Marvel's coming Heroic Age
As per usual, I don’t have anything to write about. I’m pretty wrapped up in working on my first book (a collection of short stories) and I don’t find all that much time to read them funny books. Plus, they’re not all that funny at the moment! You thought the previous years in comics were dark and bleak? Yeah, look again: Blackest Night! Dark Reign! Image United! Everything is going to hell. Everything is the end.
Of course not the real end, because it’s comics. At the end of the end the heroes will prevail. But not before heads explode, people get ripped to shreds (that really happened!) and artists decide to work their different styles onto one page, getting very close to destroying the space/time continuum with it.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like my epic, brutal story-lines. One of my favorite pieces of the last few years was Final Crisis, and if that wasn’t dark and bleak for a superhero story for a time, then I don’t know what is. And I write “for a time”, because it really was just the beginning and the middle part that was bleak. The end was a shining beacon of hope, and the hero (Superman) wins, not because he can rip someone apart with his bare hands, but because he can hope, and he knows a tune or two. It’s about the human spirit, all that is good about it. (By the way: If you enjoyed Final Crisis, you should check out the new Doctor Who, especially “Utopia”, “The Sound of Drums” and “The Last of the Time Lords”. Grant Morrison took a lot of cues from that!)
Batwoman, as seen in "Detective Comics"
Another shining beacon, this time in the art department, is Batwoman (currently in Detective Comics). JH Williams and Dave Steward KILL on every single page. But you already know that, right? That’s not what I wanted to talk about anyway. Where was I? Right, bleakness. The Heroic Age is coming, isn’t it? But that’s just a tease. The Superhuman Registration Act is still on. The Mutants are still being segregated. Kitty Pride is still fused to a bullet! We still don’t know who the Red Hulk is! (My bet: It’s Loeb. Wouldn’t that be awesome?) What I wanted to say is that The Heroic Age won’t be as heroic as Marvel wants us to believe now. It will be relatively heroic. But not heroically Heroic.
To summarize: Everything gets darker, and I don’t really like it. I have written about it before, which is funny, because I complain about things that get repeated over and over. It’s a meta-joke, that is ruined now, by me, the writer, explaining it to you, the audience. Have fun! And do read them funny books!
P.S.: On a completely unrelated note, read Phonogram! Now! It’s awesome!
Pete Schueler is currently residing in Berlin, Germany. He’s desperately trying to get his writing career somewhere. Where that is exactly, is not defined yet, but it should be somewhere where it’s visible. He’s been a comic book and pop culture geek all his life, but started reading them funny-books again on a weekly basis just three short years ago. In this time he matured from reading just DC books, to preferring mostly Indie titles. He still has a reverence for the Big Two and superheroes in general, and consumes them at a regular rate. The books, not the heroes. 
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