Comic book death

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 rarely taken seriously and is not believed to be permanent or meaningful.

Marvel Comics supposedly engages in this gimmick more frequently than other publishers, a tendency that has been addressed directly in the X-Men books ("Mutant heaven has no pearly gates, only revolving doors" - X-Factor #70). In contrast, one famous aspect of the younger Ultimate Marvel universe is the relative lack of this device, as stories are planned to be explicitly tied together or stand-alone in advance.

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.

Death isn't the handicap it used to be...

The two most famous comic 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 (although of the two, only Jean's was actually intended to be a true, permanent death, and was later retconned not to have been a death at all). Since the Dark Phoenix Saga, comic book deaths have been particularly common in X-Men-related series.

The prominence of comic book deaths 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, but brought back to life in Captain America vol. 5), Batman's second Robin, (died in 1989, has since returned) and Spider-Man's uncle (dead since 1962), respectively. Ironically, both Todd and Bucky returned from the dead in 2005, and an Uncle Ben from a timeline where he never died recently entered mainstream continuity in the recent issues of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Note that sometimes a character can be dead in the mainstream continuity, but alive in an alternate reality, such as the aged Bucky in the Ultimate Marvel universe, or Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy's return in the House of M storyline.

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 some characters have lasted only a single 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).^{[citation needed]}

• The person who died was a clone, impostor, or shapeshifter (Dark Phoenix being the most well-known example).^[2]

• The character really did die, but was resurrected, either intentionally (e.g., Green Arrow)^[3] or unintentionally (e.g., Jason Todd)^[4] 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

• List of dead comic book characters
• Retcon
• Women in Refrigerators

References

Wikipedia information about Comic book death This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Comic book death". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.