Seeking color amid the darkness and grit

My daughter and I were talking about comics last night, as we tend to do. The particular occasion this time was a nasty, nihilistic bit of business called Wanted, by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, which she and I had read over the break. Yes, we understood that it was supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum version of the “dark/gritty” trend in the last couple of decades in comics — note that the supervillains wipe out the heroes in 1986, the year of Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. However, this was another case of “What’s that stuff above the subtext? Oh yeah… the text.” And honestly, I didn’t see any pleasure in the book — it wasn’t as vile as the Saw movies, but that’s not exactly high praise, and even that’s mainly because Wanted was shorter.

So the Spawn and I were talking about it, and she said something I thought was interesting. “I get the whole dark and gritty thing,” she said, “and in some comics, it’s OK — I mean, X-Men can apparently die as many times as Mario. But shouldn’t somebody be doing bright, fun things, too?” She went on to tell me that when she gets into the business, she thinks there ought to be room for superhero comics that make people happy.

In a way, this reminds me of the conversations she and I have had about her reading for school, where the young adult books seem obsessed with racism, poverty, and sexual abuse in various combinations. Yes, all those things are in the world, but so is goodness, and so is justice, and so is love, even if we don’t see as much of those as we like. But if we don’t even make room for those better things in our imaginations — even in our comics, what are the chances of trying to bring them into the world? Again, think of C. S. Lewis’s comment that the people most likely to oppose “escapist” fiction are jailers. What we’re seeing isn’t realism — it’s despair, and the Spawn wants something more than that. And I guess her dad does as well.