In some ways, you could argue that Alan Moore laid the foundation for this. After all, he penned some of the most acclaimed superhero comics of all time in the 1980s, stuff like The Killing Joke, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow and, of course, Watchmen, all of which offered a more mature take on classic superhero characters and tropes and got many adults excited about the medium again. But ask Moore how he feels about superhero stories now and he immediately responds with disdain. His reason? Well, it's a somewhat complex answer, but his main point seems to be that superhero fans now are just too old.
"I haven't read any superhero comics since I finished with Watchmen," Moore told The Guardian in an interview to promote his new limited comic series Fashion Beast. "I hate superheroes. I think they're abominations. They don't mean what they used to mean. They were originally in the hands of writers who would actively expand the imagination of their nine- to 13-year-old audience. That was completely what they were meant to do and they were doing it excellently. These days, superhero comics think the audience is certainly not nine to 13, it's nothing to do with them. It's an audience largely of 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-year old men, usually men. Someone came up with the term graphic novel. These readers latched on to it; they were simply interested in a way that could validate their continued love of Green Lantern or Spider-Man without appearing in some way emotionally subnormal. This is a significant rump of the superhero-addicted, mainstream-addicted audience."
So, apparently, if you're still into superheroes and you're no longer a child, you're "emotionally subnormal"? That seems to be what Moore's saying. And he goes on to address the continued success of superhero movies, noting that the genre has gone beyond its supposed purpose, with "alarming" results.
"I don't think the superhero stands for anything good," Moore said. "I think it's a rather alarming sign if we've got audiences of adults going to see the Avengers movie and delighting in concepts and characters meant to entertain the 12-year-old boys of the 1950s."
