"This was the comicbook version of shows like "The Shield" -- excapt there were no good cops anywhere."

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JB, I respectfully disagree with this statement. As many have pointed out, Rorscach, knowing that he will be killed, attempts to return to America to inform the public about Veidt's plan. Doing the right thing in the face of certain death, is, to me, the very definition of heroism. I'll agree that Rorschach was crazy (Hell, a friend of mine submitted a paper to one of his college professors arguing how he as a psychology major would diagnose that character), but I actually find it uplifting that he rose above it to do what he considers to be the right thing.

Equally, Veidt wagers that the death of thousands (millions) as a preventative measure to the impending death of billions is also arguably heroic. I would argue that it isn't, but it presents the reader with a fair and difficult moral conundrum.

I think one of the things the book explores is what heroism and doing the right thing is. That it doesn't explore things simply in terms of black and white or crimefighters vs. super-powered bank robbers, is a strength and testament to the book's craft rather than a detriment to it. I like that it shows heroism in shades of gray and, that it exemplifies this through nonestablished characters created by Moore to tell the story (rather, than as some have pointed out, pre-existing more clear cut and identifiable Charlton heroes), I think makes it both fair and acceptable.

At the end of the day, I think that heroism is a subjective term that varies from person to person, and that a dictionary definition doesn't do an abstract concept like heroism justice. Superheroism, at the end of the day, is harder to define, and I'll admit that you as a long-time writer of fine superhero stories undoubtedly have a better formed and articulated definition than I am likely to submit, however.  

Truth be told, if I could have things exactly the way I wanted them, I'd have the mainstream universes more in line with what Mr. Byrne, Matt and many others want, because I think the kinds of comics I grew up reading should be a part of the industry.

Where we seem to be disagreeing time and again however, is that I don't think that there are only certain types of stories that can or should be written about certain characters.

I see nothing wrong with more adult themed stories about Superman, Batman, Spider-Man etc. but I do think it'd be best if these stories took place outside of the mainstream universes of the respective characters.

Disclaimer: Listening to the debates on here has altered my view somewhat, so don't everybody jump down my throat because I changed my mind.

But with Watchmen you get Dark Knight and with Dark Knight you get Killing Joke and that stupidty became canon. I agree there should be adult themed comic books, but not in the guise of a superhero comic. And that is my problem with Watchmen, it is an adult story dressed up as a superhero story.

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I have to disagree with you here.  You can say Watchmen is an adult story, but saying it’s just "dressed up” as a superhero story isn’t really accurate.  Seems that you’re implying that Moore had a story to tell and decided to use superheroes to tell it.  Watchmen is an in-depth look AT SUPERHEROES (or former ones).  There is no way to tell Watchmen without superheroes.

"Deconstruction" isn't the problem -- tho what a sad day it was for comics when fanboys learned that word!

The problem is what is being "deconstructed". Should we deconstruct Pooh? Should we deconstruct Harry Potter? Sesame Street? Tom Swift?

Some things are what they are. Superheroes fall into that category. "Deconstructing" them is shooting fish in a barrel.

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I think a better question would be – CAN we deconstruct Pooh, Potter, Sesame Street etc.?  I would guess no.  I don’t think the potential for deconstruction is great in any of those works.  Superheroes were ripe for deconstruction at that time.  The fact that Watchmen was so successful and is acclaimed by so many shows that.

RE: Fish in a barrel.  Are you saying it shouldn't be done because it's too easy?

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No but you should blame Megadeath and Gwar for Marylin Manson. He took a very adult story and dressed it up as a superhero tale.

Wrong.  See above.

Which allowed Dark Knight to become darker which allowed Killing Joke not to be a one shot elseworlds but to be thought of as something that would be ok to make canon.

I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of people wanting Watchmen or KJ or DK to not exist simply because of what other creators did afterwards.  That’s like saying – I wish Neal Adams never came along because of all those crappy Adams clones that followed.

It is the slippery slope of "pushing" the boundries and upping the bar for the next idiot who wants to shock us.

So I assume you were against the whole death of Phoenix saga?

Watchmen should have been an adult series set in a more sci fi setting instead of bright colored superhero figured world. This gritty realism allows the next comic to be more gritty and the next one and all of a sudden you have heroes who aren't heroes. Good that is not bad to a degree and a world where you can make the orginal Superboy a mass murderer and Iron Man set up a prision in the Negative Zone. This is one the first shots across that bow make no mistake. It started here.

I don’t see how Watchmen makes it okay to turn Superboy into a mass murderer.

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The problem with Stark's alcoholism is that he was the wrong character for this particular "revelation". There was never so much as a hint of him having such problems before the IRON MAN office engineered a sequence of events that "drove" him to alcoholism. A sadly classic example of the character(s) being forced to serve the story the writers wanted to tell.

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SER: There was a scene in HULK: GRAY, which about the Hulk's early years, in which Tony Stark is at a meeting regarding capturing the Hulk and he's downing scotch like water during it. I thought this was the nadir of "Tony Stark as drunken lush."

And, of course, that will be the "angle" for the movie, I'm sure. And we'll see that used as a means of "legitimizing" the "goofy superhero" stuff. We all saw that with the HULK movie and MPD.

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So you would prefer that Watchmen and Dark Knight never have been written?

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WATCHMEN, yes -- tho it would be sad to lose that beautiful artwork! DKR -- let's just say I wish the second half had told the same story as the first.

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SER: When I first read this comment from you, I was taken aback by how true it was when I re-read DKR! I didn't like it any less but pretty much everything I loved about it was in the first half and everything I had a quibble with was in the last part.

Superman as a tool of the government doesn't seem true to the character, either. I don't see Batman and Superman as opposites -- they both fight for the common man in their own way.

I have to disagree with you here.  You can say Watchmen is an adult story, but saying it’s just "dressed up” as a superhero story isn’t really accurate.  Seems that you’re implying that Moore had a story to tell and decided to use superheroes to tell it.  Watchmen is an in-depth look AT SUPERHEROES (or former ones).  There is no way to tell Watchmen without superheroes.

 It isn't about superheros, it is about how a madman kills a huge chunk of New York because he thinks he is right AND he gets away with it. Seriously if you think this is a superhero story then the bad guys must not win enough for you.

I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of people wanting Watchmen or KJ or DK to not exist simply because of what other creators did afterwards.  That’s like saying – I wish Neal Adams never came along because of all those crappy Adams clones that followed.

No I dont Watchmen not to exsist because of what IT did not what others did.

So I assume you were against the whole death of Phoenix saga?

No I was buying red sweaters in bulk at the time so had no time to protest a meaningful, emotion ridden death of an established character who was killed off by an editoral demand. Instead I sat down and got all cozy while Tony Stark got ready to throw heroes and vilians into the Negative Zone and while someone who was supposed to be a Clark Kent killed half a dozen Titans and the Avengers Mansion was blown up because stories needed to be grittier.

I don’t see how Watchmen makes it okay to turn Superboy into a mass murderer.

I don't think it went around and granted murder passes but it is part of the line of realistic comics that made it ok for Superboy to be considered a murderer and no one objecting to it

Blaming the sad state of many of today's superhero comics on Watchmen and Dark Knight is a completely unfair, unreasonable standard. These works should be judged solely on their own merits - nothing more or less.

But holding Frank Miller and Alan Moore responsible for what others did afterwards is misplaced blame at its worst. By that logic, Stan Lee is at fault for the Spider-Totem nonsense - after all, if he hadn't created Spider-Man, then JMS couldn't have screwed him up so badly.

In the end -- which is to say, now -- the publishers had to change not only the content, but their very perceptions of what made a "successful" book. WATCHMEN and DKR might have been huge financial successes, but the overall "darkening" they brought to the industry led only to a spiral of ever diminishing sales.

I disagree with this assumption.  WM and DK were “dark”, and people ate it up.  So somehow, when the industry followed, it got “too dark”?  People suddenly stopped liking dark?  What about other people who weren’t doing dark stuff (like you for example)?  Wouldn’t that stuff be wildly popular instead?  My guess would be that you had 2 very well done works that were hard to follow.  The bar had been raised for ORIGINAL, QUALITY stories.  I would say that folks got spoiled and found it hard to read “lesser” works.  I stopped reading comics in the years that followed DK and WM not because of “dark” books, but because of all the Jim Lee clones of the 90’s and the art-driven books that were being published.  The stories were dreck (and the art not much better).

But holding Frank Miller and Alan Moore responsible for what others did afterwards is misplaced blame at its worst. By that logic, Stan Lee is at fault for the Spider-Totem nonsense - after all, if he hadn't created Spider-Man, then JMS couldn't have screwed him up so badly.

Well there is so much wrong with that statement...if people handled the charcater like Stan Lee did we wouldn't be here would we ? Watchmen was a completely different type of story and the debate here is if the story was worth what it did to the industry. Hence SHOULD these type of stories be told. Watchmen gets you Dark Knight gets you Killing Joke gets publishers thinking it is ok to make dark, gritty stories that mame and disfigure charcaters ok. It makes it ok to make heroes anti heroes and still call them heroes. It is the decline of the modern superhero and Stan Lee didn't lay that foundation, Moore did.

But I don't think Watchmen laid any sort of foundation - it was a self-contained story that should be judged on its own merits.

Have Watchmen and Dark Knight been influential? Sure. But if people tried to copy it and did a poor job in the process, that's hardly the fault of the original creators nor does it diminish the original work. That's on the people who followed - not Miller or Moore.

And of course Stan Lee isn't to blame for today's amoral, dark stories. That was my whole point - to illustrate the absurdity of blaming writers for what their successors do 20+ years later.