Alan Moore Has A Point

 Written Oct. 10, 2020

Maybe it’s because I’m old and bitter, but I find myself agreeing with a lot of what Alan Moore has to say this time.

Maybe “agree” is too strong a word. But I find myself understanding where he’s coming from when it comes to superhero comics. I guess I’m finally in a place where I can receive what he’s saying without getting defensive.

Because defensiveness is usually the response when it comes to Alan Moore’s criticisms of superhero comics. The fans that are keeping that industry afloat (myself included) looooooves the capes. But I’ve been thinking about the industry and how it continues to shrink, and how prices keep going up. I’ve been thinking about what it would take to get large numbers of kids into comics again. But also I’ve been thinking about if kids would actually want to read these comics. And the answer seems to be “no.”

Because it’s not like kids don’t read comics. The sales figures show that kids still read comics. They just don’t read these comics. And with good reason. Look, I’m not gonna pretend that I’m in touch with what preteens and teenagers like these days. I have a niece and a stepdaughter and I am befuddled by some of the things that they’re into. I’m so old that the word “befuddled” actually describes my feeling on these things.

But just look at the shows that come on these days. Look at the stuff that’s on Nickelodeon or Disney Channel or Cartoon Network. Listen to the music. Watch what they’re watching on YouTube or Tiktok or spreading around on social media. Then plop down Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men in front of them. What about that book would appeal to a 14 year old? It’s dense. It’s serious. It’s slow. Like his previous works, you’ll probably have to read it in its entirety to really get everything. It’s very well written and I’ve come to enjoy it, because when it comes to Hickman, I don’t really read for enjoyment. I find myself reading because I feel like I should. But I see why it appeals to people. It’s just that those people are all in their 30s and up.

You could probably find some kids that will read it, understand it, and enjoy it. But not enough to prop up the industry. And that’s the problem. It’s also Alan Moore’s point.

We all can see that the industry is aging upward. Much of it is written for adults. That’s unsustainable.

Now, Alan Moore isn’t saying this out of love for the industry or anything. But it is an accurate observation that this is a medium that was intended for kids, and it’s basically been hijacked by adults that don’t want to let go. And we don’t want to let go because these stories are good. There are a lot of talented people writing this stuff because they love and I love that they’re writing it. But they’re written for us, and the superhero comics game is focused on keeping us coming back, and it shouldn’t be. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be superhero comics that appeal to adults, I’m saying that shouldn’t be the center of the industry.

It’s 2020. I started reading comics when I was four or five years old, in 1983. And I’ve watched comics grow up as I grew up. It’s basically been trending that way as people born in the 1970s have gotten older, because that’s who drove the popularity of stuff like Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns or Alan Moore’s Watchmen. “Hey, man, this isn’t kid stuff. This stuff is takes it all seriously.” That was the feeling and it caused a change. And we’re still reeling from that change in 2020. Because now, it all takes it seriously. None of it is kid stuff.

And the truth of it all is that comics should have just let us go as we grew up. If we stay, we stay, but they shouldn’t have kept trying to keep us. It’s like everything else in the world. The demographic focus stays on the young, because they’re just starting, and that’s 20 or 30 years that those industries can get out of them, before moving on to the next. Literally every other entertainment medium does this. And we’ve seen before what happens when you don’t do this, because it’s exactly what the wrestling industry went through. It was kid stuff, then aged up with the teenagers at the time (me) and it threw things into confusion when they tried to go back to kid stuff. It didn’t invalidate the enjoyment you got from the Attitude Era, but they did the right thing going back. They couldn’t go the other way, because mass market adult themed wrestling doesn’t exist. We tried that. It was called ECW and they barely got outside of Philadelphia before they shut down.

The healthy alternative would have been what TV and radio generally does: We become a niche market. I don’t mean that we should subsist on reruns until we die because no one is creating for us anymore, but there are markets geared towards older people that are still into the things they like. We’re just not “pop culture” anymore, and “pop culture” shouldn’t be pretending that we are. I’ve got gray hair in my balls, man. Spider-Man shouldn’t still be trying to keep me around, but I don’t need the same stories about girlfriend problems and not being able to pay bills. And likewise, Spider-Man shouldn’t be a family man. That story can be told, but it shouldn’t be the main story. Talk to these kids, don’t talk to me.

Are superhero comics are too far down the road to make the shift, though? When WWE did it, some of their older fans rejected it, loudly, even in the face of the kids who loved it (your boy is guilty of this one). They seem to have found a middle ground in the last few years, and smoothed it out. But comics have been on this road for decades, and comics fans have shown themselves to be some touchy little bitches when they don’t get their way. Creating new black characters, or queer characters, or HydraCap, or generally anything that takes the focus away from the straight Anglo-Saxon male causes consternation among some fans. Comicsgate exists because they can’t take being the focus anymore. I can only imagine what would happen if the comics industry told them that they were going to focus on the kids from here on out.

But they should do it, anyway, because who’s gonna be left to read these superhero books when we’re in our seventies?