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Gargoyles
1994 · TV series · 22 min episodes · 3 seasons
AnimationScience FictionFantasyActionAdventure
In Scotland, 994 A.D. Goliath and his clan of gargoyles defend a medieval castle. In present day, David Xanatos buys the castle and moves it to New York City. When the castle is attacked the gargoyles are awakened from a 1000 year curse.
2 positive1 mixedfrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
Those comics were visually dark and had some darkish themes but they weren't much darker than Power Rangers or anything else on at the time. If anything they were more sophisticated shows than Power Rangers.
That's not to say Power Rangers was bad, but Spider-Man and Gargoyles were interesting in that they used multi-episode storylines with multiple acts. Outside of their visual motifs they weren't dark series. They were just offering narratives for older kids that were reading books and comics and playing video games.
You reminded me of Gargoyles which is worth mentioning. Creator Greg Weisman quit over Disney planning to ruin it in Season 3. It was probably a good call because they did ruin Season 3.
Weisman had created a detailed story arc that had a couple more centuries to go. He has continued to answer never ending fan questions and reveal details of the story arc for the following 20 years at "Ask Greg" at Station 8 Gargoyles
http://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/
Gargoyles was amazing. The movie (which shows the story of their "creation") and some of the early episodes can get surprisingly dark (but deep).
Another show along those lines is "Batman Beyond" (a dark "reboot" of Batman in which an aging Bruce Wayne enlists a young protege to be the next Batman in the near future).
In both shows (particularly Batman Beyond), if you ignore some obvious elements that point to them being shows for kids/teenagers, they almost seem like they were originally intended for adults, and then later rewritten to be targeted towards younger audiences.