Well there's the rub.Was Moores change negative or positive. You say neative. I saw positive.

Hear hear.

Hmmm.  I can see your point, Ian, and I certainly felt that way for a while (hence my early love of Liefeld).  Maybe it's just because I'm an aspiring artist, but "I wish I could draw like that" overtook "I could do that" a while ago.  As for CG colors and such, check out the Coloring JB thread and play around with Photoshop or GIMP for a while.  I'm actually amazed at how (relatively) easy some of that stuff is (and I suck at it).

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Oh sure Matt - but I meant from the point of view of a kid, really - the 'intended' audience has yet another barrier to the love affair we all enjoy.  Or not.  I dunno.

Coming into the discussion late here I know.

Having read all of Moore's MiracleMan, which I had to track down after picking up a cheap copy of Gaiman's The Golden Age and not understanding it at all, I liked it.  Books 1 and 2 where it's more a "Super hero in the real world" than "Super Hero creates new world" were a great read.

I have never read the originals, and probably will never get the chance., so I can't say whether the Moore version ruins them.

On the other hand, with Swamp Thing, which seems to have been dragged into this conversation, it was my second real experience with American comics, the first being Preacher.  I found I enjoyed what I read, which was the first 3 books.  A couple of years later I was given a couple of the original comics and nothing about them really stuck in my mind.

What I have found with Moore's stories s that they tend to be great reads when you get them as a whole set.  I think it is this aspect of his writing that leads him to changing characters.  It's my opinion that having ST as an elemental lends itself to much more epic storytelling than Alec Holland looking for a cure, which as was pointed out elsewhere, is not exactly an original idea.  The same goes with MM.

Yes, he could have created new characters, but in both cases, from what I have read, he was given the characters and then when he put forward his proposals for plot, was given the go ahead by the editorial staff.  And would you have picked up a new comic featuring a new character by a writer you'd never heard of called Elemental?  New characters are a risky proposition for companies, changing old characters that are either out of print or underselling is less risky, and I feel this is a major factor in the retrofitting of these characters.

this is part of why i love Marvelman/Miracleman,outstanding art by Gary Leach and Alan Davis.I frequently buy comics just for the art,for example when JB is the "art robot"

Well there's the rub.Was Moores change negative or positive. You say neative. I saw positive

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If I maybe honest, he took a super-hero story and made it much darker and less pleasent to read. I can't see how the change is a positive one.

Ian, that Trigan Empire artwork was by Don Lawrence. Interestingly - to me, anyway - his work is an influence on several 3D comics artists I know, one of them me.

3D has made it easier for us to imitate what Don did the hard way: what seemed impossible to you then is a bit less so now.

IMP.

There is no such thing as a consumptive retcon or revamp. Creators are fully capable of restoring the past within a panel. The changes are often completely ignored and the original version hits the ground running as if nothing ever happend.

I apologize for speaking of something which I have not (fully) read but John seems to have restored the Doom Patrol to its original state just like that. So writers can do their worst and with a new #1 issue all can be restored.

Morrison's Doom Patrol, no matter what many may think, was faithful to the core concept of the group at the same time he used the everything is a lie approach. The lie part was that the Chief had evil designs and intentionally threw tragedy in the path of future DP members in order to form the group. On the other hand he kept the premise that the DP were social misfits. They delt with the weird threats that groups like the JLA weren't able to take on. Finally he put them on a collision course with catastrophe (DOOM!!!) which led to his run ending up very badly for the group. This is all part of the core concept.

Morrison's DP stories were some of the funniest, most original, and suspenseful (especially at the end) that I ever read. And for all the wierdness the characters were done no harm because...BAM just like that they are back to their original state thanks to John. But what happens to the characters that Morrison introduced that I just loved? Gone....that is until someone else dreges them up.

As long as we're talking core concepts and the darkening of characters I think the original template for this sort of thing is provided by John himself. I don't think Stan and Jack envisioned Jean Grey as struggling with dark power hungry forces which eventually overpower her causing her to go on a cosmic rampage of death and destruction leading to her eventual death. (Do I need to tell you I'm referring to the Phoenix saga?) Was it a good story? Sure was. Was it better than the not too subtle chauvanism that Stan and Jack handled female characters with in the 60's. Yep. Were we able to eventually turn things around and get Jean Grey back right as rain? We sure were.

So I see nothing wrong with deconstructing or darkening in and of themselves. Good stories can and are told outside of the original core character concepts. I have to disagree with John if he feels that altering the core concept automatically means a story is bad. As another poster has pointed out though, a bad idea is a totally different story. Some creators just have bad tasteless ideas that they dress up in the shock value of retcons or darkening. But really a story must be read to determine if this is the case. The original Dark Knight was a great story. Miller's current All Star series is just plain dumb (He wants Robin to eat rats? That just makes no sense.)

Finally, a word about Swamp Thing. How many more Swamp Monster horror stories did you want to read? The original premise of the character was tired. (Who's trying to steal Alec's body this month?) There's just not much you can do with it. What Moore did with it was absolute genius and expanded my idea of what could be done in comics. For all of you that lament his deconstruction, don't forget that in this run we got to see the Demon, The Phantom Stranger, The Spector, Deadman, Adam Strange, The JLA, Batman, and a Green Lantern, all handled quite respectfully.