[paw broon]

I'm 2 days late but still worth mentioning anyway.  March 20th, 1986, The Dark Knight Returns was published.  A landmark event which arguably changed comics.  Discuss.
I remember seeing this book for the first time and the effect it had on me. 
Now, I think that change was for the worse.  Anyway, I would rate Batman Year One as the better of the 2 books.  Discuss. 
So much became gritty, violent and humourless.
Then again Watchmen followed.  Discuss.
Just though I'd mention it.

[The Australian Panther]

Back to you on this. But the biggest effect Millers work on these had, was on the films. And that's got worse and worse as time goes on. There are now two Batman films I won't go to any trouble to see. The Clooney film -which I haven't seen, and the most recent one.

[paw broon]

I'm not ideally qualified to comment on the films as I've only seen the Michael Keaton one all the way through, and bits of some of the others.  Many of the superhero movies don't do it for me.  Given the choice of an Avengers film or an old movie serial, I'd take the first Spider serial or Captain Marvel.
As for comics and the effect The Dark Knight had on them, as it is so important in the continuing development of the medium, I wondered if others would like to chuck in their tuppence worth.
I'd much rather read The Zebra Batman, silly and old fashioned as it is than a recent Batman comic. Despite my original WOW!!!! I don't get any great buzz from reading The Dark Knight now. It seems a bit nasty and violent now.
Over to the rest of you.

[SuperScrounge]

I think it's pretty well recognized that The Dark Knight & Watchmen had an effect on writers that led directly into the Dark Age of comics in the '90s.

I can't recall any specific articles that dealt with it, but I have encountered it in various articles talking about comics & interviews with Moore.

Of course thinking about the '90s and TDK & Watchmen brings to mind a quote from Miami Vice, "That Speed Metal is nothing more than Hendrix played twice as fast and half as well."  '90s comics fans might disagree.

[The Australian Panther]

The worst thing about 90's superheroes comics for me was the preponderance of young guys still learning to draw who drew 'Heroes' with ridiculous, over-muscled and proportioned anatomy. And some made fortunes our of such bad art. I'm looking at you, IMAGE. This tendency was well satirized by Don Simpson, with his character 'Megaton Man'.
https://donsimpsoncartoonist.blogspot.com/

The 90's to me were a definite low-point for comic books. This was also the decade of greed before content. I speak of metal-embossed covers, special editions and this was the time that 'multiple covers' became a fashion.
Many new people started buying, nay - stockpiling - comics in the hope of making a fortune - and went broke.
Anything but good stories.
Re Miller and Batman, to me the dark age started earlier with Miller's Daredevil - with Bullseye and his murder of Electra and the sadism implicit in the relationship between Daredevil and Kingpin.
As creative work, tho, it was far ahead of most of what else was on the stands. I was one who stood in line on comic book release day to get those.
Miller himself lost me with his SPIRIT movie. With his films and SIN CITY he has gone more and more over the top. 
Or does the Dark Age begin with the violent murder of the Comedian and the character of Rorschach?
What happens when you have people of outstanding talent like Moore and Miller?
one- Their egos can get out of hand
two - People of much lesser talent attempt to imitate them and then you get really bad stuff.
Oh well!     
           

[crashryan]

I realize that Alan Moore is practically worshiped as the writer who ushered comics into adulthood. However I found his stories increasingly pessimistic and ugly. The "adulthood" historians praise seemed to me mostly to be a fixation on the violent, the morbid, and the perverse. As the Panther suggests, Moore's followers pushed  "dark and gritty" to even greater extremes. At the time I swore I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the entire contingent of British writers had committed group suicide because they couldn't stand living in this world any longer.

Much the same for Miller, though his work also displayed a fascistic streak which grew more obvious as he went from Daredevil to Batman to Sin City.

Regarding 90s collector-centered comics. Have I already told the story of my erstwhile roommate who bought one of Marvel's all-reprint Giant Size editions? Ka-Zar by Trimpe on the cover, all junk reprints inside. But my roomie noticed that the inker had sneaked a F--K (spelt in full) into the background. He was sure it would become a hot collectible once everyone found out. He bought a pile of them to resell. Unfortunately for him nobody gave a F--K about the cover. Years later he was still stuck with a pile of Giant-Size reprint mags that he couldn't give away. Fortunately (for him) 20 copies of the thing only set him back five bucks. He was gainfully employed and didn't lose anything but a bit of pride.

[The Australian Panther]

the entire contingent of British writers

That reminds me, Crash, of 2000AD and Judge Dread - the cradle of British comic Nihilism, where many of these guys got their early training.
Technically, much of the work was excellent, but the mindset never spoke to me.   

[paw broon]

"The cradle of British comic Nihilism"  Excellent summation.
"Greed before content" Another bang on phrase. I was turning out every morning to aka Books and Comics back then, wondering what nonsense was going to be in the delivery. My memory fails me at times but the foil Bloodshot?cover was one of the crap comics, and #10 of Bloodshot?, the black embossed cover. I try to forget them. 
Punters started coming to the shop to buy multiples of those and other abominations. 
As the customer is always right, even when he's wrong, we sold them.
The Dark Knight started tv, radio and papers talking about comics, mainly about what they were worth, rather than the content.  Not sure how many reporters had actually read them.
Thoughts on Killing Joke?

[SuperScrounge]

I realize that Alan Moore is practically worshiped as the writer who ushered comics into adulthood.

I ain't one of those. LOL!

At the time I wondered why DC had hired all these British writers to come over and ruin their comics, and Moore was the worst of the lot. A few years ago I kind of realized that I was holding Moore to a different standard than other writers and that some of the stuff may have been out of his control (like the Moore worship). So I try to give him more of a benefit of the doubt when I read his stuff these days.

That being said there does seem to be a certain mindset in common between the British writers and what they brought to comics and college age comedians whose jokes and sketches revolve around sex. Doing things because they can get away with it rather than considering if it's really a good idea and needed.

[The Australian Panther]

I believe I read an interview with Moore not too long ago  where he said he regrets Killing Joke, having seen the consequences of that story in terms of what other writers consequently think they can get away with.
I can't not admire Watchmen as a creative work, but the premise just doesn't work. Nothing stops the impulse to war in humanity, as we are witnessing again.
For mine, Moore's best work is very good, and his worst is very 'worst'
I am a huge fan of TOP10 and the work he did for America's Best Comics'.
But there is work by Moore that I have never read and will never read.
Moore is the quintessential 'Postmodern' creator. Postmodern creators don't do anything new, they take older tropes and dissect and reconstruct them, ostensibly to see what makes them tick and see them in a new light.
He clearly has a love/hate relationship with comics.
Cheers!               

[K1ngcat]

I was very fond of TDKR when it was first issued and thought it an interesting concept, with the old Batman on horseback, the female Robin, and the sublimated sexuality of his relationship with the Joker, though it might have been better without all the teenage gangs. The showdown with Superman was surprising, and evidently made an impression on Zack Snyder.

Then Miller had to go and make that godawful Spirit movie and my entire view of him changed for the worse. I've just about forgiven Samuel L Jackson but Miller's ridiculous Sin City is unforgivable.

So there's a town full of prostitutes that enjoy being on the game so much that they enforce their right to being hookers by carrying big f***-off guns everywhere and the only villain in the story is a paedophile? Sure, Frank, now take your meds and go lie down. That stupid thing with the Spartans is little better.

Now I'm also fond of a lot of Alan Moore's work, V for Vendetta, the Killing Joke, the Marvelman rework (I wish he'd been allowed to finish it before Marvel butted in), Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen etc. But I find his reactions to his own work now somewhat confusing, and I fear, like Putin, he's beginning to believe his own publicity, so he just comes across like a crazed old hippy!

I haven't read a "modern" comic since Brian Michael Bendiss's Dark Avengers, which I quite enjoyed, though I gather there's now a Justice League Dark so I can see where that trend's going. Too many modern artists seem to rely on computers, no-one understands the value of brushwork,  shade, depth of line, cross hatching, and all the things that used to make artwork so individual.

Thoughts on Killing Joke? Wouldn't have worked without Brian Bolland. That's my rant over for now
Be seeing you

[The Australian Panther]

Justice League Dark - should really be called Justice League Magic, since it is a league of all the Major DC 'Magic' Heroes, Zatanna, Dr Fate, Detective Chimp, Deadman, John Constantine and the Demon being the major players and others like Swamp thing, Wonder Woman and Madame Xanadu guesting from time to time. Not a bad book mostly.

Now an animated movie.
Justice League Dark
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2494376/
[Jerry O'Connel as Superman?!]
[Zatanna - 'Your life is a patchwork of blackness with no time for joy.How do you cope with it?'
Batman - ' I have a Butler.' ]   
     

[Captain Audio]

I was very fond of TDKR when it was first issued and thought it an interesting concept, with the old Batman on horseback, the female Robin, and the sublimated sexuality of his relationship with the Joker, though it might have been better without all the teenage gangs. The showdown with Superman was surprising, and evidently made an impression on Zack Snyder.

Then Miller had to go and make that godawful Spirit movie and my entire view of him changed for the worse. I've just about forgiven Samuel L Jackson but Miller's ridiculous Sin City is unforgivable.

So there's a town full of prostitutes that enjoy being on the game so much that they enforce their right to being hookers by carrying big f***-off guns everywhere and the only villain in the story is a paedophile? Sure, Frank, now take your meds and go lie down. That stupid thing with the Spartans is little better.

Now I'm also fond of a lot of Alan Moore's work, V for Vendetta, the Killing Joke, the Marvelman rework (I wish he'd been allowed to finish it before Marvel butted in), Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen etc. But I find his reactions to his own work now somewhat confusing, and I fear, like Putin, he's beginning to believe his own publicity, so he just comes across like a crazed old hippy!

I haven't read a "modern" comic since Brian Michael Bendiss's Dark Avengers, which I quite enjoyed, though I gather there's now a Justice League Dark so I can see where that trend's going. Too many modern artists seem to rely on computers, no-one understands the value of brushwork,  shade, depth of line, cross hatching, and all the things that used to make artwork so individual.

Thoughts on Killing Joke? Wouldn't have worked without Brian Bolland. That's my rant over for now
Be seeing you

Actually there is a town not far from here that in the 50's through the 70's was much like Sin City. Prostitution and drug dealing was the major industry. A number of FBI agents assigned there simply disappeared there and in the early 80's a cave containing 60 complete skeletons and enough scattered bones to make up perhaps 200 more missing persons was found.
The local good ol boys syndicate purged the entire state of Mafia, killing as many as two thousand Mafia connected gangters and all their employees in bars and massage parlors. At about the same time 35 of 95 county sheriffs were arrested by the FBI for crimes ranging from running under age male prostitution rings to major drug trafficking. Almost all these sheriffs got off scot free when witnesses disappeared or changed their testimony. A highly respected judge was found to be a morphine addict who threw out major drug dealing cases in exchange for narcotics to feed his habit.
Ambush murders were commonplace as were innocent men being convicted of murder due to blatant perjury on the part of police and jurors being openly threatened by judges.
Pardons were bought and sold on a regular basis.
The local police chief resigned after being beaten with a chain saw blade in his own office and his home riddled with machinegun fire while his family were sitting at the diner table. His replacement lasted awhile longer, till run down in a restuarant parking lot in front of several officers who made no attempt to arrest the driver. Only a passing highway patrolman who saw the whole thing and ran down and arrested the driver brought the facts to light. The driver was a police informant and got off with a slap on the wrist.
Drug shipments from South America by aircraft were an everyday thing.

[K1ngcat]

Actually there is a town not far from here that in the 50's through the 70's was much like Sin City. Prostitution and drug dealing was the major industry. A number of FBI agents assigned there simply disappeared there and in the early 80's a cave containing 60 complete skeletons and enough scattered bones to make up perhaps 200 more missing persons was found.
The local good ol boys syndicate purged the entire state of Mafia, killing as many as two thousand Mafia connected gangters and all their employees in bars and massage parlors. At about the same time 35 of 95 county sheriffs were arrested by the FBI for crimes ranging from running under age male prostitution rings to major drug trafficking. Almost all these sheriffs got off scot free when witnesses disappeared or changed their testimony. A highly respected judge was found to be a morphine addict who threw out major drug dealing cases in exchange for narcotics to feed his habit.
Ambush murders were commonplace as were innocent men being convicted of murder due to blatant perjury on the part of police and jurors being openly threatened by judges.
Pardons were bought and sold on a regular basis.
The local police chief resigned after being beaten with a chain saw blade in his own office and his home riddled with machinegun fire while his family were sitting at the diner table. His replacement lasted awhile longer, till run down in a restuarant parking lot in front of several officers who made no attempt to arrest the driver. Only a passing highway patrolman who saw the whole thing and ran down and arrested the driver brought the facts to light. The driver was a police informant and got off with a slap on the wrist.
Drug shipments from South America by aircraft were an everyday thing.

Aah! American corruption. I understand that.  I guess if Frank Miller had written it,  fans would have complained it was "unrealistic." Where were the hookers with assault rifles? 

[K1ngcat]

[Zatanna - 'Your life is a patchwork of blackness with no time for joy.How do you cope with it?'
Batman - ' I have a Butler.' ]   

[Rintintin]

I'm 2 days late but still worth mentioning anyway.  March 20th, 1986, The Dark Knight Returns was published.  A landmark event which arguably changed comics.  Discuss.
I remember seeing this book for the first time and the effect it had on me. 
Now, I think that change was for the worse.  Anyway, I would rate Batman Year One as the better of the 2 books.  Discuss. 
So much became gritty, violent and humourless.
Then again Watchmen followed.  Discuss.
Just though I'd mention it.

I thought it was laughable and for the worst along with Watchmen. Those comics were much more juvenile to me. I am still incredulous seeing adult fans reading such drivel & claiming comics are finally "realistic".  I think it's a higher level of denial. I did enjoy Sin City but I see it as a big dumb cartoon.

[Rintintin]

Aah! American corruption. I understand that.  I guess if Frank Miller had written it,  fans would have complained it was "unrealistic." Where were the hookers with assault rifles? 

Miller's fandom has always been very confusing to me. The way they talked about him in the adult sci fi fan magazines in the 80s it was if they didn't read his stuff as a cartoon joke. I would read glowing articles claiming this would finally bring respect to comics.

[K1ngcat]

Miller's fandom has always been very confusing to me. The way they talked about him in the adult sci fi fan magazines in the 80s it was if they didn't read his stuff as a cartoon joke. I would read glowing articles claiming this would finally bring respect to comics.

What's even more confusing to me is that god allowed him to live after he made that stinky Spirit movie. Eisner must still be turning in his grave. 

[Rintintin]

Miller's fandom has always been very confusing to me. The way they talked about him in the adult sci fi fan magazines in the 80s it was if they didn't read his stuff as a cartoon joke. I would read glowing articles claiming this would finally bring respect to comics.

What's even more confusing to me is that god allowed him to live after he made that stinky Spirit movie. Eisner must still be turning in his grave. 

I'm sure it must've looked really stylish though!

[K1ngcat]

I'm sure it must've looked really stylish though!