I think that you can tell dark, dystopic superhero stories that are full of gloom and ultimately are tragedies. I think you can tell those stories if you’re highly skilled at it. I’m not saying those stories shouldn’t exist, but from my perspective, superheroes were not created to tell those kinds of stories. Superheroes to me are always about hope and always about inspiration, and I think that I never intended for “Irredeemable” to be a book where the end note was just bleak and depressing and not life-affirming in some way. I just don’t think I have it in me to write something like that about superheroes.

That’s Mark Waid, talking about the end of Irredeemable, his Boom! Studios series that I once likened to Battlestar Galactica in terms of the constant tone of “Oh, you think things are bad now…? Just wait.” I completely agree about what superheroes are “about,” but find myself wondering just how out of step that is with current mainstream superhero tastes, especially considering that most superheroes now don’t have an end-point, which means their entire existence can be “Even more things go wrong!” second act…

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2012 at 8:30 am and is filed under Creators, Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.