Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5977013-20130905233230/@comment-61022-20140809195948

I'd also like to point out that comics have always gone from light to dark to light again. I don't know what sort of rose colored glasses you people are looking from but comics have always gone through cycles. The early 40s were DARK. Very dark. Go and read the first few years of Marvel Mystery Comics. You have characters like the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch executing criminals and laughing about it. Then America got involved in World War II and things got darker still. The comics didn't start lightening up until after 1945. Things got a lighter because the war was over American won and everyone wanted to read happier stories.

Then the 1950s rolled around and it was the Cold War. Everyone lived in paranoia of the Soviets and while super-hero books were a dud, the fear of communism was reflected heavily in science fiction and horror anthologies. Things didn't start to get light hearted again until the industry was forced to adhere to the Comic Authority Code, which basically neutered any innovation for 15-20 years. When super-heroes were reintroduced in the late 50s and early 60s --- particularly the Marvel heroes -- the spectre of the Cold War was still heavy. If you go back and re-read those stories they were rife with paranoia and fear of communism, atomic warfare, and the like. It might not seem like a big deal now, but back in the the 50s and 60s that was a real fear.

The Code watered down comics by creating a rigid definition of what a super-hero could or couldn't do in a comic book. It made it stagnant, but there were still very dark thinks that eeked into comic books during the time, it was subtle at first but got more prevalent as the CAC laxed its grip in the 1970s. There was the civil rights movement, Vietnam (both the conflict and protests against it), the hippie movement, then the resurgence in horror in the 1970s. There was a lot of focus on witchcraft and satanism in comics from the 70s because that's what scared people back then on top of the big bad communists. They did a story where Richard Nixon was part of the Secret Empire terrorist organization and shot himself in the head right in front of Captain America -- making him quit being Captain America for a while! Lets also talk about the death of George and Gwen Stacy while we're at it, and how about the Hulk's woman Jarella.

OH right, those good old days where everything was so light hearted!

And lets talk about the 1980s! When the code was at its most lax, Frank Miller doing Daredevil, Chris Claremont's Wolverine and the X-Men, Cloak and Dagger, the Punisher... These were not happy go lucky times either.

The 90s didn't so much light hearted fun romps either. On top of being the most saturated and creatively dead decade in comics, you had multiple characters dying, the Legacy Virus (Which was basically AIDS for mutants, How cheerful!) characters who were tortured, government conspiracies, more anti-heroes who would shoot first and ask questions later than you could shake a stick at, not to mention the CAC was even more slack than ever which meant more graphic violence and more death in comics.

How many times has Spider-Man gotten everything only to have it all taken away tragically only to find new resolve and start all over again? If you've read the entirety of Spider-Man's publication history it happens at LEAST five or six times. Three times in the last decade and a half (Strazinski's run up to Civil War Spider-Man worked his way up to having everything and then lost it when he went anti-registration and then made a deal with Mephisto. Then he had to build his way back up from Brand New Day all the way up until he started working at Horizon Labs. Then Dr. Octopus took over his life for a year and now has to start all over again)

How many times has Asgard gone through Ragnarok where everyone died only to be reborn and Asgard rebuild? At least three times in the comics.

How many times has Steve Rogers been disenfranchised with the government and quit being Captain America? Three times (when he became Nomad, when he became the Captain, and during Civil War) He's also been incapacitated or replaced by other people five times now.

So I have to ask you all again, where do you not see this constant cycle of light and dark? It's ALWAYS been there. Characters fall off the beaten path, something awful happens, sometimes they go bad, sometimes they turn a little dark, sometimes they even die. However there is always a cycle and the character always goes back to the status quo. It basic story telling and they have been doing it since human beings have been writing stories. Look at Roman and Grecian mythology.

To sit there and complain about heroes changing sides, going evil, going crazy, doing things that are out of character is to ignore the entire history of the published medium. Which is quite ignorant, because either you've never really bothered to read anything outside of your wheelhouse, or you've read it and just don't understand the cultural and historical context of the stories. In which case, you have a myopic view of the medium. Perhaps instead of complaining about changes you should open your eyes and realize that change has been a CONSTANT thing in comics. It's always been there. In fact change has always been in all forms of literature. Perhaps instead of wasting time and energy complaining about it, you should embrace change and enjoy a story for what it is, instead of getting self-obsessed over insignificant and irrelevant details.

If you want to read something that stays the same and never upsets the status quo, perhaps you shouldn't have gone beyond reading Dr. Seuss.

But if anything focusing all this negative energy complaining and resisting change you're just stunting yourself, stunting your growth, and you're going to be very ill equipped to deal with change in your real life. But hey if you can't process or elevate yourself beyond that at least take comfort in the fact that no matter what they do, they're going to hit the reset button eventually and the character will go back to the status quo. If you don't like it that much perhaps you should just stop reading until they do.