As the co-cerator of Watchmen, Dave Gibbons is an expert in crafting bleak superhero stories. But he found Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice a bit “too dark” when it came to the movie’s depiction of Man of Steel. Gibbons said that in making Superman as brooding as Dark Knight, Zack Snyder’s film lost essence of the character which led to a failure to capture the duality of the heroes.
“… I think probably the failure of the Superman-Batman movie was that it was really too dark, and that Superman was made as dark as Batman,” Gibbons said in an interview with ComicBook.com. “And to me, that really doesn’t work, I thought that’s the perfect opportunity to contrast the two characters. Which is something that I did actually, in the graphic novel series that I wrote back in the ’90s, where you know, they were seen as kind of yin and yang, you know, the two sides of the superhero coin, so.”
Gibbons was referencing his ’90s story with Steve Rude, World’s Finest, a lighter story that saw Superman and Batman team-up to take on LexLuthor and Joker. Gibbons stated that he wanted to do lighter stories at DC Comics after the 1986 Watchmen with Alan Moore, saying he did not think that the dark style of superhero storytelling would live on today.
“You know, there was a time when superheroes had to be really dark. And I think of the Dark Knight movies. And of course, I also feel a bit guilty, because Alan Moore and I very much kind of instituted the idea of dark superheroes. We never thought it would persist for 25 years, you know,” he admitted.
