Judge Learned Hand.

Oh, damn. That's gotta have been used in something since then, hasn't it?

Judge Learned Hand.

Famous judge in tort law (came up with the B/PL equation.) Boy did we have a lot of jokes.

Link stolen from Dana: Essay on Superman's behaviour in JLU, with some refs to Identity Crisis.

I was wondering if they ever showed Captain Marvel using that maneuver before.

BTW, here's Evan Dorkin's rant about Identity Crisis and Countdown.

Where does it go from here? It's like a rabid fan of pornography who can't get his kicks from depictions of straight intercourse anymore, so he moves on to more hardcore stuff, then into the crazy shit that even guys at frat parties won't watch together out of embarrassment. The thrills need to be amped, the bullshit revved up, the stunts multiplied, the violence ramped, the childhood characters must be put through even harsher predicaments and fates, saddled with traits and failings they were never designed to carry on their threadbare personalities.

This seems like a relevant question. Escalation of the grim. If you keep chipping away at the characters and compromising them, it gets reductive. Is there a point in Batman getting darker? How about Superman? Don't you need to be able to contrast them against their adversaries to make their missions meaningful?

It all brings to mind the Spinal Tappian "None more black" endpoint.

I feel like superhero comics have been in a mannerist era since Dark Knight and Watchmen. There's more and more meta commentary on the core subject, while the core subject itself shrinks in significance.

Fundamentally Meta: Starman, The Incredibles, Venture Brothers, Powers, Tom Strong, The Tick, Kingdom Come, Marvels, Astro City...

Don't you need to be able to contrast them against their adversaries to make their missions meaningful?

Not for me, no. Now, I don't think everyone should be dark, but the continuum of similarity between a hero and a villain, the distinction between means, ends, and motives fascinates me.

There's no need to shuffle all the stories to either end of that continuum, nor balance them all at the middle.

It's the homogeneity that bothers me, not the existence. There isn't a way that superhero comics have to be for me. I couldn't really even define the term conclusively.

Fundamentally Meta: Starman, The Incredibles, Venture Brothers, Powers, Tom Strong, The Tick, Kingdom Come, Marvels, Astro City...

I dunno, do the blatantly humorous items in there count as true meta? What differentiates meta from parody? Or is parody inherently meta?

Dorian weighs in: [link]

(There are reasons that's the only comics blog for which I read the feed.)

Or is parody inherently meta?

I specifically noted examples where the parodic element is only an element in a deeper delving into the superhero mythos. The Tick and Miracleman (the comic) both depend on acknowledging the absurdity of so many of the superhero conventions, but spin off in different directions from that point. The Tick uses it to do a lot of character based comedy and contrasting the mundane and the bizarre. Miracleman sees those false myths as being a means of control over a powerful weapon (at least in the earliest Alan Moore conception).

That's pretty different from a one-dimension (though funny) parody like Kurtzman's Superduperman, or the way Dave Sims used The Roach.

The Incredibles actually has a fairly Ayn Randian undertone decrying mediocrity and the cultural pressure to quell or diminish the exceptional.

Is Marvels meta for acknowledging canon, but spinning it with reality? I mean, the stories I suppose can stand on their own, but are highly enhanced if you know the source material.

Remind me of the meta in Kingdom Come, will you?