It’s been a rough week. My grandfather passed away on Friday after a sudden illness, so I’ve been dealing with that since last week. He was something of a comics fan, I think. I know he LOVED watching Lynda Carter on Wonder Woman. I haven’t had much time to devise the next group participation thing; though I hope to have something for next week. I did, obviously, have a lot of time to contemplate death.
Death is a sad, sad joke in comics. NOBODY ever dies. I have always said that good fiction is realistic. I can suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy most four color comic senarios. Guys with metal claws? Sure. Women with ridiculous breast to waist ratios? Hell yeah! Optic blasts, elastic bodies, blind radar, weather control, extraordinary mental abilities? You betcha. But serial immortality? I have a problem with that.
The problem is pretty basic: it trivializes death. Death is not trivial. Death is final. Death is “The End”, it’s over, there ain’t no more. But in comics it’s a cheap tactic to bump sales. And I think everyone’s caught on. I don’t have the numbers, and maybe an enterprising soul could look them up for me, but I’m betting the big death issues today don’t really show that much of a bump in sales. If they killed the latest Manhunter would anyone but me even know? It’s already on cancelled, so it’s just a matter of time. If they killed Kyle Rayner would anyone care? Not me. There’s a whole Corps full of Green Lanterns. I can easily find one (or a dozen) that entertain me more. DC received global media attention back in the early 90s when they “killed” Superman. Sure, you could reasonably expect that Big Blue would somehow retrun in due time, but killing a major character is a big deal. Killing an icon character is damn near impossible. Death can’t touch Superman. Batman and Spidey are right up there too. None of them are technically immortal, none of them have that power in their dossier, but public demand will always keep them alive.
So explain to me, then, why characters whom the public demanded to die are being ressurected? Why is Jason Todd alive and well? The public gave him the modern equivalent to a thumbs down in a Roman gladiator match. The public condemned Todd to death. Not just a simple and tragic illness, but a bludgeoning with a crowbar and an explosive in the face. There shouldn’t have been anything left but some charred bones scattered across 500 yards. But NOOOOO, some lazy-ass creator brought Jason Todd back because YOU demanded it! Well, OK, you didn’t, Judd Winick did. Winick and his editor ignored the desires of the public, just like a good Republican should, and brought back a punk brat with no powers. Sweet, I’ll buy 10 copies! Not. Green Arrow Oliver Queen? He’s back. Green Lantern Hal Jordan? He’s back. I fully expect Maxwell Lord to untwist his neck and storm Checkmate any week now, because I have no reason to believe in the permanence of death in comics anymore.
Look at Marvel. Go to the Marvel Universe, go right past Hela’s realm, past Valhalla, and enter Death’s realm. That dark, forboding residence of Thanos’ consort is…hmm…where the heck is everybody? Hello?!? Anybody home?!? Nope. Nobody. They had hundreds of useless mutants sitting around waiting for Chris Claremont’s next run and they didn’t kill them, they just turned their powers off. Like Jason Todd, Captain America’s sidekick Bucky Barnes got blown the Hell up but secretly survived to be a secret assassin for the Commies. you all know I love The Brubaker, but it’s still unnecessary. The Winter Soldier couldn’t have been Nomad? D-Man? Frank Castle? Somebody who wasn’t blown to shit? Peter David brought Uncle Ben Parker back. Uncle Ben. Seriously. May Parker might acually be immortal, she might someday scream “There can be only one!” just before receiving her opponent’s Quickening. But Ben is dead and for good reason. He’s dead because if he’s alive there wouldn’t be the Spiderman we all know and love. For all of the tragic origins in comics, Pete’s is perhaps the most character-defining. After all, baby Kal El and young boy Bruce Wayne couldn’t have done much to prevent the explosion of Krypton or the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne. But ol’ Petey could have and should have stopped that thief. His failure to recognize that…drumroll…sing it with me kids…”WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILTY”…resulted in the death of his beloved uncle and kindled the fire that has driven Spiderman ever since. Why mess with that? Of course Peter David, a tremendous writer, had a clever means of doing it. It’s not really the DEAD Uncle Ben brought back to life. It’s a Ben yanked out of time, perhaps from another timeline altogether. But that doesn’t really make it less contrived. I heard a lot of people complain about J. Michael Straczynski damaging the reputation of Gwen Stacy by giving her mystery children via a retconned rape by Norman Osborne. I actually found that more reasonable than bringing back Uncle Ben. Icon characters can’t die. Major title characters shouldn’t die. Old men without superpowers of any kind are free game, and once gone they should stay that way.
|
Comic writers have the power to bend these characters to their will, but they also have the responsibility to respect what has come before. |
Let’s not forget the worst offense of all. The Civil War is a good excuse to bring a number of characters into the spotlight. Speedball, Young Avengers, Sue Storm, you name ’em and they’ve probably played a roll. So who’s brilliant idea was it to bring back Captain Marvel? Fabian Nicieza just killed off his kid prior to the Civil War. Monica Rambeau has been changing her name every couple months but hasn’t seemed to miss being Captain Marvel. The title alone may be the kiss of death: every Captain Marvel in the Marvel Universe is (or was) either dead or completely disused. DC, ironically enough, has done more with the words “Captain Marvel” than Marvel has in the last 10 years. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, if you haven’t read “The Death of Captain Marvel” by Jim Starlin you need to quit reading this right now and find yourself a copy. It’s a masterpiece of poignancy right up there with Dark Knight Returns or Kraven’s Last Hunt. And it doesn’t ruin a thing to tell you that Mar-Vell, the Kree traitor turned superhero, dies of cancer. Yes, cancer. Everyone knows someone who has dealt with cancer. My mother had breast cancer. She was able to beat it into remission. Not everybody does. Mar-Vell doesn’t. He has a unique physiology that defies the efforts of the best minds in the Marvel Universe. When Captain Marvel finally succumbs, even if you’ve never read any of his 60s-70s adventures, you feel it like the loss of a friend.
And now in the Civil War: The Return, Paul Jenkins brings Captain Marvel back. I’d like to believe it isn’t Paul Jenkins’ fault. He seems like a good soldier. And we all know that Bendis and Quesada call all the shots. But this, this is grotesque. Bringing back a cancer victim is a slap in the face. You want to secret Colossus away in a hidden labratory while we all THINK he’s dead, fine. But Captain Marvel died the way real people die. The monitors flatlined. The hearts stopped beating, the lungs quit pumping oxygen and the brain died. He was surrounded by friends and even a few enemies. It was the most realistically handled death in comics, perhaps ever, and whomever is pulling Jenkins’ strings this month thought it’d be “cool” to bring Mar-Vell back and make him the warden of the gulag in the Negative Zone. Of all the hundreds of live characters in the Marvel Universe, Bendis and Co. needed to wake Mar-vell from his eternal sleep not to stop his nemesis Thanos but to ride shotgun on Tony Stark’s ill-conceived concentration camp for heroes? I call bullshit. I don’t care what the relative power levels of the prisoners are, and I don’t care that they just yanked him from time prior to his death in a contrivance even more forced than Peter David’s handling of Uncle Ben. Taskmaster would have been a better choice for warden. Or Cardiac. Bring back Nightwatch. Bring back Phoenix for like the sixth time. Hell, quit teasing us and bring back the REAL Thor. Do something with Kang even. It’s not like the pro-registration heroes are above sleeping with the enemy. Don’t cheapen Starlin’s masterwork for a little half-assed story that doesn’t even fill the issue. There are some things that should be beyond even Quesdada’s and Bendis’ questionable taste. There are some things that are better left alone. It doesn’t always have to be about dollar signs. Sometimes it’s about the emotional investment readers make in a character. Captain Marvel, perhaps moreso than any other character, should be allowed to rest in peace.
I miss you, Grandpa.
