They always used to say that Superman and Batman were eternally 29 years old, and always in their absolute prime. Old enough to have some experience in life, and the small wisdoms that come with it, but still capable of the most outstanding physical feats.
It's still probably just a coincidence that I really started to sour on superhero comics at the same age. I didn't really go off them just because I was older than Bruce Wayne now. It was because Identity Crisis came out when I was 29.
I had been a full-time American superhero nerd for more than two decades at that point, and was deeply invested in all the lore. While the sheer amount of stuff being produced meant I was slowly falling behind on the various continuities, I still loved all that goofy and soaring super-shit.
Even in the late nineties, it felt like there were some real possibilities for the long-running superhero sagas. Marvel and DC had both crashed hard from the amphetamine highs of the early 90s, and were almost totally wrecked, which is where you start to get all the interesting stuff.
At Marvel, there was an unlikely hero in Joe Quesada, who proved to be a better businessman than penciller - and he was a fucking great penciller! - and was about to take things to the next level as editor in chief, with the mind-blowing notion of letting great creators go crazy on these characters before they got stale.
At DC, they were flailing around for a new direction - I still think there were three main choices between Waid, Morrison and Johns, and they went with the Johns, which always tasted a bit too mean for my liking, with the naked sentimentality mixing uneasily with the limb-shredding super carnage. If you're going to be nasty, be nasty, don't try to mix it with the hopeless optimism of the superhero.
So it wasn't really a surprise when Identity Crisis came along, and did a 'Everything You Know About Those Goofy Fucking Justice League Comics Is Wrong, Because There Was Loads Of Rape and Mind-Wiping Going On Between The Fights Against The Fucking Shaggy Man', and in righteous hindsight, I have to say that soured things forever.
It wasn't just that they were trying to put the grossest shit on characters that were really not built for it, or because it had all the worst kinds of revisionist tendencies, shitting on the innocent original series and tainting them with that stink forever more, without really saying anything new.
It was because DC were so goddamn enthusiastic about it, and so pleased with it, and that this was the sort of thing they would be doing for years to come. Ham-fisted mining of childhood delights, instead of forging into the new. And fuck you, if you liked it when Elongated Man wriggled his nose.
I have no idea what the real status of the DC universe is any more, or if Identity Crisis still counts, I think there have been at least five reboots since then, so who knows? I do like stories that are ultra grim and serious and intense and all that, but that isn't what I want from superhero comics. took me three decades to get there, but I got there.
Also, when I turned 29 I got a proper career that I still deeply love, and a beautiful wife who has given me all the greatest things in my life, and with all that going on, who really has time to worry about super heroes crying in the rain?
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