The Modern Age of DC Comics
By Ramsey Rusef
The post crisis DCU is dead.
It died well before Hypertime appeared. Flash killed the DCU. He almost always does.
The DCU started out pretty simply. Two kids from Ohio came up with a simple idea: "What if the hero of a story were more powerful than the villains he faced?" They created Superman, and, from that idea sprang all the rest of the spandex clad big pecs, big boobs superhero universe. For you indie fans, the alien farmboy ain't to blame for everything. It all starts from the source of all superhero comics, the pulp heroes.
To get an understanding of the Golden Age of the DCU, you have to understand the stories that Superman was based on, the pulp stories of the 1930's. Comics up until then were simple action stories about lone heroes who fought shady villains. The women were all cool, and half naked. Every story followed the same predictable pattern. 1) The hero faces the villain. 2) The hero gets captured by the villain. 3) The hero escapes and defeats the villain.
Then Superman came along and messed with the pattern. The heroes of pulp comics were weaker either physically or mentally than their villainous opposition. They won through dumb luck and the fact that the villain underestimated them. In his first appearance, Superman stories followed a predicable trend. Superman would hear about the actions of some bad person while Clark Kent. He would prove too much of a physical challenge to the bad guy. Finally he would teach the bad guy, through tough love that the baddie was doing wrong.
Superman wasn't necessarily the nice boy scout he would become later on. In one Golden Age book, a villain tried to electrocute Superman. He merely picked up the charge, some few thousand volts, walked over and touched the bad guy, killing him. During this time, the Bat Man carried a gun for a bit. The heroes used physical force to deal with just about every situation. They were men (and women) of violent physical action.
After a while, the superhero titles began to die away, and westerns and detective titles started to take over the market. Only Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman survived the drought.
After a while, Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkman, and many of the classic characters of olden day started to reappear, but they weren't the same. Barry Allen made his debut in Showcase #4, and the DC Universe never looked back.
Flash and the other heroes saw their powers much more based in science, or something which vaguely resembled science. If the Flash were rooted in real science, he would achieve infinite mass as he hit the speed of light, and, before that, he would turn into a pile of pink goo, if he didn't burn up in the process.
Barry Allen's Flash would display more creativity than any other character in using his powers. As a scientist, he knew more about the possibilities of what he could do than anyone else had before him. He would vibrate to turn invisible or pass through solid objects. He could run through time whenever he felt like it, and he could vibrate into another dimension. He burned objects with the heat he generated by friction.
The superheroes in the Silver Age DC Universe were basically goodie goodie types. Blame Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent for that. Wortham accused Bruce Wayne of having improper relations with Dick Grayson, and after that the name "Bruce" became a codeword to describe any effeminate or homosexual man. Wortham automatically determined that Wonder Woman was a lesbian, and that she displayed none of the properties of a well behaved woman of her time.
To get a feel of what SOTI did to the comic book industry, look at some of the rules established by the Comics Code Authority. "The crime of kidnapping shall never be portrayed in any detail, nor shall any profit accrue to the abductor or kidnapper. The criminal or kidnapper must be punished in every case." Another rules states, "Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in a way as to create disrespect for established authority."
As a result, comics became more and more sterilized. Women were sent back to the kitchen. Even Wonder Woman, the original heroine wasn't grandfathered out of this rule. Villains began to scare her off by throwing mice in her way. This was ridiculous.
Some DC comics became exceptions to this rule. Denny O'Neal and Neal Adams broke the mold of the sterilized comic with their collaborations on Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman. They actually portrayed a kidnapping for crying out loud. People started reading their comics, and the stage was set for a new age of comics.
Flash would once again lead the DCU into the new world of comics. Due in no small part to the success of Frank Miller on Marvel's Daredevil monthly and DC's Dark Knight mini series, comics fans wanted to see their titles look far more realistic, and far less sunny. When Wally West took over the role of Flash (Why do comics writers feel the need to use the overly dramatic word "mantle of..."?), he would prove to be the definitive hero of the Post Crisis DCU.
Fans wanted their stories to be grimmer, grittier, and more realistic. How much more realistic could anyone get than a superhero who demanded health insurance from a hospital in exchange for delivering a heart to a person who was dying. Calling Wally West a pud probably would be one of the nicer reactions a person could have to the character. Wally couldn't do any of the neat tricks that Barry used all the time. He could only run the speed of sound, and he had to consume mass quantities to accomplish that. Wally would break his hand if he hit a thug too hard, which he would obviously do quite often considering his fists moved at the speed of sound.
Other characters followed suit. Batman plunged himself into a world of darkness which he still has not left. A Green Lantern (John Stewart) went crazy when he, due to his overconfidence let an entire planet get destroyed (Cosmic Odyssey). Superman started killing again, albeit three Kryptonian criminals. Then he flew off into space after going insane. Insanity seemed to be the norm for characters in the early Post Crisis DCU. Characters like Vigilante and Wild Dog, while appearing just around the Crisis, were signs that the DC universe was growing darker and darker.
The Dark Age ended, not because fans grew tired of dark, mysterious characters (Batman is still quite popular.), but because bad "Grim and Gritty" is as bad as bad happy and light. The Dark Age saw a lack of imagination in storytelling, and writers would think that explaining a character's questionable morality was all that was needed to tell a tale. It didn't matter that there was nothing to the character, just as long as the morality was questionable. How else could a title like Vigilante survive? At the same time, the Dark Age also sucked out the imagination that existed in writing superheroes. Superman was punching baddies as was Batman as was Flash as was everyone else. Even the funny Justice League (International, America, Antarctica, whatever) didn't show much creativity in the powers of its characters.
The Modern Age of DC Comics began when an ex Amazing Heroes editor named Mark Waid took the reins of Flash. Waid ended the grim, dark, and dreary run in the DCU during the "Return of Barry Allen" storyline. Up until that point, Wally West was carrying the albatross of not being Barry Allen. This probably affected his characterization far more than his popularity with the readers. When Waid changed his personality, he also changed his powers, and the Modern DCU was born. The characteristics of the modern age are pretty clear: 1) "Good" heroes, who don't kill, 2) Creative use of powers and/or weaknesses, 3) Cosmic threats, which most often consist of attempts to take over the world, 4) a whole lot of innuendo, and a graphic detail in some of its violence.
When he took over the role of Flash, Wally was, to put it mildly, a jerk. The reason that became more and more apparent as time went on was that Wally felt he wasn't good enough to live up to Barry as a hero, and his powers also fluctuated with his confidence. Once he became more confident, he became more and more powerful, and he would be the defining character for the modern DCU.
In the "Return" storyline, Wally got rid of Professor Zoom (who had masqueraded as Barry) by tricking him into taking a ride on the Barry Allen's cosmic treadmill, and sending him into the past. The battle started as a traditional punching match, but, then some mysterious cosmic force intervened on Wally's behalf. After gaining the upper hand, Wally chooses not to punch Zoom into unconsciousness, but he instead convinces Zoom that he will go into the future and kill him. Zoom then rushes onto the cosmic treadmill, and the threat is over.
The Modern Age looks a lot like the Silver Age on the surface. The heroes are, well, heroic. The line between right and wrong is clear to everyone. Heroes in the DCU do not do wrong things. Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner, a Modern Age hero who got his start in a textbook (Dark Age story.) refuses to kill the villain, Major Force, who killed Kyle's girlfriend and stuffed her body in a refrigerator.
The two defining heroes of this age have set the tone for all the stories produced. They use their powers in increasingly creative ways. Flash, with his direct connection to the Speed Force, can manipulate the speed of other objects, even on a molecular level. When Flash's girlfriend, Linda Park, gets frozen by Chillblaine, he kinetically agitates every molecule in her body, heating her up gently. Kyle Rayner, as Green Lantern, does a bit more than just create giant green hands.
The villains in Modern Age tales generally present a cosmic threat. In "Terminal Velocity", the story which redefined the Flash's powers, Wally has to raise a superspeed posse to deal with the threat of Kobra, who needs the geothermal power found in Keystone to help power his invasion force, which is waiting all over the country. The JLA had to face an entire host of angels, who would destroy San Francisco in an attempt to kill one of their own.
The ultimate Modern Age title, of course, is JLA. The title paints big picture adventures, threats from cosmic powers, and creative threats set up by human villains. Prometheus spends his entire time planning how to kill every member of the JLA. He increases the oxygen output of the plants in the JLA WatchTower to make it easier for him to set fires, which of course hurt the Martian Manhunter more than anyone else. When they have to face the JLA, the Ultramarines use character specific attacks. Superman gets peppered with every wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum, which overloads his senses.
The heroes aren't any less creative. Wonder Woman flies a Martian into space, and she engages her in a flight into the stratosphere, and they discover who can hold her breath more. Superman has to stop the world from crashing into the world, and he uses his new electrical powers to give the moon a magnetic charge which repels it from that of the earth.
So where does the modern age differ from the Silver Age? The answer is the innuendo and graphic violence which is omnipresent in Modern Age stories. In the Silver Age, characters never discussed any possibility that any character would have a sex life. When publishers began to sell most of their comics through the direct sales market, the code seemed more and more outdated.
When The New Teen Titans showed Starfire's bare breasts, there really could be no going back to the old, more innocent stories. Hitman goes to the JLA Watchtower just so that he can look at Wonder Woman with his X-Ray vision. Although the heroes display more positive heroic outer demeanors, their personal lives have the same soap opera aspects as did the dark age characters. Jade shacks up with Kyle, then she becomes his girlfriend, with no pretense of the characters ever getting married. Jade, in fact, flirts with every guy she can. Zauriel, the Angel, flirts with more characters than anyone else in JLA. He makes every lewd comment he can about Wonder Woman.
The division between public and private morality of the Modern Age DCU represents the same division that we hold as a society today. Kyle Rayner will sleep around with multiple women, and he'll pop out of his bed and save the world that night. Issue #25 of Nightwing has the title character discuss his sex life with the new Robin, Tim Drake. They go through a laundry list of women that Dick Grayson has slept with, and the strange things about them, "an alien, a goddess, and a murderer."
Religion doesn't seem to make all that much of a difference in the behavior of the characters of the DCU. Nightwing and Huntress are both avowed Christians, but that doesn't stop them from sleeping around with everyone in sight and killing off mobsters, respectively. (Note: Huntress is a holdover from the Dark Age, but Nightwing is clearly a modern DCU character.)
The violence in a Modern Age story can be incredibly graphic. Major Force's "love note" to Kyle was just a starter. Blockbuster twisted detective Soames's neck completely around in an attempt to kill him (It just leaves his head on backwards.) So that he could take over the body of the Shaggy Man, General Wade Eiling shoots himself in the head, and Howard Porter almost uses a splash page to show the readers the body.
Even with these elements, one distinction is completely clear in looking at Modern Age stories, even though they are peppered with elements which of the Dark Age, have one thing in common, and that is imagination.
Redoubt is Copyright © 1999-2000, Ramsey Rusef. All articles contained inside are Copyright by their original authors. All characters and comic books reviewed in Redoubt are Copyright and Trademarked by their respective owners.