Today, an essay...

[seawasp]

... on Superheroes Who Should Not Be Dark, up on my website today!

Comments

[dragoness-e.livejournal.com]

Thor has an interesting dichotomy, historically: when he's on Earth playing superhero, he works best as fairly bright and upbeat, like Superman. However, when he's doing Asgardian stuff, he can get as grim as the Eddas, because he's straight out of them. Walt Simonson's epic run on Thor was pretty grim and dark for the Thor comic, but it was Norse mythic dark.

[seawasp]

I loved Simonson's run, but I didn't see it as very dark. Or rather, EVENTS could be very dark, but for the most part THOR was light, which fit with his comic book AND mythic character. Yes, the myth version sometimes tended more toward Boisterous Bruiser, but he always was generally a friend to mortals and on the side of good.

[q99.livejournal.com]

Right! Some writers think that in order to convey the weight of an event, everything around it must be dark. Which is dead wrong.