"Grim and gritty" vs. "bright and shiny"?

[K-Box]

In superhero comics, it's a false distinction.

Steven Grant nails it in one:

That's the continued lure of the superhero: the aura of moral certitude. Ambiguity in terms of using stories to work through tough questions and paradoxes has never really been the problem, and in fact when that's been done well the results have played well to audiences. And the problem has never really been telling which were good guys and which were bad guys.

The problem has been the desire of talent, editors and publishers alike for their good guys to unrepentantly behave like bad guys – let's face it, ultraviolence sells – and still have audiences accept them as unambiguously good guys. No questions need apply.

This is not a sophisticated use of the medium. In its way it's already a reversion to the unambiguous Silver Age superhero, just replacing kneejerk "traditional values" with kneejerk sadism in the name of traditional values, and the "let's all wink and look the other way" ethos behind it is as much a drag on superhero comics as the self-complacent '50s autohero ever was, and these days certainly moreso 'cause there ain't a lot of the latter around anymore except in nostalgia-ridden fanboy fever dreams.

If nothing else, it's one of the more well-reasoned responses to Bill Willingham's Big Hollywood blog post condemning the "Age of Superhero Decadence."