6 Reasons Watchmen Should Stay Out Of The DC Universe
5. DC Needs To Move On
If the impact on comics as a whole post-Watchmen is obvious, the impact on DC is a sledgehammer over the head. They’ve been chasing that success ever since. The ripples of Watchmen can be seen in the Death of Superman and Knightfall, where Bane broke Batman’s back, in the early nineties to the rape and murder of Sue Dibny in 2004’s Identity Crisis and the overall edginess of the New 52.
When Watchmen first came out, superheroes were easily dismissed as corny - mainly due to the influence of the 1966 Batman TV show, but they were legitimized by Moore and Gibbons. Even though superheroes had been tackling more and more adult themes since the late sixties, Watchmen codified all these elements into a story that felt completely divorced from the childish association of the past. You didn’t have to be ashamed of liking them anymore; they could be in serious literature.
Superhero comics have always had a chip on their shoulder regarding their place in the media hierarchy. Maybe it’s because so many of the early creators had failed to make it as traditional artists and writers. (Stan Lee famously created his pen name to reserve his legal name of Stanley Lieber for a legitimate writing career.) But this anxiety is shared by fans as well, especially around that time, where comic collections were secret shames for an adult to have.
With Watchmen as proof that superheroes could be dark and serious, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction with writers and artists clawing to outdo each other with more rapes, murders and gore. This is par for the course, but the spirit of DC should be more optimistic. We do not need to find out the Justice League erased Batman’s memory because he objected to magically lobotomizing Dr. Light nor do we need to see all of the Dark Knight’s friends and allies being taken down with contingency plans he made himself.
DC should not be revisiting Watchmen at this point in time. If anything, they should be trying to move away from it and its influence. People care more about Superman now than they have in years, not because he’s been made edgy and dark, but because he’s now a good husband and father. (It’s nice to see DC overcoming its allergy to married superheroes.)
Batman is far from an intensely driven loner and now closer to the Bat-family than ever. Superheroes no longer need to prove they can be serious and mature; they have to prove they can be inspirational again, pillars of hope we can look up to. Not single-minded buffoons who will fight for contrived reasons (see: Batman v. Superman).