This is my first post, and after Colleen and Braxy's quite excellent attempts, I am feeling intensely nervous. You can tell, can't you?! The topic I have chosen to discuss (or rather, yell at you all about) is the first in a series I call Why Everything Is Bullshit (I have no plans to continue this series. I just liked the idea), and will be about the surge of what I call Buzzword Comics - namely, any comics, TV shows or films that include the words 'Dark', 'Gritty', 'Realistic' or any variations of those Big Three in their premise.
The main subject is Batman. The general opinion is that Batman is a lot 'darker' (at this point you may like to begin the Buzzword Drinking Game, in which you must drink a Smashy Spritzer every time any of the Big Three are mentioned in this article) than other heroes in the world of superhero comics. I mean, he wears black, all his villains have plausible motivations and gimmicks, and he basically lives in a city that's so dark it's like a Tim Burton wet dream, where the sun almost never shines and the streets are composed entirely of shadowy alleyways. So, he's pretty 'dark' and 'realistic' and 'gritty', right?
Well, ha, no. At its prime (referred to as the Silver Age of comic books), the DC universe was as campy, outlandish and fucking spectacular as Marvel is (or was, but we'll get to that). I mean, this was a time when KITE MAN was a tougher than the Joker. 
Batman was awesome back then. Who needs a growly Christian Bale voice or a perpetually angry old Frank Miller jerk when you've got a Batman that bitch slaps his own apprentice when he talks back and dresses like a FUCKING mirror just to outsmart an enemy. Goddamn he was cool. Who needs a deadpan, eye-stabbing Heath Ledger or a 'super-sane' transvestite Grant Morrisson.... thing when you have a gleeful Joker who threatens to turn all of Gotham's water to jelly. Jelly. Just think how many problems that would cause. More than raping some henchman's wife to spite him (all these things I mention have happened, btw). The Silver Age was like, WOAH.
Frank Miller (a writer I'm sure you've all heard of, who, like M Night Shymalan and Tim Burton since, has got worse with each piece of work) once wrote a book called The Dark Knight Returns. People loved its gritty, dark and pissed-off take on what could be the future of the Batman world. It was shocking and wonderful because it demonstrated a world in which Batman had retired, and quite simply, everything had gone tits-up. Weird monster gangs ruled the streets, all the supervillains and heroes have retired or been killed, and the worlds' finest (a certain Mr Kent) was now a mere pawn of the US Government. Times were hard. That GN worked so well because when The Dark Knight actually did return, you felt it. Miller took time to introduce the future Gotham and shock us with it - the scenes of rape and violence (comitted mostly by teenage gangs) aren't as gratuitous as they seem. They just add to the feeling of 'FUCK YEAH!' when Batman comes to fix his city.
But a lot of writers didn't see this when they read it. All they saw was 'OOH RAPE! KIDS AS CRIMNALS, BELOVED SUPERHEROES DECONSTRUCTED, BELOVED SUPERVILLAINS KILLING THEMSELVES - THIS IS MY KINDA SHIT!' For the next few years, almost all comic books followed this tradition (Batman: A Serious House on Serious Earth is perhaps the best example of this), and pretty soon people began to try so hard to be like Alan Moore and Frank Miller that comics became campy once again. Rob Liefeld and many of Miller's more recent works are a good example. However, recent years have shown that the time of dark, gritty, realistic comics are far from over.
The much-praised Christopher Nolan Batmovies are a perfect example of people not quite understanding it.
Now please, don't get me wrong - one of the great things about comics is that anyone can interpret them however they want, but it's the writers and artists that take this idea and completely screw up by making comics that aren't fun, orginal or even interesting for the readers.
Anyway, the 'Nolanverse', as fans have dubbed it. Many, many people view it as the greatest ever incarnation of Batman and his world, but that is simply not true. The Nolan films are less 'brillaint Batman films' than they are 'brilliant films that include Batman'. The Dark Knight is not a great Batman story, it is a great story featuring Batman. Heath Ledger's performance is not a fantastic portrayal of the Joker, it is just fantastic. But no, pretentious assholes who have never read a single Batman comic ignorantly label themselves as Batman fans simply because they like to dress up as the Joker on Halloween or write 'Nolanised' fan fiction, then post their crappy DeviantArt illustrations online. They don't understand and love these characters the same way Paul Dini and the Nolan brothers (to an EXTENT) do. They call the classic Penguin character 'lame' and 'not special', and prefer the current 'realistic' interpretation of him simply being an ugly and cowardly club owner who provides Batman with information, rather than the colourful, rich jerkass who had the class of Joker, the gadgets of Batman and the complete obnoxiousness of the Riddler. It's insulting, and an example of writers too lazy to stay true to the character. It's like if they made a Star Trek movie in which Spock was a young, blonde action hero with no Vulcan ears, no fringe and no crazy eyebrows because the original depiction was 'too boring' or 'too unrealistic'. Fuck that, I want my Penguin back.
The Brian Azzarello GN Joker was released fairly recently, to rave reviews. It has been called the best depiction of the Joker since Killing Joke, and when I heard Lee Bermejo was pencilling I was ecstatic (check his stuff out, it's amazing). Then I saw the first image, of an extremely Ledger-like (the book was finished before TDK was released, but their similarities back up my point that the 'realism' dominating modern comics is unoriginal and is producing the same results every time) Joker striding out of Arkham Asylum and giving it the finger with the look of a teenager sent to his room, I knew this was going to suck ultimate.
The Joker in this comic book is NOTHING. He's a bullying gangster who speaks in slang, kills for no reason, rapes women, robs banks and pops pills. You may as well have called him Evil McDoesNoGood and it would have made him only slightly more cliche. The entire book is full of terrible interpretations of Batcharacters such as Two-Face, Riddler, Penguin, Killer Croc and the beloved Harley Quinn. Two-Face is a sort of expressionless, brooding, upper-class criminal who sits in a chair half the time. Riddler is a hustler with tattoos and a pimped-out car. Penguin is the bumbling coward I have already mentioned. Killer Croc is a token black guy with bumpy skin. Harley Quinn is a mute stripper. What the fuck is this? Reading this GN, I get the impression that Brian wrote an incredibly generic gangster story and thought 'Well, this sucks. How can I make money out of this....' He stared around his office and noticed a kid playing outside the window with some Batman figurines. 'THAT'S IT!' he cried. 'I'll tweak the characters a little, rename the city to Gotham and mass produce this shit!' He then laughed evilly and preceded to beat up the kid and rape a few kittens.
Anyway, the entire graphic novel is just terrible. The Joker is a swaggering bully who commits petty crimes and Batman is a kind of presence watching him the whole time (now this idea I did like, but it was not used particularly well), who lets him murder a bunch of people because they're criminals.... or something? Because apparently the Gotham Police Force is completely nonexistent in the world Azzarello has created.
The problem with a realistic Batman world is that it isn't quite possible. Saying all of Batman's villains are realistic and 'could happen' is like saying that it's a good idea to burn Qur'ans.
Oh.
Anyway, CONTROVERSY aside, there are tons of Batvillains who are completely comic-booky and would be BORING if you made them realistic. Poison Ivy. Clayface. Bane. Killer Croc. Loads of the greats. If you create a Batman world in which some of Batman's best characters won't work, you have created a pretty shitty Batman world.
If you want to do something new with Batman, create a comic that is the OPPOSITE of Joker. Less rapes, more pie-throwing. Less club-owning mobster 'Abner', more umbrella-gun wielding, top hat wearing, cummerbund sporting supervillain.
For all his faults, Grant Morrisson recently came up with a phrase that perfectly describes comic books: 'Popcrime'. Murder, burglary and all-out crime comitted not because someone's daddy once cut a smile in his face, but because it's part of the game. Criminals do it for fun, and most of them (particularly the Joker) are gleefully aware that they are ridiculous. Arguably, the 1960s Batman show is the most 'realistic' Batman of all time. Every character is completely insane. The Bruce Wayne of the Nolan films is an extremely realistic character, which is why it's so dumb that he is secretly Batman. If Batman existed, he would most definitely be as batshit insane (pun most definitely intended) as the Adam West version is. ARGHHHHHHHHH EVERYTHING IS BULLSHIT
It is pretty late, and if any of you stopped reading half an hour ago, I don't blame you. All of the above is most likely incorrect, nonsensical crap, so I apologise. This was mostly a test article, as I felt like I should take advantage of my position as contributor before all of you have written a bunch of masterpieces and I'm still trying to find a decent Mad Men torrent.
Also, does anyone know how to put more than one picture in these things? The Kite Man one worked fine, but none of the others are appearing.
Thanks for reading and so on! Hope it was worth it.
KTHNXBAI
