Death in Comics: How Events Took Over Stories

If you’re a regular comic book reader you know that when a character dies in the comics it is rarely if ever permanent. Throughout my twenty plus years of being a comic book fan I can count on one hand the number of characters who have been killed off and stayed dead.

Prior to the early nineties, death in comics was a rare occurrence. The few characters that had died prior to then had managed to stay dead for decades. There was a respect to killing off a character. It wasn’t like today when character deaths last as long as celebrity marriages, and usually generate just as much sensationalism. When Captain America died in 2007 it was featured in national media. Even more than when Superman died in 1992.

And it was with the death of Superman that the Pandora’s box of super hero death was opened. Because the issue where Superman died sold huge numbers. DC Comics realized that the easiest way to generate sales was with big event comics. And there is no bigger event than a hero’s death. But in actuality it wasn’t so much the death that ruined it for mortality in comics. It was the Resurrection.

Superman’s death was the type of death a hero should have. An unstoppable foe, Doomsday, comes along and completely defeats all other heroes leaving only Superman standing. After page after page of a drawn out slug fest Superman finally defeats Doomsday with one devastating blow before finally succumbing to his wounds and dying in the arms of Lois Lane. That is the type of glorious death we should expect when a publisher says it is going to kill off a beloved character.  And it was a satisfying death.

But then it came time to bring Superman back. As I said, the Death of Superman was an event and events make money. So if killing a hero is an event then bringing them back must be an event too. And that’s where things get sketchy because the team at DC couldn’t quite decide how they were going to bring Superman back. So rather than getting one resurrected Superman we got four watered down kinds of Supermen. All four meant to be red herrings while the writers held back the real Superman until the last possible moment.

In the wake of the Death and Return of Superman we saw characters being sidelined left and right. Batman was crippled, Iron Man was killed, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) sacrificed himself to save the earth, and many many other heroes have passed through the revolving door of super hero death. In fact Superman’s resurrection had such an impact on comics that characters who had been killed off years, and in some case decades, before were brought back. Both Jason Todd (Robin II) and Bucky Barnes (Captain America’s WWII sidekick) were both brought back from the grave despite the fact that comic book readers had long accepted their passing and saw no need to want them back.

"Put me in coach! I'm ready"

Death in comics have now become just a stop watch for fans asking how long until they bring a character back. So far to my knowledge only one hero since the death of Superman has managed to stay dead and that is Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle. Of course the only reason I think that he has stayed dead is because they replaced him with a younger hipper version of the character. Had the new Blue Beetle failed to garner fans, Ted Kord would have been resurrected faster than a Timelord.