Joe Field of Flying Colors Comics & Other Cool Stuff in Concord, California saw the comment from Buddy Saunders (see 'Buddy Saunders of Lone Star on Comics Content') on Steve Bennett's column on comics content (see 'Confessions of a Comic Book Guy -- Giving People what They Don't Want'), and chimed in on the tune:

I'm tempted to leave it at 'What Buddy said.'

In heroic fiction of any kind, there has to be some contrast for the stories to matter.  If the good guys are as dark and foreboding as the bad guys where's the heroism?  Where's the dividing line between good and evil?  There are shades of gray to good and evil, but do so many of those shades have to be so dark?

Buddy's right in that we are cutting our market off from a much larger audience by primarily playing down one street in our adventure/super-hero titles.  We sure could use some light to balance the dark.  Even in genres other than super-heroes, we have an over-abundance of navel-gazing, downcast, just plain mean fare.  There are exceptions, but we sure could use more of a balance.