And please deliver us from the perpetual angst, whining, and depression that has encompassed many of the books now. Nope, can't have any books with a lighter tone.
Others may see it differently, but to me, so called "light and comedic" stories (e.g. Giffen) are ultimately a thousand times more harmful to characters than so-called angsty ones, because if you do a dark themed tale, at least you have to play it straight and take the characters seriously.
Which is worse: taking things too seriously, or not enough?
For what it's worth, I'll have to agree with Alan Moore that the official moment the Golden Age ended for the superheroes was the Kurtzman MAD magazine parodies. Unlike Giffen and David and the rest, the MAD comics were truly, hilariously funny, yes, but the parody officially ended whatever vague relevance to pop culture superheroes may have had, and they have never entirely recovered their dignity.
There's such a thing as a parody that is just so TRUE, that it makes what it parodies ultimately irrelevant. It's no wonder that the film version of RENT bombed; how could anybody ever look at it the same way again after "Everybody Has AIDS" from TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE?
It wasn't just that MAD Magazine parodied the superheroes. It was the fact that the parodies reflected a real general shift in sentiment: deprived of the direct good and evil of the Second World War, superheroes, who require good vs. evil and symbolism, no longer functioned in the anxious world of the fifties. Superheroes became a joke. Remember, this was the era where Batman and Robin are gay gags started to be everywhere, and there were a thousand bright blue jokes about Wonder Woman and her lesbian island.
To be fair, there are real differences between the MAD magazine parodies and Giffen, David and the so-called "humorous" take on characters; for one thing, MAD was actually FUNNY. But here's my essential point:
Superheroes didn't die in the fifties because the problems and anxities of the time were beyond them, or because the times were too weird for them. Superheroes died in the 1950s because people
laughed at them.
Kon's origin wasn't murky before Johns, it was quite simple: he was a geneticly-engineered human and the closest that human scientists could get to cloning a Kryptonian without making another Bizarro.
Well, that's what I mean: if Conner Kent's origin was as the clone of some random guy, who really cares? What's so "Super" about him? Previously, it was thought he was a clone of Superman, but they did plenty of gymnastics around that. Another gutless concession to the Post-Crisis "No Kryptonians" rule.
Under the others, Kon was a happy, free-going character who didn't spend all of his time brooding over his origins.
Conner Kent, pre-Johns, wore a leather jacket and had a comb in his pocket so his hair was never out of place.
Now, the fact he was vain doesn't make him a bad character, but under the people that wrote him, he was something of a cartoon, a character right out of High School movies; I doubt under Peter David that Conner could be capable of such really honest moments of the kind Johns gave him, such as for instance, when he and Wonder Girl shared a private moment in that barn during the TEEN TITANS ANNUAL.
(Incidentally, both Geoff Johns and Peter David have two first names.)
Please, the entire death scene is ludicrous. Kon dies by flying SB Prime (another character that Johns royally screwed up) into a giant tower and is killed by the resulting explosion and debris. An explosion which Nightwing, Wonder Girl, and others walked away from unscathed.
Am I supposed to suddenly forget that NW is completly human and that Kon is a half-Kryptonian that has survived a nuclear explosion in the past? Or how about the fact that Power Girl and the Martian Manhunter were in the same area and could have easily took out the tower without any damage done to them?
To be fair, Kon-El was at Ground Zero for that particular collision and the others were not, and with a being as powerful as Superboy-Prime, it's really hard to say ANYONE would walk away from a fight with him without a scratch. If Power Girl or John Jones had distracted him, it would have been just as much of a sacrifice play as if Conner had.
I think you're missing my point, though. I agree that the Death Scene wasn't perfect by any means. What I'm saying though, is that it wasn't some random non-sequitur or shock value death; he didn't die like Pantha or Wildebeest did earlier, as afterthoughts. His death is pretty much the central focus of the story arc of five major characters, as well as the direction of the DCU post-IC. In other words, his death MATTERED. It can't be said that he was just "thrown away."
It's a comic book universe. Plus, space pirates and supercomputers might make a pretty good Thor story.
True, but the example doesn't work because the big secret behind Marvel's Mighty Thor is that he isn't "mythological." In fact, with Thor, the further in the stories get away from Norse myth, the better they are. The more interesting Thor elements are not the ones lifted from myth, but things like the Destroyer, the Enchantress, the Rigellians, the High Evolutionary, Ego: the Living Planet, and so forth.
It's like when people say that Indiana Jones is based on the 1930s-1940s movie serials. The serials were merely the bare blueprints for something that had so many other influences that it was ultimately unique.
At some level, this sort of non-mythological science fiction stuff is a part of what Mighty Thor is all about; the same can't be said of Superman and the Kryptonese mythology. Truth be told, in nearly fifty years, the only thing about these gods that we really KNOW is that Yuda was the moon goddess and Kara was the Kryptonian goddess of beauty. They're a barely peripheral part of worldbuilding instead of active, real, and significant forces, cute factoids for Krypton fans to throw around like the fact the main building material on Krypton is a plastic called Grahu, or the Kryptoniad.
Well, without commenting on IC, why is it a perception that Supergirl "died like a dog" in COIE? It wasn't a slugfest with her beaten to a pulp, she saved Kal and I suppose it was an important mark of a plan to show this was supposed to be a big idea...
The reasoning behind the "died like a dog" statement (and certainly, a character as historically important as Kara deserved better) was that ultimately, her death wasn't important to the CRISIS story. By contrast, Ferro Lad's death under Jim Shooter and Curt Swan was the vital climax and resolution of the Sun-Eater story, for instance.
Not only that, but the scene was hardly touching, the way the death of the Swordsman was in GIANT-SIZED AVENGERS #2 (possibly the greatest death scene in comics history). Marv Wolfman, whenever he wants to express powerful emotion, instead of letting the scenes speak for themselves, he lapses into a sort of baby-talk. An example of this is in one issue of NEW TEEN TITANS where the intelligent, educated Dick Grayson says that Cyborg is the "best hero I know of...most anyone!" What, was Shirley Temple talking now?
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