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Which is better: Funny and wild or dark and grounded?

Like every other type of art form, Comics has gone through a period of evolution, and they are constantly taking new directions, whether it’s in terms of writing, art, or whatnot. And of course, the more styles and trends are developed, you see more people inclined to a specific style or specific way of doing things.

We can see this debate with the way stories are told in comics. Since the early 70s, the medium has turned to more mature and often darker storytelling, proving time and time again that comics can reach a wider audience. Comics tell all kinds of stories, arguably reaching its zenith in terms of dark storytelling with Alan Moore’s Watchmen in the mid-80s.

Some people favor that approach, while others prefer classic comic book stories that rely more on a lighthearted approach with humor and aspirational messages.

Today, we will discuss both sides of the argument and explain which approach is better suited in the medium.

Dark and grounded

If we go back to the 40s, 50s, and 60s, we can see that comic books were targeted at young kids and were a form of entertainment that adult readers mainly rejected. And despite the arrival of Marvel Comics in the 60s, with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others offering a more mature and ambitious way of telling stories in comics, the medium was still primarily focused on kids.

But it was in the early 70s; we started to see a shift in the way stories were told in comics. Writers like Denny O’Neil, Jim Starlin, Jim Shooter, Chris Claremont, and others were starting to make comics a lot more varied in the way the stories were told, making the medium a lot richer in terms of storytelling.

Thanks to the seeds that these writers sowed in the 70s, we began to see a lot more ambitious stories in the 80s in comics, which often allowed for darker, more grounded approaches. This is how writers like Frank Miller or Alan Moore managed to make an impact in the industry, becoming two of the most influential creators in the medium’s history.

Many writers began to show a darker side of what it meant to be a superhero and all the responsibility that came with it. Stories like Squadron Supreme, Watchmen, Mike Grell’s Green Arrow run, Frank Miller’s Daredevil run, and many other comic books showed that superheroes don’t always make the right decisions, and sometimes they make colossal mistakes, driven by human flaws.

It painted a very different look to the medium, and you can understand the appeal: it shows a whole new range in terms of storytelling, and it gave a lot of writers a lot more room to try new things that might have been rejected in other times.

It can also lead to a lot of vices, which is something that modern comic book storytelling tends to suffer a lot with. Many contemporary comic book writers struggle to write classic heroic tales. They don’t have the nuances and understanding of the medium that Claremont, Miller, or Moore had, which leads to having morally dubious “superheroes” that are unappealing and borderline villainous.

That has become a prevalent trend in the industry as a lot of writers fancy themselves as the new Alan Moore, and they end up as nothing but pale copies of the real thing while also making comics repetitive and even soulless to some degree.

Funny and wild

We have heard the criticism for lighthearted stories a million times, even if we are not huge superhero fans: that they are too innocent, that the real world doesn’t work like that, that they are childish, or that the people writing these characters in such an aspirational manner are simply living in a dream world. We have heard and read those notions a million times, often said in many different manners.

It is true that comic book stories were very lighthearted back in the day and were very childish at times. This is true, and there is no denying that. And it often showed a lack of ambition by a lot of writers at the time. But I also think that stigma has done the medium a disservice, and I think it has influenced a couple of generations of writers the wrong way.

Just because a story is funny and wild doesn’t mean there isn’t a meaningful message or a great lesson to learn. It doesn’t mean that the characters are no longer relatable. It is all about storytelling, and there are a lot of classic comic book stories that show the value of heroism, optimism, and hope in a positive manner.

Stories like Kingdom Come, All-Star Superman, or Green Lantern: Rebirth show the value of hope, optimism, and the capacity to overcome the dark nihilism that has taken over the medium throughout the years. These are classic superhero tales that have withstood the test of time and have become classics of the industry, and for a good reason, I might add!

Conclusion

There is value in both types of stories, and this is a debate that has become fruitless to some degree. There should be room in the comic book industry for both kinds of storytelling, and there is an inherent value to dark and grounded characters and for those that are uplifting and lighthearted.

You don’t have to pick one side as there is a lot of room in the comic book industry for all kinds of storytellers. Or at least there should be.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]