Comic Book Death: Defining Death

If a likeable character dies a "meaningful" death, such as a heroic sacrifice or something that forever shapes the behavior of another character (some examples here would be Skurge the Executioner, who died a very heroic death, and Ben Parker, Gwen Stacy, or Bucky, whose deaths are major parts of the mythos of the character they support), then bringing the character back to life on a whim is degrading the meaning of the original angst.

If Skurge the Executioner came back, it would take away any meaning his death as a sacrifice to help others and as his shining moment in the sun, his blaze of glory, that would be degraded too. I think Skurge would probably want to snap the neck of some bum who brought him back to life.

Or take Ben Parker. If Ben Parker hadn't died, Spider-Man would probably, after J. Jonah Jameson ran the editorial that put him out of his first job, have instead gone straight after J.J.J. and threatened him, possibly becoming a true criminal instead of a hero. At one point in the original story, Peter Parker thinks to himself "I'll see to it that *they're* [Aunt May and Uncle Ben] always happy, but the rest of the world can go hang for all I care!" Now, maybe I'm reading it differently than Stan Lee intended it, but didn't Peter just basically say "I love my own people, but as far as I'm concerned, everyone else can go die!"? That is a rather teenaged thought, true, but it is also not a charitable thought. Not charitable at all. This is hardly the same person who would stop a random mugger on the street, and realizing what kind of consequences not acting responsibly could have on someone's life is what drives Spider-Man. Bring Uncle Ben back to life, and you've just undone that single consequence that set Spidey down the path of being the worst-off person in Western mainstream comics.

Gwen Stacy's death, ironically, means a lot less, almost nothing by comparison. Its effect on Spider-Man comes less from its "meaning" and more from the fact that it broke the status quo that had been going on for some time in Spider-Man: Spider-Man is dating Gwen, and thinking about maybe marrying her, but he's too poor. Chances are, if the old status quo hadn't been broken this way, Spider-Man would be immensely less popular today, because it'd be all about "Oh no! I *still* don't have enough money for a wedding! Oh, no!" Or possibly, he would have gotten married a lot earlier, and had less of a chance of the status quo being messed up, which would also have stagnated his stories somewhat. No, what Gwen Stacy's death means is change. Gwen Stacy cannot be allowed to come back, because it undermines the sense of Peter Parker having a "real" life, one that resembles that of a real person's, with ups and downs (mostly downs) and struggles and changes over time as the character gets older. (Gasp! People age! Shocking!) This, for me, is the strongest and most important part of Spider-Man's character, and while they haven't undone Gwen's death yet, they've still undermined it repeatedly.

(As an aside, undoing previous deaths can have an undermining ripple effect across a shared universe like Marvel's. Gwen Stacy's death being undone would have a greater detrimental effect, in my opinion, on the Marvels miniseries than on Spider-Man's mythos itself.)

As one last example, take Bucky's death. This death is, by pretty much any standard, "meaningful," but it did a lot less for Captain America than Ben Parker's did for Spidey. Cap is the way he is because that's *always* been the way he is-shooting off cornball lines as he takes down the badguys with improbable skills and weaponry. Bucky's death or undeath makes no difference there. So the return of Bucky Barnes as the Winter Soldier and later as Captain America XVIII (okay, I'm making that number up) is not so bad.

These are all, as I have said, "meaningful" deaths of supporting cast members.

What happens, out of curiousity, when a main character dies?

Practically nothing. About fifteen minutes later, he gets back up, washes off the blood, and is fine. Even if he was vaporized or died of cancer twenty some years ago, he's fine. This is part of the reason I like team books; if a team member dies, unless that person is Jean Grey or Wolverine, that person is probably dead.* Even Barry Allen has come back or will be coming back (might as well be the same thing, he's the Flash), just so you don't think I'm only honking my backseat driver horn only at Marvel.**

(In fact, I'd say that historically, Marvel was a little better about this. There was apparently a pre-Crisis comic where some villain actually brough Pa and Ma Kent back to life in order to hold them hostage against Superman. Seriously, what a heck?)

Sometimes, this is okay, if not especially believable, but it's kinda overused. When I say, "sometimes," heroes are by nature "larger than life." They're more impressive than the normal Joe on the street. Remember I mentioned that Sherlock Holmes came back to life? He did it by elaborately faking his death in front of his best friend, who being of normal instead of exceptional intelligence completely fell for it. Slightly contrived, but Holmes' death was, quite honestly, the less satisfying part of the equation here (hence the vicious campaign to return him to life).

And how about villains? Well, it matters how much appeal the villain has. If the villain is some thug who was fried by the Eradicator-turned-Superman or reduced to an ugly smoldering corpse by a Toastmaster in Reign of the Supermen, then, yeah, he's pretty dead. If he's, say, Doctor Doom, or Thanos, or freakin' Apocalypse***, then death usually means little to them, and they rise from the grave at least as easily as a main character hero type, and sometimes more easily. (Dr. Doom once apparently convinced the Beyonder to restore him to life and his own body by coming up with some convoluted bit of weird logic that, if the Beyonder did not, the Beyonder would not exist because of timestream warping. Stupid Beyonder fell for it, too. Not that, being in the process of bargaining with the Beyonder, Doom was in any sense actually dead; he had hijacked someone else's body.) And in the case of Mephisto, the bugger doesn't even blink if someone eats his heart. (That was in a Black Panther comic, although I can't tell you which one.) Obviously, in the case of some of these guys, death means something different than simple physical dismemberment, but there's a fundamental difference between these guys and heroes.

They're villains. They're monsters. They're horrific and brutal by nature, and willing to do anything to get ahead. (Granted, increasingly we see heroes with at least some of these characteristics, an extreme case being Spawn.) They're willing to do just about anything to stay alive and keep on doing what they do. (There are exceptions to this, I'm sure. Thanos won't come back after the latest stuff with him for two or three years at least-he's "at peace with Death now," which is kinda nutty because he's always wanted to die.) And like heroes (but to a greater extent) villains are often larger than life. And yes, it really can be to a greater extent. Solo villains from team books are a great example of this kind of thing. Characters like Ultron, Thanos, and the Silver Surfer (in his earliest appearances) present huge threats that counter the entire team's skills and strengths, so it's a little hard to trust such a character's death.****

Wow. As opposed to last time, when I was just releasing targeted snarkiness at specific and numerous examples, that was actual verboseness. Next time in Comic Book Death: EDITORIAL HAMMER OF DEATHS!

*Decision subject to editorial approval and acts of God, which in the comics biz are the same thing as far as the editors (and probably the writers) are concerned. At Marvel Comics, they actually deliberately extend this metaphor!
**This irritates me at least partly because I have no attachment whatsoever to Allen (as he died when I was two; that and I like the name "Wally West" better).
***Admittedly, the old clownface seems thoroughly "dead" at this point, captured by the Celestials for some wicked purpose that will have him screaming in hopes for oblivion for all eternity, but I give it another five years at the most before someone decides it'd be a great idea to bring him back.
****By this point, it would probably require the complete destruction of the Marvel Universe to destroy Ultron, with all those backup copies apparently running around and doing stuff in two or three places almost at once.