Comic Book characters dying has become tiresome

Looking at my site you can probably tell but in case you haven’t picked up yet I am a huge comic book fan. But recently something has really started to bug me. The news that Captain America was to return from the dead was probably to the delight of many fans and even myself felt that the star spangled hero should be back (then again I never thought he should have been killed). However, his return annoys me and that is because I honestly believe once a character has been killed that should be the end of them unless their death was in away where at the time of writing, the writers were aware that they were going to bring the character back or if there was an actual chance of the character surviving in real life. The amount of characters that die these days is unbelievable and the reader is aware that the character will return in one shape or another. In most respects I would argue that killing a character is the least imaginative thing a writer can do because either themselves or another writer later in time will bring them back.

A key examples that I am thinking about at the moment are both Captain America and Batman. The first I am going to discuss is Captain America. The death of Cap was a truly shocking event that made newspaper headlines as although Cap was no longer the Marvel Franchise player, in the actual comics he was the icon of hope and liberty. In many ways, Cap’s death saw Marvel as a company lead the characters down a much darker ambiguous path through the Dark Reign plot. But now, yet again, we are about to see him return. The book will no doubt make lots of money and as I said earlier I never think that the character should have died in the first place as the world being in this torrid state that it is at the moment needs a character like Cap to look up to. But the amount of rebirths and survivals etc we see in comics makes the medium feel less realistic. I know that we have to hold our belief as we are accepting a world where people have powers but still I think that once someone dies they should be dead.

Batman

Last year, the great Grant Morrison killed off the DC Franchise player in Batman. Since then, we have seen that the Batman will carry on regardless of whether Bruce Wayne is alive or not. At the moment I applaud this move by DC. In my opinion, I think that if a character dies, the best way to keep the book going is to pass the iconic character onto another as Dick Grayson has taken the Bat mantle. Furthermore, DC have released some excellent spin off Bat stories such as Red Robin that have taken characters down an incredible path that we may never have seen before. Now again, I am a big Bruce Wayne fan but in many ways would it not ruin things if he suddenly returned. What would happen with Dick now that he is Batman? Would he simply bow down to his teacher and re-emerge as Nightwing? Again, the original story would be good but the fact that us readers would have to accept that another ‘death’ meant little would be annoying.

Now, I would argue as a whole that before the recent story with Batman in DC, Marvel has been better at keeping its characters dead. The areas that I am going to be looking into are The Amazing Spider-man and the Ultimate series.

The Amazing Spider-man

When, Gwen Stacy died in The Amazing Spider-man in the early 70s, we saw the whole basis of Spidey and Peter Parker’s world change. Not just that, Gwen, with her father George, is one of the few characters to have remained dead. She may have come back as a clone but the original Gwen is dead with no sign of her coming back. To me, this is a sign that killing characters forever can actually work. Peter Parker evolved as a character as like when Uncle Ben died (another Spidey character never to return thank goodness), Spidey learnt more that with great power comes great responsibility. What is more, if Gwen had not died it is likely that Peter’s social life may have become stagnant because he would never have got together with Mary Jane and as much as I liked the character Gwen, we all know that the feisty red head is the love of his life, who brought an extra dimension to the Spider-man character. So, an example where Marvel was brave, where they killed off a character forever (it would seem) and the character prospered. However, Marvel could have been more brave with having the Green Goblin remain dead instead of bringing him back to life. Do not get me wrong, in my opinion the Green Goblin is one of if not Spidey’s greatest villain. However, surely then the Green Goblin’s legacy would have been greater if he had died in the most iconic battle he had with the webslinger. His return in my view could never live up to the death that he had.

Ultimate

For a long time in the Ultimate series, Marvel took the sentiment that I have echoed in this article: if a character dies in the ultimate universe, they are dead. End of. This was a great thing about the Ultimate universe as it gave the universe a more realistic slant. However, as of late this has changed and in my opinion not for the better. Ultimate X-Men brought the Beast back from the dead when there did not seem to be any realistic way in which the character could have survived. What is more, with the ongoing Ultimatum storyline, can we honestly believe that every character that has died in the Ultimate universe will remain dead? Ultimatum has left the Ultimate universe in a state of  flux which will probably be brought back by characters returning from the dead.

Therefore, I close this article by arguing that some writers should have the courage to have their character remain dead if they do kill them off. This will be more of a genuine shock to the reader instead of the collective groan that us readers would make when the huge plot line that apparently was going to change things forever was changed by the character surviving.