Thalen Speaks

Isey’s ruminations in response to my post yesterday got me thinking more about death in comics.  Death has been a part of superhero comics for a long time, and has been handled in varying ways.  Sometimes it’s been done well, but more often it just seems like a last desperate attempt to do something shocking with a character that isn’t as relevant as they once were.

One of the earliest superhero deaths was that of Lightning Lad, way back in 1963.  He remained dead for a less than a year and was then resurrected by super-science.  There was never really any question that he would be back, though; even the end blurb of the story he died in alludes to his eventual resurrection.  Gwen Stacy is another famous death from the 60’s, and one of the few that hasn’t been overturned.  Later appearances have inevitably been clones.

These days, death and resurrection seem to go hand in hand, just another plot device among many.  I can’t say I entirely disapprove of characters in superhero comics dying, but I do think it should be rare and meaningful.  The death of the original Captain Marvel is a good example of a superhero death that was well handled and made for an excellent story.  Much of the story is actually focused on how his friends and fellow superheroes deal with his death.

Barry Allen is another character whose death I can’t disapprove of.  The Silver Age Flash went out in the most superheroic of ways, saving not just the world, not even just the universe, but an entire multiverse from destruction.  His death in Crisis on Infinite Earths ended and era and passed the torch to his sidekick, Wally West, who took up the mantle of the Flash.

More often, though, character death seems to be a way to try and raise the stakes by knocking off a few heroes to show that the threat should be taken seriously.  Avengers Disassembled killed off Hawkeye, Vision, Ant-Man, Jack of Hearts, and Agatha Harkness among others to try and drive the threat of the Scarlet Witch’s madness home.  It’s worth pointing out that the first three of those characters have all been returned to life since, and the remaining two could be easily brought back at any time based on their established powers.

It’s always possible that part of why I accept the deaths from longer ago is the simple fact that they occurred before I was reading comics.  To me, Wally West was the Flash and Gwen Stacy had always been dead.  I’m sure readers of the time were as dismayed by their deaths as I was when Nightcrawler died (he’s also back now, by the way).  Time heals all wounds, and distance lends objectivity.

Ultimately, death is a part of the story now, for good or ill.  I guess I can’t complain too much, since it seems even the most ignominious of superhero deaths have a silver lining.  Without Avengers Disassembled we would never have gotten the sublime Young Avengers.  And my all-time favorite superhero team owes its existence to one of the most derided of crossovers, the story that killed off the Fantastic Four and Avengers all at once, Onslaught.

Heroes Reborn, on the other hand, was pretty much 100% hot garbage.

Source: Thalen Speaks
Death in Comics

Superhero comics, particularly Marvel and DC, have a number of peculiarities that come from effectively being incredibly long serial works.  You get the strange effect of having an ongoing setting that has been built up over the course of decades by a great number of authors.  Individual characters can go through periods of wildly different characterization due to changing times, changing writers, and the demands of the company as a whole.

One of the most uniquely comic-booky of concepts is the retcon.  Short for retroactive continuity, a retcon occurs when an aspect of established continuity is changed after the fact.  You can into a lot of debate over just what counts a retcon.  Is it any change to the past at all? Does it matter if it’s done by the same writer who created the element being changed, or by a different writer?

I view retcons as story changes that actively modify past stories and directly contradict continuity as it previously existed.  It’s not a perfect definition, but mostly it works.  Superman’s return after his apparent death wouldn’t be a retcon because he was never intended to stay dead; Barry Allen‘s return from the dead is, since his death was meant to be permanent.

What got me thinking about this is a series of retcons that have been going on over the past few years in Marvel Comics around Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D.  Specifically, Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Warriors comic that ran from 2009-2011 and the current Original Sin event.  Both have resulted in major changes, but where I ended up happy with Secret Warriors turned out, I’ve been more and more disappointed with Original Sin as it goes on.

I think in both cases a lot of the impetus has been a desire to bring the comic book versions of Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. more in line with the movie version.  Where movie Fury is Sam Jackson, the comic book Fury is a white guy who fought in World War II and became a super spy in the 60’s.  He’s kept young by a serum called the Infinity Formula.

Without spoiling too much, Secret Warriors ended with Nick leaving S.H.I.E.L.D., breaking his triple-agent girlfriend out of prison, and riding off into the sunset.  It was a great send-off that retired the character after giving him one more great story.  I was sad to see Nick go, but I was okay with it.

Spoilers for Original Sin after this point.

Original Sin brought him back to reveal that he’s been secretly murdering aliens and monsters for decades to preemptively protect Earth from them.  The Infinity Formula wore off, so he’s an old man now.  He’s apparently murdered the Watcher.  And his best friend was actually killed in 1966 and all his appearances since then were actually a robotic replacement.

If the final issue of the story doesn’t end with Fury dead, I’ll be shocked.  Everything about this story just feels like an attempt to not only ensure he’s no longer usable, but also no longer liked.  I’m sure once this is finished, it’ll be a long time before we see him again.  What makes me sad is that he was already set aside, but in a way that seemed appropriate to the character.

Eventually though, decades from now most likely, someone will decide they want to bring him back.  And they’ll do it, because in comic books death is never permanent.  Just ask Barry Allen.

Source: Thalen Speaks
On Retcons