Superheroes: The Dark Age

The Dark Age of Comics begins, more or less, in 1986 with the publication of Alan Moore's "Watchmen" and Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns."
The Dark Age was characterized by increasingly edgy characters in violent stories.
The Dark Age began with good intentions. Moore and Miller, among others, crafted some of the first comics to be taken seriously as literature.
Their books deconstructed larger-than-life heroes that hadn't questioned themselves. They asked questions about power, justice and the common man.
Moore, Miller and some of their contemporaries wrote stories that dared to be serious even if they were about men in tights. They wrote stories that pushed the limits of the genre and questioned the genre, the people creating it and the people consuming it.
Their books sold, and the industry took the wrong message.Superheroes were anti-heroes with ethics only a little better than their foes.
Sex and gore splashed across the panels, and the high standards of previous generations of heroes were laughed off the page.
Ultimately, they created stories as ludicrous as any Silver Age goody-two-shoes. Anti-heroes blasted their way from comic to comic with huge guns, inhuman musculature, and costumes covered in spikes.
Bad art and bad storytelling reigned.
The Dark Age came to an end with a boom. In 1996 DC Comics published "Kingdom Come." This story by Mark Waid defied the dark trend of the times.
The book critiques the Dark Age by having the Justice League come out of semi-retirement to face off against a new generation of heroes.
These new heroes, drawn straight from the Dark Age, have killed all their foes and brawl in the streets with no regard for the bystanders.
Ultimately, Waid manages to expose flaws in both the old and new heroes, fusing the thoughtfulness of the best of the Dark Age with the idealism of older comics.