By Cameron Kerkau, Staff Reporter.
In my experience, many adults require certain qualifiers in order for them to enjoy media entertainment. For example, there is a certain kind of comic book fan that demands material that is darker and grittier, and is therefore, somehow, more “realistic.” They’re quick to scowl at the campiness of the 1960s Batman show while they shove Alan Moore’s “The Killing Joke” in the faces of anyone that dare think the character is meant for children. It’s as if they need to prove to everyone around them (and themselves) that a man in bat pajamas is something to be taken seriously, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. You can say what you will about Adam West’s Batman, but at least he knew what he was.
Ironically, Moore made headlines back in 2014 as an angry old man when he denounced the adult superhero fan saying, “To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children’s characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence.”
While Moore is clearly an old man (and very clearly angry), I wouldn’t say that he is entirely incorrect. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that comic books and their related media are largely a form of escapism. Though, to me, demonizing escapism is a waste of time. After all, no form of entertainment could distract the public so dramatically that it truly neglects modern existence. I would argue that Moore’s sentiments are almost backward. It seems to me, that much more often than allowing escapism, superhero stories as a whole have been overwhelmingly drowned in the “complexities of modern existence.”
Just because the world is a shitty place sometimes doesn’t mean that we need to be sad all of the time and make art that makes us sadder. Superhero comics have always held commentary on society without being drenched in blood, realism or global politics. Take, for instance, the X-Men, who, since their creation, have dealt with prejudice in stories that were as emotionally charged as they were fantastical. Minorities of any age could relate to the struggles of the X-Men while enjoying their trips through space or to the living island Krakoa.
Realism is the strangest thing to ask of a comic book. Grant Morrison says it best in his book “Supergods” when he writes “Adults…struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it’s not real.”
Details like these only burden comic books and their related media. The more time that is spent explaining the minutiae of Superman’s powers, the less time is spent on examining what a flying man with a paragonal moral compass can say about ourselves and the world around us. The only realism that should be necessary in a comic book is emotional realism. Give us characters that we can relate to and root for while they do impossible things and go on unreal adventures. Screw the details. Ultra violence and long-winded scientific explanations aren’t realistic anyway and a Spider-Man comic that’s too dark for your kid brother to read is pointless.
