Death in comics

[anarky]

It's getting overused to a ridiculous degree.

Death should always be there for a reason, and that reason shouldn't be mere shock value or an editorial attempt to drum up sales. But that's what it has become lately. Hasn't 3/4 of the DCU died in the past few years worth of unending epic crossovers?

Death should always resonate. I'm bringing up the example of GIJoe here, since the discussion in that thread was what prompted me to start this one. In the original series, Serpentor was the first to go (not counting Cobra Commander, who wasn't as dead as he seemed). And people started complaining that the team had been around for almost a decade with no major casualties. Then a massive series of battles resulted in the deaths of Quick-Kick, Breaker, Doc, Dr Mindbender, Firefly (again, seemingly), Crankcase, Crazylegs, and several others. "You can't kill them!" people shouted. "Ah, but you wanted realism," was the reply. "In war, you don't pick and choose who survives." Even throwaway characters who appeared for less than a full issue (Mangler, Shooter, Cool Breeze) were given dramatic deaths that were moving, though in some cases the character had less than five pages of "history."

The current series is quite the opposite. It's become a string of "what twelve characters can we kill this issue?" We've seen a massive body count of characters that were popular--Lady Jaye, Tomax and Xamot (apparently forgotten by the next writer), Mindbender's clone, Flash, Chuckles, Serpentor (five more times, at least), Billy--and no one cares.

It looks like the only well-handled death in superhero comics in recent years was Captain America. And even that probably originated with a call: "Hey, editorial's decided you've gotta kill Cap."

It's the end of life, people, for a character that, in every case, at least someone cared about. It's almost always done for shock, or because of the outdated belief that death sells. Look at the New Warriors in Civil War. Ten years ago, their book outsold any numbers Marvel is producing today. That probably means someone out there gave a shit, and didn't want to see them blow themselves up off-panel because they were retards.

Resurrection is almost as bad. It cheapens death. It's one thing if it was always intended to be temporary (Superman), or if resurrection of a character is the only way to save a struggling storyline (Cobra Commander). But it's tasteless to revive a character who had a moving death scene, especially if there's not a damned good reason. (Jason Todd, anyone?)

Are comic writers, as a whole, just so out of good story ideas that they have to kill off characters right and left? Sure, DC and Marvel are way overpopulated. But even the fucking stupidest character ever designed has fans. I can guarantee you that, somewhere, there's a rabid NFL Superpro fan.

Besides, no matter how fucking stupid a hero looks to us "on the outside," they're still risking their lives to fight evil (or good). They should have the respect of their fellow fictional heroes.

We see too many deaths lately, and not enough of the "funeral" sort of stories. Superman must be going to so many in the past year or so that his having adventures in his own book doesn't make sense anymore.

Worst of all, something both Marvel and DC have done (though DC far more) is massive genocide. You can get away with nuking Genosha. It changes the status quo, but you can do it. You can't utterly destroy Bludhaven without some series repercussions in the rest of the DCU (especially books centered in nearby Gotham). And you especially can't fucking say Topeka and half of Kansas was completely destroyed by aliens. That kinda kills the escapism, eh?

[Rollo Tomassi]

EP went on a similar rant during the Infinite Crisis crossover at DC. Wholesale slaughter of lesser used characters to show that "this crossover will have huge ramifications for the entire publisher's continuity" is never as effective as a slow build up to a single death in a well crafted storyline.

[anarky]

I wasn't trying to emulate the late, lamented EP (who died in as shameless a comic book death as has ever been seen ), but I do agree with him.

In reading the GIJoe: Declassified paperback a couple of days ago, I thought the death of Shooter was more emotionally powerful than anything else I've seen in years. And, yet, she was a throwaway character, a clumsy retcon of an in-joke, and had appeared for less than 20 pages total.

It's kinda like the "One Year Later" story in Batman. "In order to show what a badass the new crime lord [didn't it turn out to be Two-Face, brought back for the umpteenth time?] is, we're going to kill a lot of villains, and Batman will investigate their deaths." Not a huge deal with, say, Mime or Orca, but, fuck, if you're killing the Ventriloquist, show him a bit more respect.

Not that I'm against killing the Ventriloquist. But the character has been around long enough and is popular enough that he deserves to be more than a corpse Batman walks in on.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Sadly, the villain in that Batman story turned out to be some nobody named White Shark or some shit, and you didn't know it was him until the last pages when Batman goes to his Arkham cell and says "I know it was you..." I seriously thought I had missed some chapters because it was the FIRST I had heard of this guy. Both in the story and in Batman continuity altogether. Fuckin' lame. I think they've killed Ventriloquist three or four times, only to retcon it into "badly wounded". Now there's a chick Ventriloquist instead. Lame.

[jjreason]

My first whiff of the "cheapening" of comic book death was Jean Grey's revival in a 1980's FF issue. As a huge fan of X-Men, I had read much of the John Byrne run including the 3 issue finale of Jean as Dark Phoenix.... and I KNEW it was wrong to bring her back. Even as a young teen, the excitement of X-Factor couldn't outdo the feeling of wrongness about bringing her back. I'm not sure if that was the beginning of the "end" of meaningful comic deaths or not.... but it certainly was memorable.

[anarky]

The thing that makes Jean's death cheapest is that:

1) She was cloned, and Cyclops immediately married her.
2) she came back for real-real, and the clone died. Jean apparently had no issues with her one true love marrying an evil clone.
3) She died again, to be replaced by Emma, 'cause apparently Cyclops is a stupid fickle SOB, and we all know she'll be back!

I think two of the worst were in Spider-Man. First, the Green Goblin. His death was a milestone, a turning point in Spidey's life. And POOF! It didn't happen. Second, Aunt May. Her death in 1993 was beautifully handled. To make that have been another fucking clone was absolutely horrible. It's possibly even more unforgiveable than the whole "deal with the devil" bullshit going on now. The sequence of her revealing to Peter she's known his secret for years should never have been negated.

[jjreason]

4) It hurt the most when it happened. Looking back, the stories kind of lead up to it in a now-obvious fashion - but it was still very emotional..... hell, they dealt with it for AGES afterwards. Here's the cover of 138 ("Elegy"), just to illustrate how this wasn't meaningless to the creators when it happened:



I think I read somewhere that there was a HUGE brouhaha between Byrne and Claremont over where this storyline was headed - I don't think Chris wanted to kill her off but somehow Byrne won that one. I wonder if the creators of great stuff like this get pissed when the stuff gets retconned? I know I would.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Actually, I think EiC Jim Shooter made the call that she had to die. His reasoning was she shouldn't commit genocide of an alien race and then not be punished for it, in a literary sense of the word.
Later on they published a oneshot of that issue with the original ending.

[Tom Foolery]

In regards to the recent announcement of Avengers Arena, where Marvel is going to snuff all of its teen heroes. It would be intersting to maybe do an Inane type article about Marvel Teen Heroes and what happens to them after the luster wears off.
Like the New Warriors all getting blown up at the beginning of Civil War.
Several of the GenX students have been killed off.
Mattie Franklin eventually getting killed off during Grim Hunt.
Half the Slingers are deceased. One was gutted by Wolverine himself.
After being introduced in the new New Mutants book and then moving on to New X-Men:Academy X, like 40 Mutants were blown up on the bus.
The list goes on and on.
Marvel seems to alternate between "We need fresh characters like Runaways!" and "We need to focus on the core 1960s characters. Everyone else is cannon fodder!" So they have these cycles of expansion and contraction.
One wonders why creators would keep bothering to create fresh characters for Marvel(and DC) knowing they'll be killed off in a few years to create artificial "drama".
What other teen heroes have fed the gristle mill?

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Ollie Osnick, the Spider-Kid. Eventually he grew up to be Steel Spider before he was horribly maimed by Venom in the pages of the Thunderbolts. And I honest to god think he's still in prison even though the SHRA has been rescinded. Wow. Talk about a shitty deal.

[jjreason]

We all know it has gone from being "out of left field" to overused plot device, the most interesting factor of which is how it inevitably gets undone.

I'll suggest the undoing of Jean Grey's was the most disgusting undoing, but when did death become boring? Which death was the first meaningless one?

[vynsane]

Which death was the first meaningless one?

maybe superman? i know it was a big media event and all, and we all bought the issue, but did we really think he wasn't coming back? it was the 'sweeps week' of comics, plain and simple, just for a buck (or a million). was anything else before then considered "been there, done that"?

[RoIIo Tomassi]

That's a good question. It would be hard to be objective about "deaths/resurrections" that happened after I started reading on a regular basis.
Jean Grey was already back by the time I started. Angel had died and come back as Archangel after I started. Warlock and Thanos came back while I was reading, but I hadn't heard of either until they showed up for Infinity Gauntlet.

Perhaps it was Loki's death in Thor 450.
Or Reed's death in Fantastic Four. Nobody took that seriously. Even though he was out of the book for a few years.

Clearly nobody ever thought Superman's death was permanent. But that story was entertaining so it gets a pass.

What else? I'm sure there are more deaths I'm drawing a blank on.

[anarky]

Superman's was the first that outsiders made a big deal about and comic fans said, "Eh, he'll be back."

Of course, it was always intended to play out the way it did (according to the writers, who I believe here), but without the hoopla. Editorial and corporate made it such a big deal.