Grumpy Old Fan | Who won the '80s?

Grumpy Old Fan | Who won the '80s?

Where the over-people gather to watch big-screen botanical throwdowns

A couple of weeks ago, I wondered whether we could trace the entire sidekick-derived wing of DC's superhero-comics history back to Bill Finger. Today I'm less interested in revisiting that question ' although I will say Robin the Boy Wonder also owes a good bit to Jerry Robinson and Bob Kane ' than using it as an example.

Specifically, this week's question has nagged me for several years (going back to my TrekBBS days, even), and it is this: as between Alan Moore and the duo of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, who has been a bigger influence on DC's superhero books?

As the post title suggests, we might reframe this as 'who won the '80s,' since all three men came to prominence at DC in that decade. Wolfman and Pérez's New Teen Titans kicked off with a 16-page story in DC Comics Presents #26 (cover-dated October 1980), with the series' first issue following the next month. Moore's run on (Saga of the) Swamp Thing started with January 1984's issue #20, although the real meat of his work started with the seminal issue #21. Wolfman and Pérez's Titans collaboration lasted a little over four years, through February 1985's Tales of the Teen Titans #50 and New Teen Titans vol. 2 #5. Moore wrote Swamp Thing through September 1987's #64, and along the way found time in 1986-87 for a little-remembered twelve-issue series called Watchmen. After their final Titans issues, Wolfman and Pérez also produced a 12-issue niche-appeal series of their own, 1984-85's Crisis On Infinite Earths.* The trio even had some common denominators: Len Wein edited both Titans and Watchmen (and Barbara Randall eventually succeeded him on both), and Gar Logan's adopted dad Steve Dayton was friends with John Constantine.

If Titans and Crisis versus Swamp Thing and Watchmen were the whole tale of the tape, it'd probably be enough ' but of course it isn't. Moore also wrote one of the definitive Superman stories, 'For The Man Who Has Everything' (1985's Superman Annual #11), an even-more-definitive Joker story, 1988's The Killing Joke, and 1986's elegaic 'Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?'  Later in 1986, Wolfman literally helped redefine Superman with twelve issues' worth of The Adventures of Superman (plus a big role in the conception of post-Crisis Lex Luthor), while Pérez (with writers Greg Potter and Len Wein) relaunched Wonder Woman.

Of course, Crisis facilitated the changes to Superman and Wonder Woman (and, not incidentally, helped make 'Whatever Happened'?' possible). It also allowed Wolfman and Pérez to depict Wally West's graduation from sidekick to headliner, as he took over the role of the Flash from his late uncle. Not quite two years before, the duo showed Dick Grayson similarly giving up his Robin identity for the long pants and disco collar of Nightwing; and as the '80s drew to a close, Wolfman and Pérez (with artist Jim Aparo) would introduce the third Robin, Tim Drake, in the Batman/Titans crossover 'A Lonely Place of Dying.'

Accordingly, we might see this question in terms of quantity versus quality. While Wolfman and Pérez left their rejuvenative fingerprints on a multitude of DC's characters (not to mention the underlying cosmology), Moore infused the relatively-few characters he wrote with new sensibilities and fresh perspectives.

However, I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. New Teen Titans was a superhero soap opera, compared virtually from the start to Uncanny X-Men, but it was an extremely well-done soap opera. Simmering subplots like Starfire's confrontation with her diabolical sister, and the year-long buildups to 'The Judas Contract' and Donna's wedding, demonstrated the eventual emotional wallops that monthly comics could produce. Likewise, no discussion of Moore's work is complete without mentioning the hidden depths he found in Swamp Thing and Watchmen's Charlton-derived creations.**

Instead, in gross terms I believe the difference between Moore and Wolfman/Pérez is one of direction. Although Wolfman and Pérez did a lot to update, 'modernize,' and otherwise develop their characters organically, basically their approach was conservative, in order that those characters could still function as familiar going concerns. Even Dick's and Wally's graduations, progressive as they were at the time, came out of more practical needs. The Bat-books and Titans each wanted Dick/Robin for different purposes, and separating Dick from his original alter ego made both sides happy. Conversely, Wolfman and Pérez never quite knew what to do with the ultra-powerful Kid Flash, so in Titans' first three years they made him a reluctant hero (who'd actually retired upon his graduation from high school), revealed that his speed was killing him, and had him quit the team. Fortuitously, Crisis cured him, depowered him sufficiently, and gave him a new reason (honoring his uncle) to be a superhero.

With Swamp Thing and Watchmen, though, Moore pretty much blew up familiar status quos in order to take his characters into uncharted territory. Even his depiction of the Justice League, in Swamp Thing #24, was nontraditional, among other things describing the JLA Satellite as 'a house above the world where the over-people gather.' Moore had Swampy fight Batman and Luthor, but he also took the character into space and across dimensions. Obviously he had to have both character and book continue uninterrupted, but apart from that Swamp Thing's narrative range expanded dramatically.

And then, of course, Watchmen blew up superhero comics themselves.

Now, at this point I suspect some of you may be wondering where a certain ex-Daredevil writer/artist fits into our DC-1980s retrospective. Somewhere between, I'd say; maybe closer to Moore than to Wolfman/Pérez, but maybe not as close as you'd think. Frank Miller's Dark Knight and (with artist David Mazzucchelli, naturally) 'Batman: Year One' set a new standard for Batman stories, just as Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams had done fifteen years before. I don't include Miller with Moore or Wolfman/Pérez because he didn't do a lot of Batman ' four 48-page issues of Dark Knight and four 23-page issues of Batman ' but pretty much instantly he became the main influence on the character for at least the next decade.

More generally, Dark Knight and Watchmen were a one-two punch in favor of ' well, hyper-violent, grim 'n' gritty superhero comics. Dark Knight especially showed how a well-known character like Batman could be revitalized through such an approach, and not long after Mike Grell was using the hyper-violent Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters as the pilot for a gritter, grimmer GA ongoing series.

Nevertheless, as prevalent as it was, grim 'n' gritty didn't become ubiquitous across DC's superhero line. Pérez's Wonder Woman, Mike Baron and Butch Guice's Flash, and the Keith Giffen/J.M. DeMatteis/Kevin Maguire Justice League International each had distinctly different tones, as did the biggest post-Crisis relaunch, John Byrne's Superman.

I mention the Byrne Superman in this context largely because it was seen as evidence of DC's 'Marvelization.' In 1986 Byrne came to DC fresh from an extended, well-received run on Fantastic Four, just as Wolfman and Pérez had started New Teen Titans following their own well-regarded Marvel work. Titans might have been DC's response to the success of X-Men; but it was also seen as a 'Marvel-style' superhero soap, driven more by raw emotion than by fidelity to some square Silver Age ideal. Similarly, Marvel's tighter continuity (and lack of reliance on an allegedly convoluted Multiverse) helped justify Crisis' cosmic housecleaning.*** Add in Miller, doing for Batman what he'd done for Daredevil, and a pattern starts to form.

Even so, I believe Moore's contributions to DC's tonal palette have surpassed Wolfman and Pérez's. The duo might have taken DC further down the road to Marvel-style storytelling, but the publisher had been on that road for a while already. After all, writers like Gerry Conway and Steve Englehart had similarly crossed over in the '70s. Moore's success helped start a 'British invasion' of writers and artists, leading eventually to the likes of Neil Gaiman on Sandman and Grant Morrison on Doom Patrol, Animal Man, and JLA.

In short, even though Wolfman and Pérez were wildly successful in their own right, Alan Moore's influence led to the creation of a whole new line of comics. Moreover, the Vertigo style bled back into the superhero line, both in the '90s with JLA and James Robinson's Starman scripts, and today in its own corner of the New 52.

This topic definitely deserves more space than I can give it today, but for now I'm content to give Moore the edge over Wolfman/Pérez. Tonight I will sleep just a bit more soundly ' that is, if I don't start thinking about Len Wein'.

++++++++++++

* [Moore also pitched a line-wide crossover, the dystopian-future Twilight of the Superheroes, but for various reasons it was never produced.]

** [Let me be clear: the phrase 'Charlton-derived' is used solely for shorthand, and is in no way intended to diminish Moore's role in creating the world of Watchmen. I'm not getting into that fight here.]

*** [In fact, a letter to the Wolfman-written Green Lantern, which confused Magneto with Dr. Polaris, helped get Wolfman thinking about streamlining DC's continuity.]

• May 24, 2012 @ 04:00 PM by Tom Bondurant
• Tagged: Alan Moore, Batman, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, comic books, Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC Comics, Frank Miller, George Perez, grumpy old fan, John Byrne, Marv Wolfman, marvel comics, new teen titans, Nightwing, robin, superman, swamp thing, The Flash, Vertigo, watchmen, Wonder Woman

10 Comments

You know, this has quickly become my favorite CBR series. It certainly helps that you're a huge old-school DC fan (and by that, I mean you know about stuff from before the 2000s, something I can't say about a lot of the self-professed DC fans I meet). Also, I like your long articles, where usually I'm not, but there's something about your style; I think it's the dense information and objective analytic approach you take to superhero comics, a rare mix. Keep up the good work!

I respect the literary tranformation that Alan Moore ushered into the entire comics industry with his work on Swamp Thing and Watchmen. But the fact is, Marv Wolfman & George Perez were the creative team that transformed DC as a company and saved them from financial ruin after the infamous DC Implosion in the late 70s.

The #1 smash hit success of New Teen Titans gave DC a gigantic influx of cash that they desperately needed. Outside of Mike Grell's The Warlord, DC hadn't had a big hit book in years. Marvel's sales lead on DC was so obscenely large that rumors were rampant that Marvel was considering buying DC outright in the early Eighties. There is even the letter from Jim Shooter that I believe was featured on Bleeding Cool in the last 9 months where a deal was being negotiated for Marvel to license about a dozen of DC biggest properties. The failure of that deal precipitated a project to save DC and make it more accessible'and that was Crisis On Infinite Earths.

New Teen Titans rocketed to #1 and its mammoth sales success gave DC a ton of money to go out and lure creators like Frank Miller (who took leave of Daredevil to do Ronin at DC'3 years before Dark Knight) away from Marvel as well as new talent like Brian Bolland and Alan Moore. It was COIE that took the foundation for a new DC created by Wolfman & Perez's Titans and exploited the hell out of it by setting up groundbreaking runs like John Byrne's Superman, Perez's Wonder Woman, Miller's Batman and the very successful relaunch of Justice League the year after that.

Everything Marv and George did with NTT, COIE and WW gave DC the resources to survive and then thrive like never before. New books and new franchises began spinning out of a reborn DC saved and revitalized by the work of Wolfman & Perez: Batman And The Outsiders, successful relaunches of both Swamp Thing and Firestorm, Infinity Inc (the book that launched Todd McFarlane), the surprise hit Amethyst, cult favorite Blue Devil, Watchmen, Dark Knight, Batman: Year One, A Lonely Place Of Dying, et cetera. All of those projects were only possible because of the financial windfall brought on by the work of Wolfman & Perez.

Let's not forget that Wolfman & Perez also managed to double Robin as a profitable property by spinning Dick Grayson off into the very popular Nightwing while simultaneously allowing DC to continue making money off of Robin. Thus giving them 2 franchise characters for the price of 1.

The list of positive changes and commercial & critical successes brought on at DC by Marv and George transformed DC as a company, but also comics as an industry. DC was the company that instituted a ROYALTY PROGRAM for creators in 1982 because of sales on New Teen Titans. A month or two later, Marvel's Jim Shooter followed suit and instituted their own version of that. The whole reason DC and Marvel even have royalties for creators is all because of what Wolfman & Perez accomplished at DC.

Moore gets the literary cred as a great writer who helped transform the understanding of comics as literature for the whole industry. But if it weren't for Marv & George's revival of DC as a company, there wouldn't have been a DC Comics to hire Moore and give him the launchpad to do all that he did.

I'd toss in one more name: Paul Levitz. His success on Legion (well, successes; two separate runs) led him to the top job at DC for decades, where he made a LOT of great things happen.

I think one simple thing: all of you are right. It was ALL of those creators' efforts in this time that brought DC back to prominence'you can't seriously isolate all the credit on one writer/artist.

!980's was the the decade that I amassed ton and ton of DC comics as never before.

Ditto for Marvel, Independents and those unforgettable Warren magazine titles.

Thank you to those editors, writers and artists who brought me and many other fans (like me and this well regarded, Grumpy Old Fan) out of their buying slumps.

I can't say the same thing right know. My comic book buying habit is at its lowest level ever, averaging no more than 20, even 15 titles a month, sometimes even less.

Very interesting piece and very meaty. Definitely deserves multiple posts. Depending on which angle you want to look at this could go either way. Overall I believe Moore's, to date, the greatest and most important writer to the medium but It's hard for me to flat out say that he was more important to DC than Perez/Wolfman especially after considering the information that @Flashpoint bought up.

I would suggest that the sucess of Wolfman Perez led to the revitalisation of the WHOLE DC Line that helped bring alan to the forefront'.. for all intents and purposes Wolfman and Perez on Titans [ and Livitz and Giffen on Legion led to the company taking chances with Alan Moore in Swamp Thing and other titles.

While Moore on Swamp Thing led to a line of comics '. Wolfman and Perez led to the series of event that helped redefine DC.. all those miriad of titles in the 1986-1989 period which many feel is the pinacle of the DC climb were not due to Moore but to Wolfman and Perez'. Moore may have won the early 90's in that regard but those super-heroes titles owed more to Wolfman and Perez.

That you had to even explain the Watchmen discussion's Charlton-derived comment just goes to show how stupid that argument even is. Pre-Before Watchmen, the characters were always based on Peacemaker, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, etc. Post-BW and suddenly you have to walk on eggshells for the same comparison. Bull.

Alan Moore is a Master' but in my opinion Wolfman & Pérez are the 'Lennon & McCartney' of the DCU.

Wolfman and Perez are the Wolfman and Perez of DC. Their Teen Titans run was normal super-hero stuff just right for the times. It was an enjoyable read, and I'll probably never read it again.

Alan Moore? Boggles the mind. I've read some of his stories three or four times (including the Watchmen) and would like to read them again. His best work is Timeless. Even writing super-heroes, Alan Moore transcends genre.

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