WI: Comic books without Miller and Moore

Lets say that Frank Miller and Alan Moore never get into comics. How does the industry change? Do we still see a "dark age" in the 90s?
 
We still going to get a dark age of comics.
Comic had been moving toward a darker tone since the 1970's.
The appearances of Comics Shops meant that comics with out the Comic Code approval could still find a market.
The rise of independent publishers came about due to issue with both DC and Marvel with writers and artists. That lead to more creative story telling.
Many of those stories were the Dark more Adult Stories.

And then there was the influence of both Japanese Anime and Magna. Both started coming to US by the 80's.
And also British Comics like Judge Dredd and the 2000AD magazines were first published in the US in the same time period.(No Marvelman. No Alan Moore to reimage the Character)

Batman is not going to have too much change other then no Dark Knight Return and Year One and no Killing Joke.
We still have Doug Moench and Jim Starlin who wrote the Batman Titles after Crisis on Infinite Earth and who came up with the death of Robin.
We probably see fewer Batman Miniseries and One Shots.
Mike Grell is still there so we still get "Longbow Hunter".
We still get Elseworlds but with fewer Batman stories and more involving other characters.


The Big Batman Question is with the movies. Without the success of Killing Joke and Dark Knight will Hollywood still be interested in the Character.
Would Tim Burton do Batman?
Batman Begin is not going to happen since no Year One and Dark Knight the Movie going to be different. The title would be different for one thing.
We might see Hush as the big story that appealed to non comic readers and that would influence the movies.

And Since we get different Batman movies, then we will no have the need to make things Dark and Realistic on movies like Man of Steel and Justice League.
And No Dark Knight Returns means no Batman V Superman.

Marvel still has the Punisher. And I suspect that we still see the title "The Nam" .
We might see Daredevil canceled since no Miller run that reimage the Character
We still see stories like Mutant Massacre in the X man titles and the Scourge Title in Captain America.
Marvel Movies will be closer to what we saw in OTL

Swamp thing would get cancel around issue 30, No Alan Moore Swamp thing stories. So no Vertigo comics. Also No Constantine.
Most likely no Preacher comic.

Most likely no British invasion of comics. So no Neil Gaiman or Sandman comics. (I think he be a good enough writer to make it as fantasy Novelist so we would eventually hear of him in the US)
It would be less likely that any one in the US had heard of Grant Morrison . He not going to end up doing Doom Patrol. So that title going to be canceled again. Doom Patrol remains another 60's comic that fails to sell. No Doom Patrol TV show today.
With out Morrison , we do not get 52 or Final Crisis or his Batman Run . No Animal Man or the invisible.
He would most likely go with one of the independent. His stories are going to be very different.

So we still going to see a Dark Age of Comics but it going to be very different than what we saw in the OTL.
 
We get a Dark Age, that never goes overboard. Hell, even Moore's early Superman and Green Lantern stuff is pretty tame.

Instead of Watchman being the defining comic of the era, maybe instead it's Gaimen's Sandman or something.

Instead of Moore and Miller, its the work of former 2000AD alumni like Alan Grant that defines the 90s, and as a fan of Grants work on Batman, Lobo and the Demon, I gotta say, I like the idea.
 
We still have the O'Neill-Adams and Englehart/Andryeko runs in the Bat books. We still have Moon Knight by Doug Moench and Don Perlin. We still have Squadron Supreme. We still have Superman III and the J.R. Ewing Stand-in instead of the Gene Hackman Lex Luthor. We still have Chris Cleremont on Uncanny X-Men, John Byrne on Fantastic Four, and... well, you get the picture.
 
We get a Dark Age, that never goes overboard. Hell, even Moore's early Superman and Green Lantern stuff is pretty tame.

Instead of Watchman being the defining comic of the era, maybe instead it's Gaimen's Sandman or something.

Instead of Moore and Miller, its the work of former 2000AD alumni like Alan Grant that defines the 90s, and as a fan of Grants work on Batman, Lobo and the Demon, I gotta say, I like the idea.
I not sure we get Neil Gaiman writing for the US Comic industry.
He got his break here because DC had good luck with Alan Moore.
I can see Alan Grant coming to write for DC since he did do some good work for 2000AD especially the Apocalypse War.
But Neil Gaiman first got involved with Comics because of his friendship with Alan Moore.
So I be surprised if we see Gaiman get involve with Comic without Moore.
I suspect that Gaiman would instead continue his early prose fiction writing. So we see his success as a Fantasy writer happen earlier. Maybe Sandman as a Novel series?

We get the Dark age, but not the excessive GRIMDERP age. I call that a win.
No Alan Moore Superman Comics story , No Swamp Thing, and No Watchman.
No Ronin, No Dark Knight Returns and No Year One.
That a lot of great stories we would not see.
Most likely no Neil Gaimen and No Grant Morrison,
Not sure I call that a Win.
 
No Watchmen would change a lot at least in Super Heroes.

While Watchmen is an extremely important story in term of comic developement as medium, one must also consider that after that a lot of copycat seemed to think that the reason why worked was: the GRIMDERP...so without it we can avoid the Dork Age of comics
 
While Watchmen is an extremely important story in term of comic developement as medium, one must also consider that after that a lot of copycat seemed to think that the reason why worked was: the GRIMDERP...so without it we can avoid the Dork Age of comics

We still have the second Mike Grell Green Arrow run starting with The Longbow Hunters.
 
There really is no stopping the Dark Age unless you kill off comic books completely before 1986. Seriously, that year alone brought not only Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, but was also the year of the Crisis, the founding of Dark Horse, the launch of DC's Vertigo line and the slow death of the Comics Code. The winds of change were coming, whether or not Moore and Miller were leading the charge.
 
I don't think Dark Age would have been as Dark or grim or ridiculous, because without mainstream Dark success, it would be left to the smaller shops and imprints doing their thing. I don't think DC and Marvel would have gotten on board, but things were changing. The thing about comics is that they are a reflection of the expected audience and expected competition. So, unless societal trends would have changed, the things that made Dark popular would still be presented, but would be blunted, which might healthier for everyone involved.
 
Without Alan Moore's Watchmen DC would commission someone else to make a miniseries with the Charalton heroes which was what Watchmen was originally meant to be
 

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I not sure we get Neil Gaiman writing for the US Comic industry.
He got his break here because DC had good luck with Alan Moore.
I can see Alan Grant coming to write for DC since he did do some good work for 2000AD especially the Apocalypse War.
But Neil Gaiman first got involved with Comics because of his friendship with Alan Moore.
So I be surprised if we see Gaiman get involve with Comic without Moore.
I suspect that Gaiman would instead continue his early prose fiction writing. So we see his success as a Fantasy writer happen earlier. Maybe Sandman as a Novel series?

From my British POV at the time, Gaiman seemed to leap straight from a couple of Tharg's Future Shocks in 2000AD straight to his own DC series, so I always thought it was (justifiable!) encouragement and promotion from his good friend Moore that got him the gig.

In a 'No Alan Moore'TL, I wonder if Gaiman may have developed his career as a music journalist more.

The reason I suspect this is that in the early '80s Gaiman was BFF with one of Kerrang's early standout writers, Dave Dickson, whilst Gaiman wrote music features for 'top shelf' soft-porn magazines like Razzle, Penthouse, and Men Only*, in which they were forever namechecking and referencing each other.

Personally, I thought they were both insufferable HST-wannabes frustrated that there was no UK Rolling Stone equivalent, but I could see Gaiman becoming a kind of Tony Parsons, complete with his own Murdoch column, by now in TTL.


*(Yes, I "read" a lot of those. Don't judge me, we didn't have the internet when I was a teenager!)
 
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From my British POV at the time, Gaiman seemed to leap straight from a couple of Tharg's Future Shocks in 2000AD straight to his own DC series, so I always thought it was (justifiable!) encouragement and promotion from his good friend Moore that got him the gig.
I don't doubt that sooner or latter Gaiman would have ended up as a Fantasy Writer. In addition to his friend ship with Moore, he was also friends with Terry Pratchett.
So I suspect that Pratchett would have suggested that Gaiman continue to try Fantasy Writing.
I not sure what influence his OTL comic writing had on his novels .
Would we have seen a novel version of the Sandman Story? Would Neverwhere and American Gods have been the same?
I recall reading somewhere that American Gods came about during his visits to American to go to Comic Book Conventions.
 
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