Comics fans have surprisingly elaborate conceptions about the history of their pastime. For quite some time there was a rather successful coupe by revisionists who insisted that comics were serious, dark, and adult and spent a considerable amount of effort repressing all memory of the more whimsical parts of the medium’s past. But as the dude, Newton, once said: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The equal-and-opposite reaction coming in the form of post-revisionist comics fans. Their favorite activities include muttering angrily about the ‘90s, wondering why comics aren’t fun anymore, and none too subtly reminding everyone how much better comics sold in the ‘70s when they were targeted at kids. They got particularly loud around the time The Dark Knight Rises came out.
Ramses II or Ramses the Great was a 19th Dynasty king of Egypt. He was very militarily successful, undertook many great building projects, and was terribly fond of making statues of himself. Thousands of years later he is still known for the prosperity Egypt enjoyed under his rule. Much has changed since Ramses. Egypt is no longer the power it once was in the region and political, economic, cultural, and ethnic shifts have left behind an Egypt that Ramses wouldn’t recognize.
While it took a drastically shorter period of time and having less life-and-death consequences, the comic industry has also seen significant upheaval over the last several decades. Demographics and style have shifted. Sales in 2013 are a fraction of what they were in 1975.
You will note, however, that in their state of political unrest the Egyptians have not crowned a new pharaoh. The thinking that prevailed in Ramses’ time is no longer the way forward. The circumstances that made someone like Ramses both possible and necessary are long since passed.
The glory of Stan and Jack is gone, never to be recaptured. By the same token, there will never be another Watchmen. But to accede that our greatest moment has already occurred and that all we can hope to do is try to emulate it is to ignore the very thing that made those moments so great. Something was done that had not been done before.
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