To Deconstruct or Not to Deconstruct or Look Ma, No Heroes!

Have you ever read Watchmen? If you haven’t, I highly recommend it, and not just as a seminal piece of comic book history. I recommend it as a great piece, if not a vital piece, of literature, on par with 1984, or War and Peace. Yes, it is that important, and has had that much significance in terms of its contributions to the written record, its effect on pop culture, and how we talk about history, stories, and even the future. It also changed how we create, look at, critique, and talk about comic books forever more.

This is usually the part where I would give a description of the media I was just talk about, but you know what? Watchmen has been out for over thirty years, has had a movie adaptation, a few video games, even a prequel. At this point, if you don’t at least know something about it, I don’t know what to say. What many might not know are the effects it had on the landscape of superhero stories from the 1980s onward, in comics, cartoons, movies, and so much more. It surprised even myself, and I once considered myself an authority on comics. No, not part of The Authority, which is one such an example of the curious effects of this deconstructive phenomenon…well, we’ll get to that.

“Geoff Johns is drawing a straight line from Watchmen to The New 52. He’s saying that the deconstructionist comic books of the 80s – great books, seminal classics – have so poisoned the well that they have negatively impacted what came after. It’s the ultimate piece of comic criticism (and one I think a lot of old-timers, who were alive and energized when Watchmen first hit stores, would agree with) and it’s in the form of a comic.

“Yes, Geoff Johns says, DC is too dark and unhappy today. And what’s more, it’s a direct result of chasing the dragon of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and getting ever diminished returns.”

-https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/05/23/why-dc-universe-rebirth-is-a-gutsy-work-of-comics-criticism

This is a quote from an article by Devin Faraci on the massive comic event storyline DC Universe Rebirth, specifically on the meta criticism that the story makes on the direction comics have taken for the past few decades. Again, I won’t spoil, this time because it’s just a really interesting comic and comic nerds among us should check it out, though be warned, the aforementioned article has some major spoilers. To sum up the main point though, what Faraci is trying to get across is that Geoff Johns, the writer of this book, intentionally put meta referencing in his work to get across the idea that Watchmen, as well as its contemporaries, like The Dark Knight Returns, were so popular and cutting in their deconstructions of iconic characters, stories, but most of all just the attitudes and tropes of DC itself, that it changed the face of DC into, well, the gritty, grimdark place that it is now. It’s not hard to see the influences, especially if you see it through the lens of their film media.

It’s not an exaggeration, nor an inaccuracy, to say that in the way DCs comics were changed by the dark, edgy reimaginings and deconstructions of the 80s, DCs films were changed by Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. It’s just a statement of fact. They were wildly successful films that changed the landscape of comic book film stories forever. Now, personally, I think truly the more seminal origin moment for when superhero films started becoming respectable works of art was Spider-Man 2, for which it would take a whole other article to explain, but I can understand the sentiment and even be able to agree with quite a few points in favor of Nolan’s trilogy. While Batman Begins didn’t exactly break box office records, The Dark Knight broke that and what’s more, serious, all important ground. Something about that film seemed life changing, reality changing even.

Batman was no longer just a genius billionaire in a weird suit, he was a tortured figure, with a weight on his shoulders we could see would have broken most men long before. The Joker wasn’t just a criminal prankster, he was a seeming force of nature, of unbridled chaos, seeking nothing more than its own sick, twisted gratification. We watched these figures collide and through this conflagration begin to ask ourselves some very important questions, about the nature of law and order, good and evil, where we draw the line at what keeps us safe and what is right, and if we can even be sure we know any of the right answers to those things in the first place. This movie took apart the lives of these characters and showed them for what they would be in the real world. Bruce Wayne wouldn’t be someone who would draw people into his life, a force that people would fight for, and instead he’d just as likely, if not more than likely, cause harm, both direct and indirect to anyone who would come in contact with him, and would be incapable of being truly approachable, and forming and keeping relationships besides, as his true personality behind the billionaire playboy mask would be far too antisocial. The Joker proves to be Batman’s cruel, twisted mirror, also being truly incapable of forming any real bond with people, as his psychotic mania would make him far too unstable and untrustworthy, as likely to kill you as help you. This most incredible turning point in superhero films took all the things that contradicted the nature of these two iconic characters and their stories (Batman having a dedicated support system despite his antisocial, fascistic tendencies; Joker having undyingly loyal henchmen and reliable ties to the criminal community despite the fact that he’s certifiably insane, and kills at random for the sheer joy of it; these two rivals constantly coming at odds in large, city spanning bouts that ultimately don’t ever change the political or social layout of Gotham City), and laid them to bare, showing how unforgiving the real world would be in the face of this kind of violence and madness.

Yes, I just spent the last couple of paragraphs singing the praises of The Dark Knight. Now, consider Man of Steel. Think on Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Suicide Squad, Justice League, Aquaman, all examples of how in the wake of Nolan’s films DCs models for films was to take their material and make it all darker, grittier, yet, ironically, somehow it was making them come out less realistic than Nolan’s films. Superman was no longer the big blue boy scout, he was psychologically tortured, and forced to accept levels of sacrifice and violence that most iterations of Kal-El would not have normally gone to. Batman was made into even more of a psychotic, militant extremist, with a compulsive need for control and order so great as to rival some of the villains. Hell, Suicide Squad and Justice League both needed to have heavy reshoots just to add in humor, both trying to overcompensate for the grimdark they were forcefully enfused with, and hoping to perhaps capture the levity of the Marvel movies. They all seemed so intent on tearing apart the realities, motivations, and moral characters of these wonderful icons that they seem to have forgotten what made these characters appealing and compelling in the first place. A young, invulnerable, impossibly powerful alien raised in Kansas by two wonderfully upright farmers to be Earth’s most staunch, inspiring defender doesn’t need to be put through the moral wringer to be given interesting stories. They proved that out with Wonder Woman, yet they still felt the need to add the dark and depressing elements to the later Justice League. By the way, I remember I brought up the Marvel films, and that leads to a very important point.

It might be easy enough to think that, therefore, Marvel has been the superior to DC for the last few decades, as Marvel has not had the need to play constant catchup with the memory of Rorschach and an elderly, delusional Bruce Wayne. That the darkness and overbearing realities themselves were what was to blame. Yet, this is proven to be false when one looks at Marvel, the films or the comics. The movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier had a very dark, realistic, and even slightly deconstructive take, and worked out brilliantly. Our hero has to question himself, his motives, in a more complicated, morally grey world, and we see just how far his ethics and mores truly stretch.  Civil War, both the comic and the film, are born of the premise of some of this world’s greatest heroes fighting out one of the greatest philosophical debates in the quest for protection of the public good, the value of security and freedom, and which of the two should take greater priority. This story is iconic worldwide. Yet, I would hazard to add in a bit of critique myself, especially about where of these two, the film gets something right that the comic gets horribly wrong. A few films were spent building up how Steve Rogers and Tony Stark gained their respective philosophies on how to defend the public, giving observant moviegoers a clear line of thought that showed why they would end up at each other’s throats. The comic, however, gave us an overly libertarian Steve, and a near megalomaniacally authoritarian Tony, and no build up as to how these characters just took up such militant opposites of their usual selves. Again, for the folks in the back, they seem to have forgotten what made these characters interesting and compelling in the first place. Starting to get what really has been the problem this whole time?

So, let’s talk about The Umbrella Academy finally.

The Umbrella Academy is a TV show based on a Dark Horse comic by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, about a group of superhumans adopted at birth by an eccentric billionaire who raises them to be a team of superheroes, and upon his death learn that the apocalypse is just a few days away and that their dysfunctional family might be the only ones who can stop it. One might say it has some similarities to the Bat Family (an obsessed billionaire who trains children to fight crime), but more accurately it portrays a variant of a team like the X-Men (young people with amazing abilities brought together by a rich benefactor to be trained to fight the good fight). Unlike the X-Men though (or perhaps very much like them if you read really deep into the works) the benefactor in question is an uncaring, cold drill sergeant of a person, the dangers they go into are lethal and psychologically scarring, and as expected of any group of people raised in such horrific conditions, they don’t function very well as adults, either together or on their own. Amidst their number are narcissists, sociopaths, and junkies, just to name a few, and I only put these in plural because there are who take up more than one of these labels. They’re, after all, living their lives as would be fitting in the most logical extremes that they would act, like child soldiers suffering from PTSD. All you have to do is watch just the first episode and you see something most curious: they work! Why?!

Well, honestly, for a lot of the same reasons that Watchmen worked. The story is made up of original characters, the characters themselves are meant to be more like archetypes rather than one to one versions of preexisting characters, the story is its own self contained story meant to explore character more than plot, thus allowing for deep deconstruction, but still the plot is worth following. I think most of all, because these are original characters, when we see these things happen, horrible as they are, we don’t feel like these characters are diminished or weakened. We can see them as they are rather than as the ideal paragons we wish for them to be. There are times where this can still lead to problems, like Mark Millar’s The Authority, about a team of superheroes who have one giant distinction from most other superhero teams, that they will go to ANY lengths to get the job done, like I’m talking killing God himself sort of lengths. This, however, might be due to Millar’s natural mean spiritedness, and the content which seems constantly driven towards dissing and jibing at other known superhero teams and the comic companies that make them.

Admittedly, I went into this show wary, worried that this might just make me jaded to Marvel the way Watchmen made a whole generation jaded to DC. I also just spent a long while just wondering if they could actually pull it off. I mean, after all, like I said, Watchmen is a practically unbeatable classic. Can you really continue to deconstruct, to build upon what already seems to be perfected? Well, as it turns out, you can, because there’s always going to be a whole new set of questions to ask, more assumptions and cultural norms to poke holes in. It makes me wonder if this will affect Marvel from here on out. Will X-Men forever have to be mindful of the fact that there is a school of kids and teenagers being trained to harness insanely powerful abilities like an army and the potential repercussions of such? Will they go the route of Young Justice, and show the full long term effects of such a harsh, danger filled life on adolescents and young adults as they are pushed to the limit by their parents, guardians, and role models? Will the newest X-Men film, Dark Phoenix, address this? Could it change forever how we see child and teen superheroes? Are heroes in their most noble form going the way of the dodo, leaving only the morally ambiguous, broody, and psychologically mauled to save the day? I can’t say, but I can say this show is awesome, and you should check it out, ASAP.