Is there too much reliance on violence in comics?

My wife commented last week that she thought the comic books I have bought are way too violent, certainly for my 8 year old who is super-hero mad. Flicking through various titles yesterday has she a point? I mean I appreciate that Superheroes/villains are largely about fighting their rivals but sometimes it does seem that the storyline is largely forgotten. Particularly if you read Deadpool, where the aim is to see how much blood and gore can be shown in one issue. Ok if you like that sort of thing I guess.

Perhaps the point is further demonstrated by how little the major characters seem to spend in their alter-egos these days, i.e. Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, etc. What do you think? did the 70s and 80s comics have more storyline and less reliance on blood and gore.

Depends on the comic. Some are a bit too reliant on gore for my tastes. But really it all comes down to too much stupid shock stuff.

Agree with the person above. There's way too much reliance on shock tactics, especially deaths. I can think of about eight shock deaths that were seriously unneeded.

The worst part is that's it's usually the D list character who have small or no fanbases that mostly suffer so that Marvel and DC(who are the most reliant on such tactics) don't have to worry about many complaints.

Seriously there's no reason to kill guys like Stilt-Man and Rainbow Raider. It's a waste of potential given what some writers can pull off with such characters(Looking at Spot for example).

Yes, especially in recent years, where comics are treated like summer action movies (which... well, I guess they are).

My favorite comics are the Vertigo kind; dark, but not reliant on violence. It's where the story is the most important aspect.

Some of my friends did read the Avatar series Crossed. Now that is a series where violence/graphic scenes are common place and the whole premise of the booked seemed to be an excuse to draw such horrifying scenes. Now I'll be honest, there aren't a lot of books which I read which seem to be overly violent but the ones that do have a higher age rating (usually teen). Personally I don't have a problem with the violence though because I've never seen comics as something for people under 12-13 years (apart from specific comics aged at younger audiences).

Yup.

indie comics are almost all violence. look at image, valiant. but the thing they rely even more on is straight up lying to the reader. dc is the greatest offender of all on this.

Eh.

Yes there is. Old comics would have so much more dialogue and panels, and would last so long. Now they speed through most dialogue and skip to full page spread shots of massive fights. --for the most part. It's true like you said, they don't spend enough time in their alter egos anymore.

Another thing I've noticed is that they don't spend as much time saving civilians. Superman used to spend the majority of his time catching people and whatnot, even during his fights. Now if theres a giant fight in say Justice League, Flash will just speed through and evacuate everyone within a few panels.

I like action, but you become somewhat numb to it when theres no break. You can only read "KRACKATHOOM" so many times before it stops having impact.

If you don't like violence, never read Valiant. Stick to the big two.

@theacidskull: this, superman and batman shouldn't rip off bad guys heads. But its awesome when invincible or rick Grimes does it.

Do you mean violence or gore? Superhero comics are action escapist productions by nature - so they'll always feature violence and (largely) solving problems with your fists. Of course there's a deeper under-running message of saving lives by using violence, though.

If you're referring to explicit gore, I suppose it depends on the comic in question. Deadpool uses gratuitous gore for comedic or the 'f-yeah' value. Darker books like Punisher MAX have a high level of violence for a more suitable tone of realism. I think mainstream superhero books on the whole are fairly restrained gore-wise...with exceptions, of course (like Ares' death in Siege...or Grundy ripping off Red Tornado's arm...)

Non-superhero indie titles generally have more freedom, with a higher degree of violence.

Aside from Deadpool, what other comics are you reading that your wife commented were especially violent?

Whoa, Marvel and DC are the most reliant on violence-based shock? That sounds a bit...off.

It depends on the titles you're looking at. Obviously if you're talking about a Punisher title there's going to be blood and violence and usually at least some gore (I imagine that goes without saying though). Some titles, like the more recent (as in from around the time of Fear Itself) run of Journey Into Mystery, feature little to no gore, and the violence is kept to a minimum.

Deadpool generally utilizes violence and, to a lesser extent, gore for comedic purposes. But really, are you at all surprised by that? Just look at the main character, for god's sake- he's a mentally unbalanced, horribly disfigured mercenary, what about that suggests anything BUT violence? Hell, in some cases Deadpool just taking his mask off could be deemed not suitable for children.

@veshark: Great Post. The Majority of the comics I read don't feature any gore, Spider-man (when it's Pete), the Avengers, and other more traditional characters. There are definitely books that feature gore in the various big companies, but they are usually easy to avoid because they don't normally cross into the more "mainstream" titles.