say things like “T for Teen” and “E for Everyone”, much like current video games. But that blood-drenched Batman #62? T for Teen. And my son will be reading comics soon. All the stuff I read as a kid is “vintage” now and I can’t afford to buy it for him since it’s all collectible. And I can’t exactly buy him a copy of Batman when the Riddler and the Joker are literally torturing people in some issues. Think about that. I can’t buy my son Batman anymore.
I can’t buy him Superman, or Spider-Man, or X-Men, or any of the other great comics I had as a kid. Why? They’re simply not appropriate content for him. Those morals that I learned from all those superhero comics? He won’t get them because nothing like that exists anymore. It’s all been replaced by amoral violence and overt sexuality, even with major characters. On top of that, most of the story arcs are multiple issues. I can’t simply buy him an issue of Spider-Man (for example) anymore. It doesn’t even make sense unless you’ve read 20 other issues that fill in all the backstory. Comics are generally no longer written to just pick up and read, they’re pretty much written for me, a 41 year old man who grew up reading the stories and subscribes to ongoing story arcs.
It’s guys like me that may end up being the last generation of comic readers, even as virtually every comic I read in the last 20 years is being monetized into movies, TV shows, and cartoons that are selling like hotcakes to the mainstream media market. People love these stories as much as I did when I originally read them three decades ago, and all the guys that read them have made them into shows. But no one goes and reads comics anymore. Comic book stores are slowly dying out, with sales dropping and older and older clienteles. Why? Because there aren’t any comics for kids. That’s not entirely true, of course, but there’s nothing like there used to be. Comic Code Authority kept a lock on how violent and racy stuff got, and when we ditched it, we never thought it might be the end of comics, because they won’t be able to attract new readers. The last time I found a comic that reminded me of the clean, moral 70s and 80s comics, it was the ‘Spidey’ reboot of Spider-man in 2015. It only lasted 12 issues, and I doubt very many kids even saw it. I bought every issue.
I hope a few comic writers read this, because a lot of you are honestly destroying the industry at the same time you’re putting out some of the best comics ever written. And I’m just as guilty. Most of the stuff I buy is outrageously violent. Cullen Bunn’s Harrow County. Crowded by Christopher Seleba. Aliens: Resistance by Brian Wood. The Wicked and the Divine (already being made into a show…you’ll know it soon) by Kieron Gillen. John Layman’s Outer Darkness. They’re all utterly incredible books. They’re all pretty incredibly violent in various ways. And I don’t buy many super-hero books anymore because either they’re not well-written anymore or they’re just not fun. Most of the mainstream stuff from Marvel and DC is crossover garbage and PC randomness with the occasional brilliant story arc here and there. The stuff is probably only on the shelves as a write-off for Disney and Warner since they make more off licensing for toys, movies, and games than they ever made on the comics themselves. And so they let the source of those amazing intellectual properties wither away even as obscure characters become household names with new TV shows and movies. And they let it get more and more violent too.
I never thought it would be hard to buy my son comic books to help him learn to read. It is. I’m going to be buying up old comics that he’ll have trouble identifying with (assuming I can find them), just to provide a more wholesome experience. He sure as hell can’t read Batman now. And that’s a damned shame.
All images in this editorial are copyrighted by their respective owners, as are all characters and comics mentioned in this article.