I think that if you make all the violence and sexuality that is inherent in a concept overt...ultimately you result in something much more "normal."
Here's an example of what I mean:
Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian have had truly bloodthirsty tales. One of the more over the top scenes was in RETURN OF TARZAN, where Lord Greystoke actually killed a lion by tearing it with his teeth. There's sex inherent in the Tarzan concept. Who can forget the whole "thing no primeval, red-blooded man needs a lesson in?" Ditto for Conan to the power of infinity.
Doc Savage on the other hand, hides everything under the rug. Doc uses "mercy" bullets, tries to avoid taking human life, and has nothing anywhere near resembling a sex life...all this in the context of the pulps, where the Shadow regularly opened fire with .45 automatics on roomfuls of gangsters and where Conan was crushing soft, perfumed concubines to him left and right.
Yet, more than any other character in history, Doc Savage is the victim of a lot of speculation that paint him and his world in a sinister light, and while I have always believed in buying into the world a writer creates (if the writer says his crime college rids crooks of their evil nature, that's all it is) these theories are inevitable because it's just not NORMAL for a man to not be interested in women.
The exact nature of his "crime college," for instance. In his Doc comics in the 1980s, Denny O'Neil outright said they performed lobotomies. Or the ghastly idea Doc's men are Doc's servants and they don't really think for themselves. Or the "understanding" some speculate exists between Pat and Doc.
Not that we should listen to nitwits that say these things, but my overall point here is, people don't make these kinds of speculations about Tarzan or Conan. The reason is there's an element of repression to Doc and his aides that ultimately makes the mind wander to less wholesome directions.
I do think that the superhero genre, which can hold alot and be stretched in many different ways, cannot maintain the sort of genre expectations the current so-called adult audience brings to it.
One value an adult audience should expect is characterization - which trumps all other values, including plot.
I'm serious. WRATH OF KHAN had plot holes you could drive a photon torpedo through yet it was wonderful and watchable because of how great the characters were.
And characterization is successful when transplanted onto superhero characters. In fact, its arguable that comics only really got readable when characters started to have definite personalities.
How does all this tie into my defense of Johns having Black Adam rip a terrorist's arm off and Gorilla Grodd? Because, as an element of their characterization, these two have an element of physical brutality. It's who they are, even if it wasn't made explicit before.
We talk about violence as if it was something separate from character, but it really isn't. The reason I enjoy Johns's tales is not only because of his gift for characterization and understanding of the characters. Violence isn't just done for violence's sake, but in service to characterization.
This is why it bothers me when people talk about violence as if its presence in and of itself has a value, when it doesn't. The only thing that makes violence work is the context.
This is why it bothered me when the usual people were hooting like howler monkeys that found a Game Boy at the sight of a pair of preview panels in Johns's ACTION COMICS...because it featured Superman losing his cool.
"That's that gore-crazed hack at it again!"
By the way, do you know what the panels turned out to be?
Superman's adopted young son was kidnapped and he's demanding an explanation from a person he believes has knowledge!
You know, I'd be a mite peevish too. It was a perfectly understandable, very human reaction. Superman is a humanitarian, but I don't understand where that makes him a robot.
This is why I don't accept reactions to something out of context as legitimate opinions. And hearing something happened without reading the comics is out of context.
I admit, I really dislike gore and slasher movies. I don't see one single bit of entertainment value in such a thing.
Fair enough. Different people have different thresholds and preferences for violence.
Conan stuff, I can see the point there. Conan's world is rough and he lives by the sword. But Conan is very much an adults-only kind of thing and I think you can even overdo it there. The point of reading a Conan story shouldn't be just to see somebody's head fly off.
I don't know, I think there's something in Conan that fundamentally appeals to the boyish, adolescent portion of the brain, with his freebooting, lack of responsibilities, prowess, and so on.
There should be a difference between an audience of "children" and "adults," and an audience of teenagers. In fact, arguably, if you want to start getting into Conan NOW, unless you're fourteen the moment has probably passed.
Make no mistake Johns is a gorehoud:
Quotes from a new interview, where he talks about his new takes on classic villians, see if you can see a pattern here:
How the holy hell can these statements be construed to mean Johns is a gorehound? Unless of course,
without ever reading a Johns comic ever, it's already been resolved he's a gore-crazed hack.
Still, even if your mind shuts down at the idea of a writer you've never read being any good...this is REALLY stretching it.
This reminds me of those hackneyed sitcom plots where a character gets it into his head that a woman is attracted to him, so everything she says, no matter how innocent, is somehow about sex.
Johns on Brainiac:
"We’re trying to push him into the upper echelon of villains, and make him a really scary threat. When Brainiac shows up, it’s a very devastating thing."
So, Johns wants Brainiac to be written as a grandiose, scary villain? THAT INHUMAN FIEND!
“The Parasite leeched off of everybody in his life, and it resulted in a lot of bad things, including death and murder."
...Because if a character's actions have had terrible consequences for people around him, when written by other people, somehow, this makes Johns a gorehound.
1 + 1 = 3?
Johns on Bizarroworld:
“Just think ‘Dawn of the Dead,” says Johns. “Bizarroworld is a little bit more scary and creepy."
Because if any horror element is ever present in a Superman story, it must be a sign of a goretastic hack, right?
By the way, nobody has gotten back to me on what exactly was so wrong with the Phantom Zone mini.
Johns on Action Comics Annual:
"Art Adams is doing a four-page mini on how Superman can be killed."
You see, now we're at a gesture level in our dialogue where any idea this writer casually mentions is Johnsbad.
Johns on Action Comics:
"We’re just gonna try and push the envelope in ideas, and if people say, ‘You can’t do that!’ we wanna do it!”
How again, does this show Johns is a goretastic hack?
I will concede this statement is pretty evil, but not for the reasons you might think so.
It's evil because saying "we're trying to push the envelope and be unpredictable" is a laughable writer interview cliche.