Maybe she was just trying to point him toward some more "realistic, adult" material.

Batman, after all, was a vigilante who, after his family was murdered , put on a dark outfit with a scary drawing on its chest and doled out his brand of justice to the criminal underworld.

And the Punisher...oh, wait...

Maybe she just really liked guns.

Steve Gerber's HOWARD THE DUCK

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Gerber's Headmen!  One of the reasons I loved THE DEFENDERS

His parents owned a bookstore

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If they owned a bookstore, she may have run across THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.  It had much more violence and profanity( which you all know), she may have related it to all BATMAN material.  Who knows.

QUOTE: However, writing truly "all ages" comics is HARD WORK. And as we have seen demonstrated all too clearly in recent decades, the industry is increasingly controlled by people who have no interest in doing WORK, let alone HARD work!!

I see a parallel with wrestling (what I'm about to say will mean nothing to anyone who hasn't followed it). I much preferred the all-ages era of Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior in the WWF, where the heroes were heroic and had values and the villains were truly bad. You could take a kid to watch Hulk Hogan wrestle, it was family entertainment even when darker characters like The Undertaker would cause harm to a fan favourite.

However, in the late 90s, the WWF went down a different road (which if I'm honest, I didn't enjoy). There was still wrestling and some heroism, but it seemed to be more about pushing that envelope, having women in skimpy outfits, swearing, more and more blood, etc.

Most of my comic buying nowadays is vintage DC and Marvel stuff (Essentials and Showcase, for instance). Similarly, the only wrestling DVDs I buy now are vintage ones from the 80s/early 90s.

With regards to all-ages, characters such as Indiana Jones and Star Trek, mentioned here already, are much better and will probably stand the test of time better than than other characters.

Wasn't sure where to put this pic, but this seems like the best thread -- which one is all-ages?:

A bit OT but I wish they could have moved up the bat emblem a little...

When I was approximately 5, I was used to the more campy BATMAN of the TV show.  There were also many reprints from the earlier, more "innocent", kid friendly version; I had read the "big penny" story, the one with the Block Buster I also remember.  Then I picked up a current issue from the time.  I still have the issue, art by Aparo(who is great imo) and I thought to myself "Batman is mean."  Of course a couple of years later and I couldn't get enough of the "dark" Batman.  This predates THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS by a decade, and in many ways I think the 70's "dark and gritty" Batman is much more menacing than the Miller version.  Aparo/Adams' take wasn't as stylized as Miller's Dark Knight, they also used the traditional costume, gold oval and all, and pulled it off  very convincingly.  I haven't read any of the modern issues of Batman, so I can't speak to those.  I would guess they are more over the top.

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As I am quick to point out, the stories might have gotten "darker" in the Seventies, with (the) Batman facing less cartoony menaces, and a distinct absence of visitors from other planets, other dimensions, or other times, but (the) Batman himself remained an accessible character. Certainly not a psycho ninja!