Comic Book Death: Impermanence

Pushy fandoms and crazy writers actually have a long history of reviving characters who kicked the bucket. The earliest example that I know of is the revival of Sherlock Holmes.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was writing some of the later Holmes stories, he was getting tired of them. He didn't much like them-he thought that they were silly things. (I would look up just exactly what he said, but don't feel like it.) But when he killed Holmes off, thinking he'd laid the character to eternal rest, there was an uproar. He started receiving rather unpleasant letters. One of these letters was from his mother.

That had to be a harsh moment in Doyle's life.

Doyle: Mother's always liked *you* better.
Holmes: Indubitably, Watson.
Doyle: ...A heck?

Anyway, pretty much ever since then, writers have known that you can stage a death for emotional effect. And some people have decided that staging death for emotional effect is a great idea for sales.

Which leads me to just what has me going buggy right this second-the cheapening of death in mainstream comic books. I'll open my snarkiness by quoting something written by Mark Gruenwald in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition (Book of the Dead)

"But for the most part, irrevocable deaths in the Marvel Universe are exactly what they seem to be."

Hmm. I'll list off some of the names which sit on the very same page as the essay (titled "Dead Reckoning") from which the above quote was taken.

Ancient One: Technically dead, although even as of the book's publishing he was still going Obi-Wan Kenobi every five minutes, from the sound of it. Apparently he's been more active in the afterlife than he was while he was alive.

Baron Strucker: Alive. As a long-lived Nazi big wig, he's pretty much unkillable. Not to mention that in some alternate reality he (or a guy with exactly the same name) transformed into a sorcerer named Charnel by merging with Death's Head's corpse. But then Death's Head killed him. (Consider the essay and figure out how that makes sense. If you can't, go here, and be glad that other people put this kind of info on the internets.)

Baron Zemo (I): Okay, he's still pretty dead. But Baron Zemo (II) is still around, avenging his father's legacy or something.

Basilisk (I): Dead. You can't usually get deader than a guy shot by the Scourge of the Underworld.

Beyonder: Dead. Er, maybe. Is Kosmos still around? (That'll be another snarky post on here, I'm sure.)

Big Man: Dead, and so is Big Man's crossdressing daughter, Big Man. Although Big Man's name lives on as the name that obscures viewers of The Spectacular Spider-Man from learning that the big villain is actually-well, you can look that up somewhere else if you want spoilers (not that that spoiler would be much of one by now). (Note: This one's rather hard to find information on.)

Black Knight (I): Dead. He lived hundreds of years ago, he'd better be dead. Although he pulls some Obi-Wannage too, as I recall.

Black Knight (II): Dead. (Note that he's technically connected to the other one-the link above will take you to an article that discusses both of them.) He died a stupid man's death. Black Knight: I was riding on my flying horse, carrying Iron Man, whose armor I had disabled, when the little ------ knocked me off my horse! And I fell a few thousand feet, and for some reason all my armor didn't do anything to protect me! Iron Man: Maybe you should have had thrusters, or at least a parachute.

Blackout: My poor kitty! (cough) If you're wondering what brought that on, I actually used to own a cat by that name. He's dead for sure because Hasbro grabbed the name for a Transformer.

Blizzard (I): Still dead. This is mostly because minor irrelevant guys like him are easily replaced by other minor irrelevant guys.

Bucky: He's so dead, he's been dead forever, and they're never bringing him-wait, they killed Captain America and brought this guy back to replace him? What a heck?

Captain Mar-Vell: Because you must spell it that way to be clear. He's dead, cancer took him out. But it appears that a Skrull has been brainwashed to be indistinguishable from him and think that he is in fact him, so it doesn't matter. He's not really dead anymore no matter the convoluted ridiculous origin story, now is he?

Carrion: A zombie clone of a dead guy who came to take revenge for the dead guy... who is a relatively minor character that practically no one cares about. Okay, that sucker had better be dead. (looks him up) GACK! They made him into an immortal virus entity! What a heck?!

Sharon Carter: She's not dead, and in fact she's apparently pregnant.

Changeling: Dead (maybe), but he sort of lives on sometimes as Morph.

Then, there are a half dozen or so more characters who as far as I know are still dead. The sad thing is, since I'm taking stuff specifically from the table of contents of the one issue, I can't get to some really good ones, like:

Drax the Destroyer (not dead)
Dracula (dead forever but not really haha!)
Ghaur (dead but not dead again by two years after this book is published and his ghost is in two places on the covers!)
MODOK (not dead)
Ben Parker (still dead, THANK GOODNESS)
Professor Power (seemingly dead, but it isn't for lack of thumbing his nose at death-he apparently resurrected himself by possessing someone once already)
Red Skull (not dead, despite being killed again at least once after this, and for that matter evading actual physical death more than once before this)
Ringer (killed dead by the Scourge of the Underworld which should have meant his eternal end but it didn't although he still died later)
General "My Nickname Is Too Long For the Table of Contents" Ross (not dead)
Satana (she was dead but they brought her back as a teenager so old guys could perv at her)
Snowbird (she was dead but rose from the dead out of her empty grave because she's a Goddess of the North and she can do that)
Gwen Stacy (dead, but they almost brought her back, and there's a clone of her running around somewhere)
Franklin Storm (still dead)
Swordsman-who-is-not-the-one-from-Thunderbolts (dead, but his corpse was animated by an alien tree so the tree could get it on with Mantis)
Terrax (not dead)
Thanos (he was turned to stone but brought back to life and *then* killed)
Vampires (as a category, see Dracula's status; note this includes Varnae, previous lord of vampires, who had committed suicide to let Dracula become the lord of vampires but came back anyway with the rest of the vampires)
Adam Warlock (he apparently can stop being dead because he feels like it)
Zombie (who is clearly dead, because he was already dead, but apparently he's even deader-er, no, he came back, apparently)

So here's my point that I'm driving at. How come these deaths mean anything? I'll grant you: Lots of the characters documented in my crumbling old Handbooks are still thoroughly dead. I mean, Turner D. Century? Cheetah? Who even cares about these guys? I suppose that's the point here: Nobody cares about these guys. So they're allowed to rest in the afterlife.

This is the first aspect of comic book death-it has no permanence, and thus, it fails to parallel death in reality. Granted, comic books often flout the laws of physics and life, but death is the one thing in life that is permanent.

I read a lot of comic blogs (far more than actual comics), and it seems more than a little disturbing when folks remark "I hated it when they offed [insert name here], and I hope they bring him/her back." While I can understand that the attitude is a product of liking a character, the attitude also comes from a feeling that the characters can come back whenever they please-which they (sort of) do. And this feeling is created by the extreme impermanence of comic book death.

(Don't think, from the lack of extensive examples from the DC Universe, that I'm not looking at them, too-they're bringing Barry Allen back after over twenty years, aren't they?)