Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete literally translates to something like "I Admire Magical Girls". That's not an improper description of this show, but i applaud whatever genius saw the vision and localized it as "Gushing Over Magical Girls." it's one of the most accurate pun-titles ever; when she's not fangirling out, Hiiragi Utena is losing gallons to the sadistic attacks of whatever tentacle monster she's cooked up that week. Strong premise ! We love girls who are perverts in this house. Of course the show has something more complex to say about shame and self discovery, with Utena able to reach a higher power level by accepting her kinky side, but that doesn't take away from how damn charming she is in that journey. At first, i read this as a good fanservice show, but not a good magical girl show; i retract that. It's not so much a porn "parody" as it is a love letter to the genre that describes exactly what the author would like to do to it. It's got Precure levels of creativity in the "everyday objects turned into monsters" department, and the battles are, while not as well animated, certainly plenty well-drawn where it counts. The battles are fanservicey to the point of being pornographic and in that display an excellent sense of pacing–tension building and climax, if you will–that apply to making both action and "action" exciting onscreen. And in the end, it's a good magical girl show in being a genuinely shameless story about,dealing with new emotions or stronger combinations of familiar feelings. Excitement blends with moe-moe; it's about "what makes your heart race" either way you look at it, and genre conventions tell us that exact sense of overwhelming emotion is the source of magical girls' powers. Magia Azure's line in Episode 13 sums it up best: "It's horrific, twisted, and dangerous, but still, it is love." Out of context, it reads like something CLAMP could have written (take a shot for me mentioning them); in context, its part of her flowery metaphor for the sex battle she's about to engage in.
But enough about the actual show. It kind of connects a lot with something i've been thinking about with regards to comic book superheroes, mostly from Marvel and DC, which makes sense because i think those characters fill a similar place in my life as Tres Magica do to Hiiragi Utena's. In comics of the 70's and 80's, if there was a character in a comic book dressed in subcultural fashions– particularly anything punk, goth or even remotely kinky, they were the bad guy. Think about Mindboggler from Firestorm, Daredevil's foe (later-turned-sometime-ally) Typhoid Mary, Callisto from the X-Men comics, or Sue Storm's evil alter ego Malice. They're all pretty one-note, right ? They have strong visual characterization, but it's so strong that it reads entirely differently depending if you're a corporate suit scared stiff of the changing fashions on the street down outside your office building or if you're a normal person who has a moe for tight leather outfits. A lot of these once-one-off characters garnered enough fans of their own or at least were important enough in the minds of enough people, to show up in subsequent books like Suicide Squad, and adaptations like the Fantastic Four cartoon or Marvel Rivals. There's obvious appeal there, so it'd make sense for publishers to try and incorporate edgier fashions into their heroes, even if the creatives and certainly the shot-callers in comics of that time were so disconnected from what any of it stood for that it was kinda doomed to fail.
For one example, Storm swapped her superhero costume for a punk-style outfit after stabbing Callisto, the leader of the Morlocks, who are a group of mutants literally being hunted by humans under threat of death. It's one of those more-common-than-you'd-like arcs that X-Men fans will just kinda pretend doesn't exist to protect their image of "what the X-Men mean"; it, and this costume in particular, is kinda emblematic of one of the reasons i don't really resonate with X-Men books very much. There's a lot of posturing about being the outsiders while also, for want of a better word, policing any mutant more "outsider" than the heroes, and i wouldn't care so much if the public consensus about the X-Men weren't so contingent on their service as sociopolitical allegory. Everyone says "i like the X-Men because they're the heroes for people who don't fit in," but a lot of the time, they just go beat up on mutants who fit in less than they do, and the other half of the time they grandstand about how that's wrong when humans do it. In this arc, its so severe that even Nightcrawler makes note of it in the story, which makes sense given that in his first appearance–his first panels even–he was also hunted by humans enraged at the fact of his difference. Even then, though, as much as i clearly agree with Nightcrawler's critique, it's interesting that the story only can call Storm's actions into question after she puts on the villain's costume; after she rubs her dominant victory in Callisto's face in a famously sexually charged sequence of panels. It's meant to signal to the reader that Storm is now, on an essential level, less compassionate, less forgiving, and less willing to look for a peaceful solution. In doing so it seemingly seeks to absolve the rest of the X-Men (who were following her orders pre-costume change) for those same behaviors, their same inaction to help mutants literally being hunted for sport–all while casting Storm as the only responsible party. Like yes, i understand that it's very hard to know to help people who are intentionally hiding themselves away, but they managed to find the Morlocks well enough to go beat them up, so it really calls their priorities into question. i don't think Magneto was right, but as for the X-Men of this time, he certainly wasn't incorrect.
The other possible exception is Ghost Rider, who was as much an homage to biker culture as to larger-than-life stuntmen, and even then his powers were explicitly demonic in origin, marking him as more of a classical anti-hero than the edgy morally grey kind that phrase usually evokes in a comic book context. You could make the same argument for Blade, being a daywalker, but his original design was just kinda what you'd expect a vampire hunter blending in to the 1970's to wear. Stylish, but not edgy, and colored variably purple-and-green or in era-appropriate earth tones, at least in his appearances outside of the black-and-white Tomb of Dracula title. i wouldn't count Blade in the visually "edgy" category until his 1992 redesign in Ghost Rider no. 28 at the very earliest. That's the first time i could find him wearing any kind of leather jacket over an all-black getup. Over the next few titles, it would go on to gain spikes and lose them before dropping to the floor-length duster made famous in the 1998 Blade film around the time of that movie's release.
So, really, it wasn't until the unfairly-named "Dark Age" of comics, particularly the 90's, that things started to change. Sure, it might have been a big shift all at once, but it had been building. The 80's were a far more conservative time in comics than people like to remember. Everyone tells themself something like Watchmen, a social satire written my an outspoken anarchist, is the emblematic comic of the decade, but just a few years earlier, John Byrne got his grubby mitts on both Superman and Fantastic Four. Both those books were emblematic of the beginnings of the Golden and Silver ages of comics, respectively, and as historically important titles, it's not unfair to use them to mark the sea changes. For years after the fact Superman, the most iconic superhero of all time, was saddled with the effect of Byrne's grievances overshadowing any love or respect for the character. It's a lot more of an insult to Superman as a character to retcon Jor and Lara-El's hope for him away into hope for the Kryptonian Birth Matrix to not fuck up while 3-D printing their son on American soil (and to remove the immigration allegory in the origin of a character created by two immigrants) than to have him grow out his hair and put on a different suit for a few issues. Ditto with breaking up Ben Grimm and Alicia Masters to put her with the Human Torch, of all people. Quite frankly replacing any member of the F4 for any amount of time draws one's credentials for writing that book into question, but especially replacing Ben, who was by all accounts an incredibly personal creation of Jack Kirby's, with She-Hulk, who was created solely to ensure IP ownership, really comes across as ignorant to the history of the title. At best. The Fantastic Four are special among hero teams, in that before they're superheroes or scientists, they're a family. You can't just replace one of them.
People make jokes about "black leather everything", straps n' pouches, or Spawn's corset, but that stuff is aiming for "cool" and it hits. At least, it hits a lot harder than the shallow judgements made by celebrated writers like Claremont and Byrne. But its not just design sense that makes this era more artistically interesting than any before it. Artists like Jim Lee and even the oft-(fairly)-criticized Rob Liefeld were taking stylistic influences from manga, using techniques like crosshatching in ways i've rarely seen in American comics from before then. There was also a real focus on creative panel layouts, which the way i read them allows for a really interesting sense of dramatic pacing, in a way that allows the artist to be more deliberate. And Even when there wasn't some dark, edgy redesign at play, Jim Lee–and his contemporaries– took a granular approach to detail that brought so much more gravity to a not-unfamiliar level of angst for superhero comics. He and McFarlane (one of the artists told by editorial to copy Lee's style) just draw so damn well it's hard for me not to get invested instantly, especially in a desert of comics that feel like they have something–anything–for me, besides maybe identifiability with the image of the villain. The fact both creators' own books are stories of people who don't fit in with society, don't dress like they're trying to be seen as heroes, but still get to be the main character... it's always been more interesting to me. Mostly because it's cool; or specifically, because its someone else who recognizes that edgy anti-heroes are, in fact, cool and awesome to read about. i touched on this earlier talking about why i'm so harsh on the X-Men in particular, but there's a definite difference in expectations between a morality play and something more like a character study. In presenting characters that are less of a straightforward moral example, many comics from this era live up to Watchmen's deconstructive precedent more than some would like to admit, while themselves not being deconstructions. And y'know... if everyone who read Watchmen only permitted themself to take influence from it if they came to the same hardline conclusion Alan Moore does, they would have stopped making comics, which would have erased its influence entirely. The only way forward was walking a line both between and beyond good and evil.
It's a good thing that kind of nuance lends itself to such damn cool characters and designs. Chains, spikes, black leather. Giant shoulder pads and countless utility pouches and buckles. Every design was a story itself–my first impressions of characters like Grifter of the Wildcats were from pictures in guidebooks but i got such a clear picture of them. Just the image lit my imagination up like diamonds in the sun. It's hard for me to even imagine having to point out. Like, yeah, Connie Kent's leather jacket is awesome, the sky is blue. This design sense was something new for comic book heroes and clearly posed a threat to the established order of comics, which. In embracing the grungy real world and influence from a variety of sources, artists like Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee held up a mirror to the unquestioned presumptions surrounding what a hero can look like. And to be fair, it was popular at first. Jim Lee's X-Men is still the best-selling comic of all time, Spawn and the rest of the Image starting line sold gangbusters. Variant covers abounded as tourists flocked to comic shops hoping to score an investment piece, and left disappointed they couldn't cash out their hollow collections. As with all bubbles, it popped. People soured on these titles–maybe on their artistic merits, maybe because they never liked comics in the first place until they could sell them–but it was and still is very angry and dismissive in a way i genuinely struggle to comprehend. Frankly that makes me feel more of a kinship with this era, its angsty outsider heroes. At least, that's how you can tell they were truly edgy–on the cutting edge. Doing something right to move the medium forward. The old guard is still bleeding about it today, as they have been for some time.
DC's Kingdom Come (1996) is an awful comic book, but it helped me codify this theory in its fear-unto-literal-demonization of change. The thesis of the book is that all these terrible awful grimdark edgy anti-heroes are poisoning the public's morality because they dress mean and have scary names, and its up to our retirement-age Justice League to go herd them into a camp. In the end, Superman and the rest of Mark Waid/Alex Ross' Golden Age spankbank all either win or (gag) valiantly sacrifice themselves, the survivors are enshrined as dictators by virtue of, seemingly, nothing more than super-strength, and no one cares. Out of universe, because it felt like "how it should be", and in-universe, because Superman wears bright colors and sells burgers with his faces on them. It's beyond parody. And yet i'm supposed to believe that this book is the less mean-spirited "alternative" to the stories of damaged people in dark costumes trying and sometimes failing to do the right thing ? It's defined by its closed-mindedness, its shallow judgement of visual presentation as the beginning and end of morality, but it doesn't try to challenge people's preconceptions, so it's critically acclaimed. The Injustice continuity draws explicit parallels between itself and Kingdom Come, and while i don't think those games offer a particularly interesting narrative either, they draw plenty of warranted criticism for their shallow attempts at edginess. i don't see Kingdom Come receiving nearly so critical a read, which baffles me given the vast gulf in intent between a fightan game excuse plot and the earnestly presented thesis statement of a prestige graphic novel illustrated in gouache paintings and written with literary aspirations.
Ultimately though, i come down on Kingdom Come about as harshly as i can. It's so moralizing and so bad at it. Like i said, i think the truth about maturity and superhero comics is more nuanced than Watchmen would have you believe, but if ever there were evidence for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' theory, it'd be Mark Waid's clumsy attempts at commentary, which really do come across as critically hobbled by his point of view being so downstream of hero-worship. Public opinion on Kingdom Come being stronger than on something like the aforementioned Injustice continuity is largely arbitrary from where i'm standing and does not endear me to it any more. If i had to summarize it, DC's Kingdom Come is the same rant you've heard aging comic book guys yell at clouds for the last 20 years with some really technically beautiful but poorly composed art by Alex Ross, who proved here his style is best served to the variant cover mines. At the end of the day, though, i can't fault people for enjoying it when they have their own beliefs reaffirmed. It's human nature. But there's nothing for me in these stories about how their authors are so pissing scared of difference and change that they have to call in Superman to put their least favorite new characters in a gulag and then go get burgers. There's nothing for me in the stories where largely unrelatable "heroes" were beating up on people i very easily identified with. Maybe i just get it more than people who've defined their career by looking back.
Thank you very much for reading !