With the upfront caveat that I may well be completely wrong or not taking something into consideration, here’s my long time theory about the effect Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns had on comics and many of the films based on those comics…

From my perspective, Watchmen and DKR were the first superhero comics that were treated like actual grown up serious stories that also sold well enough to be paid attention to in the marketplace. They were ground breaking and well crafted stories, too…

They also had a very different, more complicated take on the bright, uncomplicated superheroes that shared the shelves with those books at that time. You can read them as being more realistic takes on heroism or more cynical takes…

But I’ve long thought that because those were the books to be accepted as serious grown up comics, my generation and many creators in the generations after us equate those darker, more cynical takes with “seriousness”…

If you want your story to be taken as serious and grown up, it has to be dark and grim and cynical. Less cynical takes on superheroes are dismissed as fundamentally unserious or just for kids…

There’s a whole other discussion around Rorschach and the effect a specific reading of that character had on the characters that followed…

But I do think Watchmen and DKR cemented the idea that the only serious approach to superheroes involved everything being dark and gritty. And I think we see that reflected in a lot of the media based on comics, as well.

/End of thread