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Comic book death
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Comic book death is a neologism used 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 generally not taken seriously and is rarely permanent or meaningful.
Some comic book writers have killed off characters to gather publicity or to create dramatic tension.
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Encyclopedia
Comic book death is a neologism used 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 generally not taken seriously and is rarely permanent or meaningful.
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 for which he/she did not particularly care, but upon their 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.
Deaths and subsequent resurrections have become such an institution on comic book narratives that certain characters have been written with this as a character trait, such as DC's Solomon Grundy, Resurrection Man and Marvel's Mr. Immortal.
Notable examples
Arguably the two most well known comic book deaths are 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. There is one major distinction between the two, however - whereas it was never intended that Superman's death be permanent, and that he would return to life at the conclusion of the story, Jean's passing (the first of many comic book deaths that would be associated with the X-Men) was written as the true and permament death of the character, only to be retconned a few years later to facilitate her return. The most recent, high-profile death was that of Captain America, who made headlines worldwide in early 2007 when he met his apparent end.
The prominence of comic book deaths has ultimately led to the readership rarely taking the death of a character seriously - when someone dies, the reader feels very little sense of loss, and simply left wondering how long it will be before they return to life. This, in turn, has led to a common piece of comic shop wisdom: "No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben" referring to Captain America's sidekick (retconned dead since 1964), Batman's second Robin (dead since 1988), and Spider-Man's uncle (dead since 1962), respectively. This long-held tenet was finally broken in 2005, when Jason Todd returned to life and Bucky Barnes was reported to have survived the accident that seemingly killed him, remaining in the shadows for decades. Some may argue that Gwen Stacy came back to life (as a clone in both the original comics and Ultimate Spider-man), but the fact that the original never comes back to life qualifies her for the list.
Comic book characters themselves have often made comments about the frequency of resurrections, notably Charles Xavier who commented "in mutant heaven there are no pearly gates, but instead revolving doors."
Common retcons include:
- The death scene is not actually the death of the character, but instead a severe near-death injury or situation, from which the character gets saved (off-screen, detailed in the subsequent retcon) by his powers or skills (e.g., Green Goblin), by good luck, or by the help of someone else. The death scene may be a deliberate plot of a character that simulates his own death or that of someone else for a certain purpose.
- A common variant is an explosion that doesn't kill the character, they are merely buried in rubble/flung to safety/transported to another dimension (Spider-Man villain Hammerhead once survived a nuclear explosion in this way).
- The person who dies is a clone, impostor, or shapeshifter (Dark Phoenix being the most well-known example).
- The character really does die, but is resurrected, either intentionally (e.g., Green Arrow) or unintentionally (e.g., Jason Todd) by some cosmic or magical being.
- The character does die, and stays dead, but an identical character takes his place and uses the same name. Examples are the death of Snowball II in The Simpsons or Marvel's Thunderbird.
- Time Travel, reality manipulation or other narrative tricks may be used to undo big changes in the fictional universe (such as the death of characters) by setting them out of continuity and restoring things to a previous point. A story may also be conceived as not being canon from the start, so that the writers have creative freedom to kill major characters or perform radical changes as they see fit for the narrative, with such changes taking place only in that work and not in the main fictional universe.
- The character does die, and stays dead, but using similar narrative tricks the character may be used and interacted with anyway. For example, even if being dead, the character may be found via time travel at a past time prior to his death, or in the afterlife. Flashbacks may be used as well to tell stories involving the character that would have taken place before his death and were not published before.
- The writer may simply not be aware of the death of the character, so the use of it would become a continuity error until a proper explanation to fix it is given.
- A character who was initially thought to be dead may be revealed to only have been in a coma. This premise is often misused for injuries and illnesses that do not involve brain trauma, the primary trigger for coma. Variations on this theme include the character being placed in suspended animation or cryogenic suspension.
Parodies
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. In X-Statix Presents Dead Girl, it is further parodied. A group of dead villains want to return to life claiming "it happens all the time". Dr. Strange tells that if enough people want him alive, a character will be "promoted" to life.
In Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, Cyclops states that "Jean Grey is dead" only to have Agent Brand respond with a sarcastic "Yeah, that'll last".
In Next Wave: Agents of Hate, two of the characters are talking about the X-Men member Magik. One of them comments that she is dead and the other replies "So what? The X-Men come back to life more than Jesus".
Comic book death has been also parodied by the Great Lakes Avengers member, Mr. Immortal, a mutant whose power is to resurrect from the dead. Consequently, he is killed and revived in almost all appearances. The concept was further parodied by Dan Slott's 2005 GLA miniseries, in which one member dies in every issue.
The Simpsons also parodied comic book deaths in the episode "Radioactive Man" in which Milhouse mentions an issue of Radioactive Man in which the eponymous character and his sidekick Fallout Boy die on every page.
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 who had been dead throughout that season could return.
One of the most famous cases outside comic books is the death of Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Final Problem". He was later brought back to life in "The Adventure of the Empty House", with the creator Arthur Conan Doyle writing in the apparent death as being a part of Holmes's plan.
Death is rarely taken less seriously than by animated series South Park. The show's character Kenny McCormick has died numerous times, only to (almost) always return the next episode. The fifth season episode "Kenny Dies" was intended to give him a definitive death, but he was definitively revived and returned to the cast at the very end of the sixth season finale, "Red Sleigh Down" (despite having appeared twice more between both episodes). From then on, the gag of Kenny dying has been severely downplayed, since he dies with less and less frequency.
In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock died from radiation poisoning but was ressurected in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock due to the Genesis Wave. The rebirth of Spock was not originally planned as the producers did not anticipate the critical acclaim of Star Trek II and the fact that fans were not quite ready for Star Trek to end. According to Leonard Nimoy and director Nicholas Meyer, one cryptic scene was placed near the end involving Spock and McCoy and another which involved Spock's landed capsule on the Genesis planet. This, along with Nimoy's voiceover of the "Space: the Final Frontier..." monologue all served to facilitate resurrecting Spock should a sequel be desirable but at the same time suggest closure if a sequel did not happen.
In The Transformers: The Movie, the main character Optimus Prime is killed within the first twenty minutes of the film. This controversial killing off of one of the franchise's two most popular characters (the other being Megatron) sparked a letter campaign that resulted in Hasbro and Sunbow Animation Studios bringing Optimus back from the dead within a year. This has since started a running gag within all subsesquent Transformers continuity families (with one notable exception) in which the resident Optimus dies and is ressurected shortly thereafter.
See also
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