Alan Moore’s Twilight of the Superheroes: Lost Gem or Dodged Bullet?

Is it, though? Let’s take a look.

Content warnings below for incest, outdated terminology, and general unpleasantness.

The Plot

Very basically, the Time Trapper creates a time warp approximately 30 years from the present day, within which multiple possible futures are made. The story focuses on one particular future, where societal collapse has left costumed heroes as the only source of stability, such as it is.

The heroes responded to this by separating into various houses. The most important of those houses are the House of Steel and the House of Thunder. These two are preparing to unite through the marriage of Superboy and Mary Marvel Junior, much to the weaker houses’ dismay.

Amidst all this, John Constantine is running around and playing the various sides off each other. This results in a massive battle in which everyone either dies or is exiled to space.

The Good

Based on that brief synopsis alone, the story really does sound interesting. It’s also somewhat reminiscent of Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s classic Kingdom Come, published some 10 years later. While I’m not generally a fan of very dark stories, this one would not necessarily have come to pass; it’s just one of many possible futures that the present-day heroes could or could not choose to work towards averting.

That’s something else to like about Twilight. According to Moore, the effect on DC’s other books would have depended entirely on each creator’s willingness to participate. “If they choose to involve themselves actively in the crossover, then that’s fine. If they refuse to do so, then the very act of refusing to do anything about the crossover also becomes part of the overall storyline,” Moore explained in his proposal.

Each character would be informed about the possible future. The creators who wanted to participate would have their characters actively try to stop the catastrophe. Those who didn’t want to participate would have their characters dismiss the warning, which in and of itself has implications for whether or not the catastrophe comes to pass. As someone tired of seeing series I like get hijacked by event comics I don’t care about, this sounds like an excellent workaround!

Moore even seems to predict the rise of the billion-dollar superhero blockbuster. When discussing a possible screen adaptation of Twilight (big thinker, our Mr. Moore), he wrote:

[S]hould anyone see any potential in the ultimate superhero movie, bearing in mind that DC currently owns almost all of the really important superhero icons imprinted on the mass consciousness and could thus perhaps come up with something that legitimately laid claim to that title, then it will be simple to detach the central idea from the off-putting clutter…[T]he Twilight story line could be presented as a spectacular and epic finale to the whole essential superhero dream.

Swap out “DC” for “Marvel,” and you’re basically describing films like Avengers: Endgame.

The Bad

The characterization is…questionable.

Obviously, allowances must be made. This is an apocalyptic future, with all of the trauma and upheaval that implies. So while I personally might not want to see my favorite characters develop tyrannical tendencies or “lack […] compassion and understanding” (as Moore describes the future Nightwing), such changes don’t necessarily indicate a problem.

But I REFUSE to believe that Wonder Woman would become so enamored of patriarchy that she would change her name to Superwoman upon marrying Superman. If anything, Superman should be changing his name, since she’s royalty and he’s just some guy.

Moore also succumbs to the urge to take deliberately silly or fun characters and make them as dark and/or grotesque as possible. I’m not going to discuss that further, though, because I’d rather tell you about Blackhawk, erstwhile leader of the Blackhawk squadron of World War II fighter pilots.

The guy on the left.

After losing his legs and his entire team, Blackhawk spends his days cruising gay bars and picking out young men to populate a new team of “vicious leather-queen Blackhawks,” a phrase so ludicrous that I felt it burn its way into my psyche the minute I read it.

The Ugly

Remember how I mentioned the marriage of Superboy and Mary Marvel Junior? Would you like to know who Mary’s parents are?

Mary Marvel Junior is the daughter of Captain Marvel/Shazam and Mary Marvel.

In case you didn’t know, Cap and Mary are, in their civilian identities, twin siblings.

Aside from being weird and gross, this poses a problem for the story’s big twist. It turns out Captain Marvel died before the story began when, as Billy Batson, he was killed after soliciting a “six-foot-six-tall call girl into heavy bondage,” who turned out to be Martian Manhunter, who then disguised himself as Cap and has been him ever since.

Why is this a problem, beyond all the obvious ways it is a problem? The reason is stupid, so hold on.

According to Moore, Batson’s mind aged normally, while his body remained that of a 10-year-old. The resulting sexual frustration drove him “quietly […] well, bats, I suppose” and caused him to start experimenting with sadomasochism, hence the trip to the six-foot-six sex worker who was Martian Manhunter.

If all that’s true, how does Mary Marvel Junior exist? Clearly, he’s functional in some capacity, if only as Captain Marvel. Is the implication that Captain Marvel and Billy Batson are two separate people with no shared memories? While that would make the marriage marginally less icky, that’s not how the Marvels’ powers work. Moore should be aware of this, as he mentions reading an outline of the contemporaneous miniseries Legends, which prominently features Captain Marvel.

Don’t look, Billy, you are definitely not old enough to read any of this.

Bizarrely, Moore does not refer to the fact that he has put two of DC’s characters in an incestuous relationship, even though it really needs explaining.

The Verdict?

Online sources attribute Twilight‘s cancellation/rejection to the various disagreements Moore and DC had around that time. The End of Eras blames the story’s high body count, which the editor-in-chief apparently found uncomfortable.

Either way, if the proposal had been accepted, it seems likely that Moore and others would have made changes. Maybe some of the more problematic elements would have been smoothed out. Or perhaps they would have remained to mar an otherwise intriguing story. Or maybe DC would have found a way to make it worse. There’s no way to know.

Because there’s no way to know, I find it hard to be enthusiastic about it. So much of Twilight has poorly aged or is just plain bad that one’s ability to see genius in it depends entirely on how much one trusts Alan Moore.

If you want to make up your own mind and have some time to kill, the whole proposal is probably still kicking around the internet, or you can watch this hour-long, semi-animated narration of the plot-related parts that Tom Scioli did in 2022. He cut the phrase “vicious leather-queen Blackhawks,” though. Probably for the best.