Warning: this article contains major spoilers for Strange Adventures and Batman/Catwoman!
Since he left DC Comics in 1989, Alan Moore has left quite the hole in their creative fabric, but it looks like writer Tom King is finally stepping into the role. Though not yet of the same fame as the creator who for many defines comics as an art form, King has quickly become a byword for mature, meticulously structured, character-driven DC drama. His penchant for writing superhero odysseys of postmodern philosophy and emotional realism recalls the legend who changed the way global popular culture relates to superheroes as a concept. Alan Moore may have left comics for good, but King has been doing his best to carry the torch he lit, on display in his most recent Black Label series Batman/Catwoman and Strange Adventures.
The circumstances of the DC’s Moore-shaped void occurred as a result of DC taking unprecedented steps to retain control of Moore’s Watchmen characters, including a series of bitter disagreements regarding the merchandising and profits from the runaway hit, leading the iconoclastic writer to infamously proclaim he would never work for them again. In the time since, it’s become clear that Moore’s skill and dedication to the art of making comics have proved him a true one-of-a-kind cultural phenomenon, with his work going on to provide enduring stories that are among the very best in the medium. His absence from mainstream comics has set forth a plethora of admirers and imitators over the years, with varying degrees of success – Moore himself has expressed regret that he didn’t actually change comic storytelling in the ways he’d hoped. But perhaps the greatest of these successors is the most recent, former Batman scribe Tom King.
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Beginning at DC in 2013, King has since embarked on a streak of psychologically hard-hitting 12-issue maxiseries – no doubt a habit he picked up in imitation of his idol Moore in works like Watchmen. Like Moore, King is a deconstructionist, choosing often obscure or lesser known DC heroes to isolate moral fallacies or ethical contradictions in superhero literature. For instance, much of the subject matter of his recent Batman/Catwoman series (with artist Clay Mann, among others) concerns a version of Catwoman who, though involved in a deep, lifelong romantic relationship with Batman, is not the traditional antihero on the wrong side of the law, but an obsessive villain who can’t escape her inherent inclinations towards deceit and theft.
One way King builds upon Moore is in his use of emotional realism in his stories. Moore is often credited with revolutionizing the medium of comics with his groundbreaking 1986 series Watchmen, a comic which showed off his detail-oriented approach and visceral yet poignant writing style in an exploration of the psychological pitfalls of hero fantasies. While Watchmen depicted a world of physical realism which was praised at the time for its stark and sober take on the classic, “clean” violence in comics, it was in his introduction of true emotional realism to the superhero genre that Moore managed to impart real lasting change to the medium. This is also an attribute that preoccupies much of King’s own writing, put on exhibit most keenly in his recent maxiseries Strange Adventures, with Mitch Gerads and Evan Shaner.
Strange Adventures features a contemporary take on the Silver Age space hero Adam Strange, who comes under suspicion of murder in the midst of an alien invasion. Juxtaposed with scenes of his own heroics on the alien planet Rann, winning wars, diplomatic negotiations, gladiatorial battles and the hand of his wife Alanna in marriage, King takes readers through the present-day foibles of a strung-out, increasingly desperate and violent traitor who is revealed to have sold out Earth (and committed murder) in exchange for saving Rann. Though Strange’s guilt is a mystery until the final reveal, King’s cohesive, emotionally-realized characterizations of the central couple turns this simple parable of a hero’s failure into an incisive take on the nature of human duality, and the fundamental cheapness of escapist fantasies like Strange’s space adventures.
While King notably resurrected Moore’s Watchmen in his own recent maxiseries Rorschach, their similarities run far deeper, as Tom King adopts Alan Moore‘s long-ago role as a creator of deconstructionist, emotionally realist, stand-alone series that bolster DC’s reputation for offering mature comic stories particularly relevant to the modern reader.
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