You hear a lot of rhetoric about how the dominance of the superhero subgenre is strangling the life out of comics. I can't argue with it, but that's not why I hate superheroes - it's just why I hate their publishers. No, I've got other, better reasons to hate them. And I'm going to tell you what they are.

No, you don't get to leave. All exits have been sealed, and the building is surrounded by angry wasps. You're stuck with me. Now shut up and listen.

REASON #1: They've got no testicles.

Yes, I admit it, the art bugs me. I understand all the theory of heroic proprotions, and I understand about "willing suspension of disbelief", but in Blackadder style, I stare in disbelief at their willy suspension. Or their breasts, or their absurd and inhuman muscle structure. Well, I don?t really stare, but you get the point

It's a small and stupid thing, but it bugs the hell out of me that these people have freakish physiques and are completely unembarassed about them to the point of going out wearing spray-on latex to show them off.

I picked that as a symptom of the weird unrealites of the genre ? there are others that bug me, too. I appreciate that this is fantasy, and that these people don't live in our world, but still, the genre conventions infuriate me.

REASON #2: They?re for children.

That?s no bad thing, except that their audience is mostly adults. I find this alarming and scary. But not exactly the fault of the subgenre. So perhaps I?d better come up with something more convincing.

REASON #3: They're a shower of bastards.

It was Jim Steranko, one of the older and more gaga generation of comic creators, who lost the plot over Garth Ennis' THE PRO. He wound up wandering alarmingly close to saying that this sort of think was aiding The Terrorists.

'Even when villains can justify their actions, the heroes dismiss them as mad.' But I think he had a point. Superheroes have no moral compass. They never have had, because they?ve never needed it. This is a genre where the accepted first solution to a problem is to hit it. This is a genre where the bad guy, quite often, has no motivation beyond power or even simply likeing to hurt people. Warren Ellis made a joke of it in early issues of THE AUTHORITY, putting up a villain who genuinely didn't want anything more than to cause death and mayhem for the fuck of it. "Superheroes with the volume turned up to 11" was the phrase I think he used. Which of course, means it was there to begin with.

In superhero comics, the villain has to be mad. It's true to say that no-one thinks they're the bad guy - even Michael Douglas in FALLING DOWN found the realisation a bit of shock, despite having cut a swathe of violence across the city. And the realisation drove him to suicide.

But take a look at the antics that most superhero villains get up to. Even when the characters can justify their actions to themselves, we, and the heroes, cannot help but dismiss them as mad or Evil ? even with characters like Lex Luthor and Doctor Doom the hero's point of view goes unquestioned, their morality unopposed 99.9% of the time. After all, their opponents are mad, and the only way they can be stopped is for the hero to use their fantastic power to hit them until them fall down.

'This is a genre where the accepted first solution to a problem is to hit it.' Look at THE ULTIMATES, for example - Bruce Banner turns himself into the Hulk in what's pretty clearly the act of a desperate man on the edge of cracking up entirely, and Captain America's response, once the crisis is passed, is to hit him. A slice of morality from fifty years ago, and in keeping with the character, sure, but we're invited to go along with this as an appropriate response, rather than an anachronistic one. That's without even getting into the fact that none of these "heroes" even tried to find a non-violent means of stopping The Hulk...

Of course, THE ULTIMATES is a post-AUTHORITY comic, and we're supposed to accept it with a sly wink - we're meant to realise that these people aren't heroes or role models, merely a five minute diversion in bright colours. That's the punchline. Superheroes have become Judge Dredd - horrible arbiters of a warped morality, played for laughs.

I don't mind this. I think it's something that kids will enjoy more. Show your average kid a "child-safe" comic and one with the villain's brains exploding out of the back of their head, and they'll go for the explodey-brain one every time. I'd be worried about a child that didn't.

But what, exactly, is the appeal of this for adults, apart from a few cheap laughs?

And even that's not what really annoys me most about the subgenre. I don?t mind a few cheap laughs from time to time myself?

REASON #4: They?re not good enough.

What annoys me is that it could be smarter, more interesting and less ludicrous, and no-one's had a go at it since Alan Moore did it in WATCHMEN.

'If people can tell socially aware stories in other forms of SF, they can do it with superheroes.' I'm sure I've caught Moore in interviews saying that he felt that doing the same old superhero comics post-WATCHMEN was kind of pointless - to him, the point of WATCHMEN was to kill the subgenre, force it to move on and mutate into something bigger and better. Arrogant, possibly, but the man's got a point.

WATCHMEN, alone among superhero works, has a villain who isn't just mad. Who the heroes can't simply dismiss as a lunatic. Sure, the reader doesn't have to agree with what he did, and doesn't have to feel that he was right, but we are rather forced to concede that his motives were decent, and indeed, that he has saved the world, until, at least the journal of the quite clearly insane Rorschach turns up.

We?re offered the choice between siding with a psychopathic lunatic or a genocidal madman ? neither of them have the moral high ground, and we're asked as much to simply consider their points of view as to decide which of them is right.

WATCHMEN introduces questions of morality, of hard choices and difficult grey areas into the subgenre, and it's no co-incidence that it was lauded in a way no other superhero work has been. WATCHMEN makes it perfectly clear that it's possible to tell complex, adult stories without a clear right or wrong answer even if you?ve got a tit in a stupid outfit as your lead character.

But no-one is.

That?s what really pisses me off. Superheroes aren?t anything but a subgenre of SF (sci-fi or speculative fiction, take your pick). If people can tell socially aware, socially relevant stories for adults in other forms of SF, they can do it with superheroes.

As Grant Morrison is fond of pointing out, we?re reaching a point where our technology is soon going to be capable of creating superhumans, so it?s not like there isn?t some value in considering it ? he?s touched the edges of it himself a few times in NEW X-MEN, but no-one?s really sat down and given it a proper go that I?ve ever seen.

Maybe someone out there needs to be writing superhero comics that actually have something to say, that are genuinely for adults, and that challenge and demand thought, rather than simply saying ?Fuck? and calling it ?mature?.

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

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