1986 was a pivotal year for comic books when DC Comics published Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, along with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. Never before had mainstream superhero comic books taken a novelistic approach to the genre. Both reinvented the superhero comic book for a more mature audience–and reinvented popular culture as we know it. This talk goes through both series in an in-depth nature to evaluate the changes that influenced the superhero world.
