Civil War & What's Wrong With Comics These Days

I recently read the Black Panther: Civil War trade paperback collection. I found it to be an engaging read. I'd recommend it to others who like political thrillers, espionage, and/or superheroes. I also read the Checkmate: A King's Game trade at about the same time. My overall enjoyment and evaluation is the same.

Despite the excellence of these two collections, they seem to perfectly illustrate a trend I don't especially like in comics: the post-90s, post-9/11, grimmer, grittier superhero comics. It probably started in the 80s with grim, deconstructionist superhero tales like Watchmen, Bat Man Year One, Bat Man The Dark Knight Returns, Miracle Man, and, depending on your definition of the superhero genre, V For Vendetta.

It went further in the 90s, with companies finding ways to make superheroes grimmer and grittier by either screwing over their marquee characters (Knightfall, The Death of Superman, Emerald Twilight, Age of Apocalypse), increasing the prominence of or introducing grim, psychotic vigilantes (Lobo, Azrael, the three regular Punisher books plus his guest appearance every month in someone else's title, Ghost Rider and Wolverine's similar omnipresence in the 90s), and turning villains into not quite heroes (Venom, The Thunderbolts).

Now after experiencing a bit of a slow down, the grim superheroes trend has kicked back into high gear again. I can't say it definitely started with Avengers Disassembled, but that seems to be a pretty key point. Since then, Marvel's House of M and Civil War and, on the DC side of the street, Identity Crisis and Infinitie Crisis have kicked it up another notch.

It's not that these are bad comics. They're not. They're intelligent and well written. The trouble is, these comics are too reminscent of the troubles of the real world.

Do I really need to read about a superhero civil war, spured on by a superhuman registration act precipitated by a disastrous explosion that resulted in numerous civilian deaths, when we've got two real wars and are heading for a third, while the nation is deeply politically divided, and the Patriot Act erodes our civil liberties, all precipitated by the real 9/11? No. I want to see the JLA and JSA team up agaisnt the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3. I want the bad guys caught. I want the world to be a bit more idyllic than our own.

I'm also tired of morally ambiguous superheroes. I like superheroes who do what's right. The Powers make them super. Morals makes them heroic.