"Maybe it's just me, but I'm not crazy about super hero stories where everything's all dark and moody. Personally, I like the ones where good guys fight giant apes on the moon and stuff. Remember those? That was back when comic book worlds were places you wanted to escape to - not from." - GLA #2

I've got a lot of sympathy for poor Squirrel Girl, a cheerful character trapped in a world - or, more accurately, a marketplace - that thinks raping C-list supporting characters is a good idea for a crossover. It's been a tough twenty years for the likes of her, ever since grim and gritty became fashionable, and the superhero genre shifted into its permanent adolescent angst phase.

Mind you, I draw the line at the bloody giant apes. The giant apes are a bizarre nostalgia fetish among a certain brand of DC fan, though admittedly they're an in-your-face embodiment of the days when superhero comics were prepared to embrace any idea, no matter how stupid. In fact, to judge from the simians, the stupider the better. Nonetheless, when you see a giant ape in a comic today - especially a DC comic - it's not there to be a fabulous, crazy idea. It's there to remind you of how you felt when you read an earlier story where somebody actually had a fabulous, crazy idea.

And of course, there are more than just two options for superhero comics. They don't have to do clodhopping angst ad nauseam, but there are other alternatives besides simply being a Silver Age re-enactment society.

'The superhero genre is in a permanent adolescent angst phase.' There is a basic problem with most of these modern superhero misery epics. And the problem is not simply that they're downbeat. Downbeat can work. Some of the most influential superhero comics of the last few decades have been downbeat. That's why people make so bloody many of them. No, the misery is not, as such, the problem. The problem is pretentiousness.

The traditional, generic, happy-go-lucky Silver Age superhero comic was vacuous entertainment. And this was fine, because it was happy, and shiny, and throwaway, and intended to be so. They spawned a raft of imitators based on the basic idea that superhero fantasy worlds were, essentially, quite good fun. Of course, it's not the only approach to superhero characters, and it's perfectly possible to do intelligent, darker stories with them.

Just as bad artists imitate the superficial style of a better artist but miss the fundamentals, bad writers do the same. As a result, we seem to have ended up with an unspoken assumption among many writers and readers that downbeat and grim equals intelligent and somewhat deep. It doesn't. But merely adopting that style gives a book the impression of a depth it simply doesn't have. It's a bit like teenagers wearing black.

There is nothing clever or adult, let alone anything remotely deep or insightful, in the mere act of writing stories about dark or miserable things. All that that demonstrates is that you know such things exist. Depth comes in how you write about them. That's the bit that most stories miss out.

Let's take, as a particularly good recent example, rape. Rape is the lazy writer's friend. It's dark, so it must be meaningful. It's slightly transgressive, so it must be grown up. It's deeply distressing for the victim, and nothing says "depth" like intense emotion. Even better, the mere use of the concept is sufficient to drag in a load of borrowed associations that give the superficial impression that something remarkable is actually being said. There are several writers out there who fall back on it so frequently that they should be sending royalty cheques to the local prison.

'Writers assume that downbeat and grim equals intelligent and deep.' Of course, it's entirely possible to write with depth and intelligence about rape. The point is that so few writers bother. It's ceased to be a crime and become shorthand for horrible things. We've been here before with child abuse. There was a time when a child abuse story was a remarkable and special event, to be handled with sensitivity and treated as a big issue. Often this meant clodhopping after-school special stories, but at least the intent was there. But soon enough, it just became the lazy writer's way of giving depth to villains. The apparent emotional impact of these stories actually stems from our existing emotional reaction to something the writer happens to have mentioned.

Mentioning a big issue is not the same as dealing with it. The fact that terrible things happen in the world is not an insight into the human condition. Still less is it any kind of insight that people are miserable when bad things happen to them. This doesn't stop people trying to pretend otherwise, though.

Comics are hardly unique in this. Indie cinema is full of dreadful films based around the principle that misery is somehow clever. The inexplicably acclaimed WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE is basically an entire film based on the tediously banal insight that it would be very depressing if everything in your life went wrong. It's vacuous nonsense. It's my least favourite film of all time, not because it's miserable, but because it's so obviously convinced that it's saying something clever. It is insufferably pretentious.

And this is what lies at the heart of so many recent stories, and what makes them so annoying. They carry themselves like events. They hold themselves out as artistically inclined. They pummel you with depression and misery in the apparent conviction that this is something clever. But ultimately they have nothing to say. They're hollow and empty, and only pretending to be something more.

Not every story has to be clever or deep. That isn't the point. The point is that if I want to read something lightweight and pointless, I'd rather read the Silver Age story that has fun in the process than read the 2005 mega-event that persists in trying to pretend that it's art. If you're going to be stupid, do it properly. Looking clever and being dumb is not a good combination.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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