While I still think Chaykin's Blackhawk and Shadow hold up fairly well as examples of this trend, I agree that much of what was done in those two series was done for shock value (in the sense that hiring Chaykin --period-- guarantees a certain take on characters). The grim morality of Chaykin's characters (from American Flagg! number one: "cruel but fair") is consistent with the puritan attitude of most pulp and early kids' superhero comics characters.
Don't get me wrong, I like Chaykin and I agree with what you're saying. The fault is more with the folks that had the bright idea to hire Chaykin for a project he was obviously wrong for, as he was with TWILIGHT. I was mentioning TWILIGHT in the context of a trend.
Just the costumes. And just in non-preteen "superhero" comics. I love the absurd things you mention, and can appreciate them as an adult, in the same way all age groups can watch not only silly kitsch intended solely for kids but also Bug Bunny cartoons or John Ford's The Quiet Man.
I can't believe you compared a
loser like Kanjar Ro or the Crocodile Man from Punkus to early Bugs Bunny or THE QUIET MAN.
I'm not sure how to respond to something like this, because the idiocy and ridiculousness of Kite-Man should speak for itself.
The burden of proof shouldn't be on me to explain why a villain who wears a hang-glider shaped like a children's toy is a laughably terrible idea.
Okay, here goes:
I don't think any of us would be here unless we're classic comics fans. One of the most appealing things about older comics is their weird and fascinating charm. But...at the risk of stating the obvious here...not every idea is a good idea, even if it is in a silly, or rather, playful idiom.
Hawkman and Hawkwoman, in their Silver Age incarnation, made no sense at all, but it all worked. It had a wonderful adventure spirit that made you stop asking why a guy and girl from outer space were museum curators and used things like 13th Century
glaive-guisarmes instead of phaser guns. It was essentially absurd and appealing for that reason.
But underneath the B-movie Nth Metal pseudoscience there was a core of a really great adventure character. Hawkman and Hawkwoman are STRONGER, not weaker, because they aren't packing Kirby BFGs like you'd expect aliens to. The Absorbascon is over the top, but astonishing. With someone like Kite-Man, though, there's no there there.
Nothing bothers me more when people come down on some of the more fascinating and beloved elements of superhero comics as being childish or stupid. But I save my industriousness for concepts that are worthy of being defended. Just because something is from the Silver or Golden Age does not automatically make it a good idea.
There are some occasions (I'm not saying you, of course) where some Silver Age fans defend a character or concept that is absolutely lame, like the Purple Man or Bat-Mite, because they interpret an attack on this concept as being an attack on the Silver Age in general, and they defend this concept in the mistaken belief it is defending the Silver Age in general.
All the bad guys are hard-ass horror-movie monsters, serial killers, and rapists with mullets, camouflage pants and spiked collars and are poorly drawn, to boot? Gross! This is stupid! I'm outta here!
Though I agree with your spirit, in the interest of fairness, Superman in the 1990s did not fight any character like that. Superman in the 1990s has enough flaws that there's no need to invent any.
Anyway, in terms of hideous fashoin statements, Vartox's outfit, reminiscent of Mr. Slave from South Park, has all the nineties guys beat hands down.
Plus, Jerry Ordway did Superman in the 1990s. I wouldn't call that "badly drawn" by a long shot. Again, I agree with you about Superman in this period, but I'm not 100% comfortable with blanket generalities like that.
Marvel understands the multiverse concept and uses this device quite often. As an example, during Morrison's run on New X-men, his last arc: "Here Comes Tomorrow" was redesignated Earth-15104. If Marvel doesn't know where a storyline fits, it's retconned to another Earth.
Though I always found Alan Moore's CAPTAIN BRITAIN fascinating (especially with art by Alan Davis, arguably the greatest artist of our generation)...it bothered me because it was very much a "DC" book, with Captain Britain as a Silver Age style white male hero. In other words it was Marvel aping DC, down to the multiverse concept: a reversal of the "natural order." DC copies Marvel, not vice-versa.
My point here is, Marvel has parallel universe stories; they're a comic staple right up there with time travel and microverses. But the multiverse as it is presently used in Marvel, in stories like the Abraxas tale in FANTASTIC FOUR, is a DC-style take - which is not fair to the Marvel Universe's identity.