Comic book death is a neologism used somewhat ironically in the comic book fan community to refer to the killing off and subsequent return of a long-running character. This irony addresses the fact that while death is a serious subject, a comic book death is generally not taken seriously and is rarely permanent or meaningful. Some comic book writers have killed off characters to gather publicity or to create dramatic tension. In other instances, a writer kills off a character that he/she did not particularly care for, but upon leaving the title, another writer who liked this character brings them back. More often however, the publishing house intends to permanently kill off a long-running character, but fan pressure or creative decisions push the company to resurrect the character. Still other characters remain permanently dead, but are replaced by characters who assume their personas (such as Wally West taking over for Barry Allen as the Flash), so the death does not cause a genuine break in character continuity. Deaths and subsequent resurrections have become such an institution on comic book narratives that certain characters have been written with this as a character trait, such as DC's Resurrection Man and Marvel's Mr. Immortal.
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Notable examples
Historically, the two most famous comic book deaths are arguably the 1980 "death" of Jean Grey in Marvel's Dark Phoenix Saga and that of Superman in DC's highly-publicized 1993 Death of Superman storyline. There is one major distinction between the two, however - whereas it was never intended that Superman's death be permanent, and that he would return to life at the conclusion of the story, Jean's passing (the first many comic book deaths that would be associated with the X-Men) was written as the true and permament death of the character, only to be retconned a few years later to faciliate her return. The most recent, high-profile death was that of Captain America, who made headlines worldwide in early 2007 when he met his apparent end. It remains to be seen if the character will return to life. The prominence of comic book deaths has ultimately led to the readership rarely taking the death of a character seriously - when someone dies, the reader feels very little sense of loss, and simply left wondering how long it will be before they return to life. This, in turn, has led to a common piece of comic shop wisdom: "No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben"[1] referring to Captain America's sidekick (dead since 1964 in real world publication, 1945 in fictional continuity), Batman's second Robin (died in 1989), and Spider-Man's uncle (dead since 1962), respectively. Ironically, this long-held tenet was finally broken in 2005, when both Bucky and Todd returned to life. Comic book deaths have been parodied by Peter Milligan in X-Statix, in which all the characters had died by the end of the series, and by Dan Slott in his 2005 miniseries Great Lakes Avengers, in which one member died in every issue. The Simpsons also parodied comic book deaths in the episode "Radioactive Man" in which Bart mentions an issue of Radioactive Man in which the eponymous character and his sidekick Fallout Boy die on every page. Common retcons include:
- An explosion didn't kill the character, they were merely buried in rubble/flung to safety/transported to another dimension (Spider-Man villain Hammerhead once survived a nuclear explosion in this way). [2]
- The person who died was a clone, impostor, or shapeshifter (Dark Phoenix being the most well-known example).[3]
- The character really did die, but was resurrected, either intentionally (e.g., Green Arrow)[4] or unintentionally (e.g., Jason Todd)[5] by some cosmic or magical being.
Outside comic books
The return of a character previously thought dead is certainly not limited to comic books. In many slasher films and monster movies, the killer or monster seemingly dies at the end of the film only to return for a sequel. Daytime and prime-time soap operas are notorious for comic book deaths; famously, an entire season of Dallas was retconned into one character's dream so that a character killed in that season could return.[1] However, the term comic book death was not used at the time.
See also
References
- ^ Captain America, RIP, para. 5, Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2007
- ^ In Amazing Spider-Man #131, April 1974. Hammerhead reappears in #157.
- ^ The Dark Phoenix Saga, X-Men #101-108 (1976-77), 129-138 (1980); retconned in Fantastic Four #286 (1985). See Dark Phoenix Saga#Jean Grey and Phoenix as separate entities for the behind the scenes writing/editorial decisions which led to the change.
- ^ returned Green Arrow vol. 2 #1 (2000)
- ^ returned as the Red Hood, Batman #635 (2004)
External links
- X-Men: Death Becomes Them A comedy flash movie that makes fun of the comic book deaths in the X-Men comics.
