Decon Recon Switch / Comic Books

• In a meta example, the superhero genre as a whole has done this to a certain extent. The Dark Age of Comic Books deconstructed a lot of the tropes that had built up over the decades of superhero comics. The Modern Age of Comic Books works to reconstruct the superhero genre in light of this deconstruction. There are several matters of debate in this, including whether or not it's actually working or if this age is simply a Genre Throwback to the Gold and Silver Ages.
• DC Rebirth is aiming in the same direction. As one critic stated in an essay: "Geoff Johns is drawing a straight line from Watchmen to The New 52. He’s saying that the deconstructionist comic books of the 80s - great books, seminal classics - have so poisoned the well that they have negatively impacted what came after. It’s the ultimate piece of comic criticism (and one I think a lot of old-timers, who were alive and energized when Watchmen first hit stores, would agree with) and it’s in the form of a comic. Yes, Geoff Johns says, DC is too dark and unhappy today. And what’s more, it’s a direct result of chasing the dragon of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and getting ever diminished returns."
• Fantastic Four: Fantastic Four 1234 by Grant Morrison appears to be deconstructing the Fantastic Four by showing them to be the maladjusted, dysfunctional people they would be in real life. Then, it's revealed that this is all a ploy by Doctor Doom to destroy them through a form of superscience mind control and their normal personalities are who they would be "in real life" — because being Darker and Edgier isn't the same thing as "real life", and a cynical take on a fictional character is just as real as an optimistic one. Consequently it ends up reconstructing the Four and deconstructing Doctor Doom himself, suggesting him to be little more than a petty, self-obsessed, self-deluding, and unbearably pompous monomaniac who isn't nearly on Reed Richards's level of intelligence and, through devoting his time to a pointless feud driven only because he can't accept his own failings, has pretty much wasted his entire life. And he also appears to be going bald.
• Hawkeye: Hawkeye (2012) does this to Trick Arrows within a single issue. They're Awesome, but Impractical, and a big waste of time due to them being tailored to specific situations. Plus, Clint never bothered to label any of them so when caught in a car chase, he's firing arrows of varying degrees of usefulness. By the end though, many of the arrows that Clint uses become more and more effective in fighting the Tracksuits and keeping him alive, and the Boomerang Arrow that Kate mocks at the beginning of the issue does wonders to get Clint out of a hairy situation.
• Invincible: The series picks apart tons of superhero tropes, depicts a world of Black-and-Gray Morality, is willing to feature graphic violence to emphasize that heroes aren't holding back, subverts many classic superhero origins and motifs, and rather viciously deconstructs the idea of teenage superheroes. And yet in the end, it reconstructs the genre — no matter how many tropes it subverts or deconstructs, the heroes are still heroes protecting the world from evil and many times, their idealism and courage ultimately wins out over the cruel and cynical villains.
• Irredeemable: The series is a deconstruction that asks "What if Superman went bad for real? That is until the very last page where the Plutonian's essence has been scattered to the corners of the multiverse...and some of it ends up in our world and inspires the creation of Superman◊.
• Kick-Ass: The first few issues deconstruct the notion of the Non-Powered Costumed Hero, by showing just what would happen if a kid were to dress up in a silly costume and go around looking for crime to fight. Then it picks it up again by having Dave help bring down a crime syndicate and officially do something special with his life. The next two volumes then follow the movie's lead in its treatment of superheroes. The superhero fad Dave inspires eventually morphs into a subculture of altruistic social work and neighborhood watches. A few of the heroes are competent and well-trained, and the rest gain experience fighting thugs and watching each other's backs, and superheroes as a whole become more competent and better fighters than a Mafia-funded private army. In the end, the superheroes garner tremendous public support, and are acknowledged without irony as superheroes but face antagonism and harassment from the police, who do have the authority and capability to take them down.
• Kingdom Come: The series deconstructs The Dark Age of Comic Books and at the same time reconstructs the Silver Age. In the ending, though, both the Silver Age and Dark Age heroes realize they're fatally flawed in their world views, take off their masks, and rejoin normal human society.
• Ms. Marvel: In Ms. Marvel (2014), Kamala Khan's origin story deconstructs and reconstructs the Ascended Fanboy trope and the character's own status as an Affirmative-Action Legacy. Kamala Khan is the daughter of Muslim Pakistani immigrants, she's regularly ostracized for her faith and heritage, fantasizes about being "less complicated" so her peers will accept her, and finds escape in her passion for superheroes, especially Captain Marvel. Then when she unexpectedly gets shape-shifting powers and turns into a younger Captain Marvel, she finds that being someone else only complicates matters further. It's exhausting to force herself to be a different person, and she finds her Healing Factor only works when she's in her own form. Kamala only comes into her own and saves the day when she realizes that her friend's best hope is for her to be the best version of herself, not a watered-down version of another hero.
• Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt (2019): The series deconstructs Watchmen's deconstruction of classic superhero comics, and in the process reconstructs many elements of the genre. Yes, it is a bit recursive; in the end, the villain of the story is literally killed by deconstruction.
• Secret Empire: The series deconstructs Marvel's love for Darker and Edgier and Let's You and Him Fight by making Captain America a super villain whom everyone loves as he uses HYDRA to take over the United States, forcing the usual heroes to resort to darker and darker actions and being called out for it and when things reach their darkest, the heroes realized they messed up and begin reconstructing the idea of Lighter and Softer by rejecting the ideals that got them there in the first place and Steve becomes the comic book super villain he should be in these stories.
• Shazam!: Shazam! (2012) initially serves as a grittier take where Billy Batson is depicted as more cynical due to being jaded by his rough upbringing as an orphan, even initially assuming the Wizard who gives him his powers intended to molest him, but the notion of using his powers as Shazam to help others greatly appeals to him and he grows attached to his adoptive family, to the degree that his confrontation with Black Adam has him make the effort to reason with Adam and show sympathy for his plight before he has no choice but to battle him like any other villain. In short, this continuity goes from deconstructing Billy Batson by showing that his hardships would tarnish his views on humanity to reconstructing him by showing he still has some good in him and having him learn why it's important to care about other people and lend assistance to the less fortunate, becoming the altruistic and amiable hero he's supposed to be.
• Spider-Man: Seen in Spider-Man: Reign when Spider-Man foregoes the Darker and Edgier black costume in favor of the classic red and blues, all while singing a familiar tune.
• Star Wars: Legacy: The series started off as a Deconstructor Fleet for Star Wars Legends. The lead Skywalker was an amoral drug-addicted bounty hunter, the Galactic Alliance was on the ropes again, the Sith numbered in the thousands, the Jedi were fleeing across the Galaxy, and Sith rule seemed certain for decades. But then Cade Skywalker experiences some Character Development, and the Alliance and the true Empire join forces and emerge victorious, giving Legacy one of the most positive and idealistic conclusions in the recent SWEU.
• Superior: The series at first seemed like a deconstruction of what would happen if a kid got superpowers and of what it would be like in real life if someone actually had the Physical God level strength Superman had. The world is also shown to be cynical with people acting as self-centered and selfish as they would in real life. Then issue #3 happens and suddenly the child with the powers, Simon Pooni, saves a falling space station, keeps it from pancaking New York, and starts saving lives all around the country like stopping a train from hitting an ambulance, stopping a nuclear meltdown, and rescuing a damaged submarine. While people are skeptical at first, they quickly find themselves inspired by the superhero brought to life. Simon even manages to clear out Afghanistan without a single fatality while saving hundreds of innocents. While the realistic tone is still in the comic and the people shown are not to be perfect, Simon is genuinely heroic and the people are ultimately grateful for everything he does. To make the Decon Recon Switch even clearer, it turns out his powers were part of a Deal with the Devil without him knowing and the good guy still wins in the end because the Devil in question didn't realise by making Simon a supremely powerful superhero beyond even age and death (being effectively indestructible), he claimed a soul he couldn't collect and is promptly dragged off to hell when the date for the soul comes due. Simon loses his powers but learns he doesn't need them, and the world, while thinking Superior is dead, mourns him as a hero and everyone is inspired to be better. The end has a touching dedication to Christopher Reeve and Richard Donner and the whole book was a love letter to the lighthearted movie that made everyone believe a man could fly.
• The Ultimates: The series starts off as a deconstruction of the Avengers operating in the 21st Century, how, as a team of assassins and scientists, they would naturally be in the employ of a government organization while also exaggerating some personality traits to emphasize how none of the members are actually Knight in Shining Armor superheroes. Then comes Ultimates 2, where the team discovers the disastrous consequences of being a government-sanctioned team of superhumans and decide to become independent from SHIELD. From then on, the Ultimates become independent superheroes...until Ultimatum left them in shambles, and the heroes went back to working for SHIELD in New Ultimates.
• X-Men: Grant Morrison's New X-Men was a solid deconstruction of the X-Men mythos, detailing some of the harsher aspects of how an oppressed minority of superhumans might operate in the real world, and introducing a slew of adult themes like genocide, drug abuse, marital infidelity, and the confusion of adolescence, leading to a climax that, while still featuring the good X-Men fighting the evil Magneto, was shadowed with brutality and shades of gray. Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, a direct sequel to New X-Men, continued many of the themes and plot arcs started by the former series, but it also featured the team reinstating their classic spandex costumes and reforming into a good old-fashioned superhero team, showing the world that there's still a place for bold superheroics amidst the chaos and ambiguity of modern life.

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