Terrence R. Wandtke

In The Dark Night Returns: The Contemporary Resurgence of Crime Comics, Terrence R. Wandtke examines modern crime comics, arguing, “Flouting the freedom from Comics Code restrictions on the presentation of profanity, violence, and sex, these contemporary crime comics push the envelope further than before. In some cases, this may bring up questions about their gratuity and male-oriented sexism, but their intentional excesses may also point to a self-conscious subversion of culture” (pg. xvi). Terming these works “comics noir,” he links them to post-industrial fears in the late twentieth century. Wandtke examines the work of Dean Motter, Howard Chaykin, Frank Miller, Brian Michael Bendis, Brian Azzarello, and Ed Brubaker.
Beginning with the crime comics that led to the Comics Code, Wandtke identifies four themes that distinguished crime comics from other stories: “first, crime comics explored moral problems through stories depicting violence with new standards of narrative and graphic realism”… “second, crime comics presented true stories, shaped by a particular perspective toward the truth and reality itself”… “third, crime comics revised the optimistic view of the modern city and, like pulp fiction, replaced the optimism with a fearful worldview that saw ‘silent menace’ everywhere”… and “fourth, crime comics fought a battle with social, political, and industry-based prohibitions, establishing themselves as outlaws like the criminals in crime fiction” (pg. 25). Like others who examined the late 1970s through the 1990s in comics, Wandtke links the reemergence of genres beyond the superhero with an increasingly older readership and the development of the direct market for comic sales and distribution (pg. 32). While some, like Professor Benjamin Demott, attempted to follow in Fredric Wertham’s footsteps and link the new crime comics with psychological issues, cultural guardians were more focused on new forms of media, such as video games and music videos (pg. 49-50).
Wandtke acknowledges that Miller’s run on Daredevil and his Dark Knight Returns imbued the superhero genre with a nihilistic sense of violence, but he attributes this to the incorporation of noir tropes within the superhero story (pg. 77). Examining the industry itself, Wandtke writes, “As the audience for comic books shrunk further [following the market bust of the 1990s], old and new publishers became more careful with their commitments to new creators, and whatever spirit of risk had been part of the direct market was lost” (pg. 102). Further, the popularity of work like Miller’s and its “critical acclaim led DC, the darling of the Comics Code era, to put out an imprint in their adult-oriented Vertigo line exclusively devoted to crime. From 2001, most comic book publishers were abandoning the review of the Comics Magazine Association of America entirely as the comic book readership skewed much older. The public image at large and Congress had turned its fears of new media (and their own children) to the newer scapegoats of popular music in 1980s and video games in the 1990s” (pg. 102). Wandtke concludes, “Crime comics offer a much less optimistic view than that presented by people invested in morally questionable benefits of industrial and post-industrial culture; crime comics offer a nuanced criticism of society that can never be appreciated by those who see thoughtful questions and criticism as un-American activity” (pg. 146).… (más)