Death as a revolving door...
So. Someone commented (anonymously- was that you marasca? I got logged out by LJ-admin changes too) on one of my comics-related posts "as a non-superhero-comic-reader" saying:
----- quote ----
WTF is up with people always being resurrected? Narrowly escaping death in a way that's explained in the storyline and somewhat plausible? Fine, that's fun. If you kill a character, fucking kill them and milk it for all it's worth, but then let them stay dead. The death loses poignency if you know they're not going to stay dead.
---- /quote ----
They also asked about the whole resetting the world thing, which I maintain is actually related but I'll cover it in a separate post. Both the continual death and resurrection phenonmenon and the world-reset device are part of the mainstream comic industry's attempt to address a persistent problem: How do you keep a decades-long franchise new, fresh and interesting without changing it so much it loses what made it mass-marketable in the first place?
You have to remember that mainstream comics are *mainstream*, and therefore essentially conservative. They want to continue to stimulate interest in order to keep sales up. Killing a major character is a good way to do this, and before the 80s was not something that was often done. But certain characters are essentially un-killable due to fan opinion. Obviously, you can't get rid of Superman, Wonder Woman or Batman. At most, you can get rid of a certain version of the character, but that's more of a world-reset issue.
So you get things like DC's heavily publicized (and largely successful) Death of Superman storyline around 1990. Followed soon after by his return, which had been planned from the beginning. This rescued the Superman books from a steep decline in sales (a similar event in which Batman's back was broken and he had to retire from the role for a year was equally successful around the same time).
Similar pressures lead (with enormous controversy) to the return of Jean Grey (Marvel Girl/Phoenix) of the X-Men. Her death in the early 80's was the climax of what's widely regarded as one of the best superhero stories ever written. There were many good reasons why she should stay dead, and it required one of the most notorious retcons* in comics history to bring her back (that's worth a separate post if anyone wants it). The external reason: the editors wanted to start a book featuring the original five X-Men since the current X-Men book was selling so well (with a team of characters introduced in the 70s and 80s). Jean was the only problem, being dead, but someone came up with a way around the restrictions laid on her death, and back she was for the power of the sales boost. By now, dying and coming back (multiple times) practically define the character.
Like all mass media, whenver the powers-that-be find a gimmick that works, they overuse it horribly. Killing a character whose glory is fading became a sure-fire way to renew interest. DC killed Green Arrow I and Green Lantern II (GL II's death was almost as much of a mess as the whole Phoenix thing). Both have since returned. Likewise Donna Troy (formerly Wonder Girl I). It just got too easy. And in one of the fabulously meta moments that make me love Infinite Crisis, part of the mess is being blamed on the weakening of the boundaries between life and death starting with the resurrection of Superman (which is when DC started getting into the kill/revive thing). You have to love it when the characters start criticizing the editorial decisions. Over in the Marvel universe, things started getting similarly loose with X-Men deaths (and probably others, I just mostly read X-Men).
Haven't any deaths stuck?
Yes. Although less and less as time goes on. The main ones I can think of are:
1. Bucky Barnes, Captian America's sidekick during World War II.
He died on their last mission, and Cap has refused to take a sidekick ever since. He's also discouraged other heroes in the Marvel universe from doing so.
2. Jason Todd, the 2nd Robin.
His death is the defining element of the modern Batman (other than his own parent's death). Batman got much darker and defensive as a result, and began taking a different attitudes towards his associates. The 3rd Robin had to push his way into the role, and was allowed to stay partly because he is much more cautious and aware of his limits than Jason ever was. The 4th Robin was treated fairly harshly due to her impulsiveness- too similar to Jason (she died, too, anyway).
3. Doug Ramsey, Cypher of the New Mutants (the 1st junior X-Men team/class).
He died taking a bullet meant for a team member, which started a change in attitudes of the student team. This plus the disappearance of the senior X-Men team about the same time started them on the road to becoming the more militant X-Force. And his death had a lasting effect on both Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) who was a close friend, and Rahne Sinclair (Wolfsbane), for whom he took the bullet.
It is interesting to note that all three were teenagers at the time of their deaths. I can only think of one significant death of an adult that lasted, and that's John Proudstar, the first Thunderbird of the X-Men. He was the first member of the field team to die (on his 2nd mission with the team, so he had not been a long-running character previously). Sidekicks and junior team members just seem more vulnerable. Another New Mutant, Illyana Rasputin (Magik) also died and has remained dead, although her situation was extremely complicated.
Deaths of young characters seem to be used better because of their impacts on others. Jason and Bucky are practically the canonical examples of meaningful, permanent deaths. Which makes it all the more frustrating that Jason was recently brought back to life, and a character that seems certain to turn out to be Bucky has also recently surfaced. To add to that, if the mysterious "villian" in the current X-Men: Deadly Genesis miniseries isn't a resurrected Thunderbird, I'll eat my LJ. They've been bringing up Thunderbird in odd places for a while now, clearly testing the waters.
So now its hard to think of a major permanent death. As much as I love Cypher (he's the blond guy I use as an icon), he wasn't a major enough character to have the same impact as Bucky or Jason (and the New Mutants were a secondary team to begin with). Although I must say that he was more popular than Jason- readers actually voted for Jason's death in a highly controversial phone poll.
I should point out that Jason's resurrection may turn out to be somewhat justified, as its been tied into the weakened border between life and death that's causing all sorts of problems- more of that great meta element in the DCU. We'll have to see what happens to him as Infinite Crisis resolves. But it does seem to cement the notion that death is never permanent in comics, no matter how meaningful, poignient or just plain useful (from a storytelling point of view) it might have been. The only reason a character won't get resurrected is if there's no demmand. It might take a while (I doubt we'll see Robin IV again soon unless Infinite Crisis resets more than I expect), but if fans want it, or a writer just thinks it will make a good story, or an editor thinks it will boost sales, it will happen.
So is a character ressurection ever good?
I'd actually say yes. The jury's still out for me on Jason (his new stories are actually quite well done), but I do feel it undermined a lot. Fortunately, Batman and company seem to be reacting just as badly. I don't know anything about Bucky or his possible resurrection beyond what I've already mentioned here, so I can't comment on that, and Thunderbird hasn't *actually* come back yet, although we all know it will happen.
But sometimes I think its good. There are three categories here.
1. When the groundwork is laid down from the beginning (i.e. around the time of death) that makes it clear once the character is back that it was always planned to be that way, and indeed the character was never "dead" in the traditional sense. Either they were just elsewhere, or they did die but their soul ended up somewhere wierd, etc. The death of Psylocke of the X-Men (which motivated the original question) falls into this category.
2. When the character's "death" is done in an open-ended manner and there's legitimately room to weasel out of it. This is close to category #1, and its also similar to how deaths worked on Buffy and Angel: if a character died some wierd supernatural death (falling through a crazy portal, consumed by a mystic burning amulet, etc.) there was the possibility of return. But characters who died of natural causes (snapped neck, brain tumor) were just dead, and stayed that way.
3. When the death just sucked. Badly written, no good impact to the dying or surviving characters, etc. A perfect example of this is Colossus of the X-Men. He was killed when the editors decided they needed to get rid of this old plot about a mutant-killing virus that no one had paid much attention to for years (except one recent storyline to remind you that it really did need to be cured). If someone had to sacrifice themselves to cure this, it made sense to use Colossus who had lost his little sister to the disease. But it was not well written. It happened too fast (one issue) and the way the cure worked was deeply stupid (he injected it into himself- this somehow caused the cure to become airborne and instantly cure everyone in the world. No, I'm not making this up). When he was brought back last year, everyone completely forgave the "aliens stole his body and revived him to experiment on him" retcon because we all just wanted to forget Uncanny X-Men #390 was ever written.
So what's your point
I'm not sure. I guess that death/resurrection can be done well, and even a resurrection of a supposedly permanent death can be justified. But also that the industry has gotten too casual with these things- Jason's return being a perfect example, and Jean/Phoenix's return being another one (and far more complicated). DC, at least, has acknowledged (through its characters!) that there's a problem, so we'll see what they do post-Infinite Crisis. Marvel seems dead-set on turning back the clock as much as possible these days, so I have less hope for them. Although the most recent time they resurrected Jean was actually far more interesting and well-written than it had a right to be.
When done right, these things can make great reading and be both critical and commercial successes. Jean's death remains a classic, no matter how much damage subsequent events have done. Colossus's return this past year was great. And while I have reservations about Jason Todd being among the living, I can't deny that its good reading.
What this says to me is that looking at mainstream comics the way you look at a novel (or series of novels) or a movie is probably not quite right. They're really more like folk tales that are managed (for better or for worse) by corporations. We all want to hear more stories about our favorite characters, and a lot of readers come on for a few years and then move onto other interests, never getting into the decades of backstory. Others will only ever read stories from a particular era in the past. But they're all valid stories even if they're not quite mutually compatible. The difference between comics and a set of folktales about the same/similar characters is that our way of producing them creates a linear continuity. No one tries to fit all of the appearances of Coyote from all Native American stories from all tribes into one framework. But in comics we don't have built-in ways to say "oh, that story's done, but here's another one you'll like just as much even though they don't fit together". Or do we?
Next time I'll talk about how universe resets fit into all of this.
*retcon == retroactive continuity. This refers to the practice of retroactively changing what had been assumed to happen before. Usually this is done by weaving in some non-original plot behind the scenes, but occasionally they just completely wipe out an old story and replace it with something new. It can be anything from the sudden appearance of a previously-unknown sibling to a major character, to a statement that "oh, that wasn't really so-and-so, it was an insane clone from an alternate dimension. yeah. the real character was over here all this time". You get the idea.
----- quote ----
WTF is up with people always being resurrected? Narrowly escaping death in a way that's explained in the storyline and somewhat plausible? Fine, that's fun. If you kill a character, fucking kill them and milk it for all it's worth, but then let them stay dead. The death loses poignency if you know they're not going to stay dead.
---- /quote ----
They also asked about the whole resetting the world thing, which I maintain is actually related but I'll cover it in a separate post. Both the continual death and resurrection phenonmenon and the world-reset device are part of the mainstream comic industry's attempt to address a persistent problem: How do you keep a decades-long franchise new, fresh and interesting without changing it so much it loses what made it mass-marketable in the first place?
You have to remember that mainstream comics are *mainstream*, and therefore essentially conservative. They want to continue to stimulate interest in order to keep sales up. Killing a major character is a good way to do this, and before the 80s was not something that was often done. But certain characters are essentially un-killable due to fan opinion. Obviously, you can't get rid of Superman, Wonder Woman or Batman. At most, you can get rid of a certain version of the character, but that's more of a world-reset issue.
So you get things like DC's heavily publicized (and largely successful) Death of Superman storyline around 1990. Followed soon after by his return, which had been planned from the beginning. This rescued the Superman books from a steep decline in sales (a similar event in which Batman's back was broken and he had to retire from the role for a year was equally successful around the same time).
Similar pressures lead (with enormous controversy) to the return of Jean Grey (Marvel Girl/Phoenix) of the X-Men. Her death in the early 80's was the climax of what's widely regarded as one of the best superhero stories ever written. There were many good reasons why she should stay dead, and it required one of the most notorious retcons* in comics history to bring her back (that's worth a separate post if anyone wants it). The external reason: the editors wanted to start a book featuring the original five X-Men since the current X-Men book was selling so well (with a team of characters introduced in the 70s and 80s). Jean was the only problem, being dead, but someone came up with a way around the restrictions laid on her death, and back she was for the power of the sales boost. By now, dying and coming back (multiple times) practically define the character.
Like all mass media, whenver the powers-that-be find a gimmick that works, they overuse it horribly. Killing a character whose glory is fading became a sure-fire way to renew interest. DC killed Green Arrow I and Green Lantern II (GL II's death was almost as much of a mess as the whole Phoenix thing). Both have since returned. Likewise Donna Troy (formerly Wonder Girl I). It just got too easy. And in one of the fabulously meta moments that make me love Infinite Crisis, part of the mess is being blamed on the weakening of the boundaries between life and death starting with the resurrection of Superman (which is when DC started getting into the kill/revive thing). You have to love it when the characters start criticizing the editorial decisions. Over in the Marvel universe, things started getting similarly loose with X-Men deaths (and probably others, I just mostly read X-Men).
Haven't any deaths stuck?
Yes. Although less and less as time goes on. The main ones I can think of are:
1. Bucky Barnes, Captian America's sidekick during World War II.
He died on their last mission, and Cap has refused to take a sidekick ever since. He's also discouraged other heroes in the Marvel universe from doing so.
2. Jason Todd, the 2nd Robin.
His death is the defining element of the modern Batman (other than his own parent's death). Batman got much darker and defensive as a result, and began taking a different attitudes towards his associates. The 3rd Robin had to push his way into the role, and was allowed to stay partly because he is much more cautious and aware of his limits than Jason ever was. The 4th Robin was treated fairly harshly due to her impulsiveness- too similar to Jason (she died, too, anyway).
3. Doug Ramsey, Cypher of the New Mutants (the 1st junior X-Men team/class).
He died taking a bullet meant for a team member, which started a change in attitudes of the student team. This plus the disappearance of the senior X-Men team about the same time started them on the road to becoming the more militant X-Force. And his death had a lasting effect on both Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) who was a close friend, and Rahne Sinclair (Wolfsbane), for whom he took the bullet.
It is interesting to note that all three were teenagers at the time of their deaths. I can only think of one significant death of an adult that lasted, and that's John Proudstar, the first Thunderbird of the X-Men. He was the first member of the field team to die (on his 2nd mission with the team, so he had not been a long-running character previously). Sidekicks and junior team members just seem more vulnerable. Another New Mutant, Illyana Rasputin (Magik) also died and has remained dead, although her situation was extremely complicated.
Deaths of young characters seem to be used better because of their impacts on others. Jason and Bucky are practically the canonical examples of meaningful, permanent deaths. Which makes it all the more frustrating that Jason was recently brought back to life, and a character that seems certain to turn out to be Bucky has also recently surfaced. To add to that, if the mysterious "villian" in the current X-Men: Deadly Genesis miniseries isn't a resurrected Thunderbird, I'll eat my LJ. They've been bringing up Thunderbird in odd places for a while now, clearly testing the waters.
So now its hard to think of a major permanent death. As much as I love Cypher (he's the blond guy I use as an icon), he wasn't a major enough character to have the same impact as Bucky or Jason (and the New Mutants were a secondary team to begin with). Although I must say that he was more popular than Jason- readers actually voted for Jason's death in a highly controversial phone poll.
I should point out that Jason's resurrection may turn out to be somewhat justified, as its been tied into the weakened border between life and death that's causing all sorts of problems- more of that great meta element in the DCU. We'll have to see what happens to him as Infinite Crisis resolves. But it does seem to cement the notion that death is never permanent in comics, no matter how meaningful, poignient or just plain useful (from a storytelling point of view) it might have been. The only reason a character won't get resurrected is if there's no demmand. It might take a while (I doubt we'll see Robin IV again soon unless Infinite Crisis resets more than I expect), but if fans want it, or a writer just thinks it will make a good story, or an editor thinks it will boost sales, it will happen.
So is a character ressurection ever good?
I'd actually say yes. The jury's still out for me on Jason (his new stories are actually quite well done), but I do feel it undermined a lot. Fortunately, Batman and company seem to be reacting just as badly. I don't know anything about Bucky or his possible resurrection beyond what I've already mentioned here, so I can't comment on that, and Thunderbird hasn't *actually* come back yet, although we all know it will happen.
But sometimes I think its good. There are three categories here.
1. When the groundwork is laid down from the beginning (i.e. around the time of death) that makes it clear once the character is back that it was always planned to be that way, and indeed the character was never "dead" in the traditional sense. Either they were just elsewhere, or they did die but their soul ended up somewhere wierd, etc. The death of Psylocke of the X-Men (which motivated the original question) falls into this category.
2. When the character's "death" is done in an open-ended manner and there's legitimately room to weasel out of it. This is close to category #1, and its also similar to how deaths worked on Buffy and Angel: if a character died some wierd supernatural death (falling through a crazy portal, consumed by a mystic burning amulet, etc.) there was the possibility of return. But characters who died of natural causes (snapped neck, brain tumor) were just dead, and stayed that way.
3. When the death just sucked. Badly written, no good impact to the dying or surviving characters, etc. A perfect example of this is Colossus of the X-Men. He was killed when the editors decided they needed to get rid of this old plot about a mutant-killing virus that no one had paid much attention to for years (except one recent storyline to remind you that it really did need to be cured). If someone had to sacrifice themselves to cure this, it made sense to use Colossus who had lost his little sister to the disease. But it was not well written. It happened too fast (one issue) and the way the cure worked was deeply stupid (he injected it into himself- this somehow caused the cure to become airborne and instantly cure everyone in the world. No, I'm not making this up). When he was brought back last year, everyone completely forgave the "aliens stole his body and revived him to experiment on him" retcon because we all just wanted to forget Uncanny X-Men #390 was ever written.
So what's your point
I'm not sure. I guess that death/resurrection can be done well, and even a resurrection of a supposedly permanent death can be justified. But also that the industry has gotten too casual with these things- Jason's return being a perfect example, and Jean/Phoenix's return being another one (and far more complicated). DC, at least, has acknowledged (through its characters!) that there's a problem, so we'll see what they do post-Infinite Crisis. Marvel seems dead-set on turning back the clock as much as possible these days, so I have less hope for them. Although the most recent time they resurrected Jean was actually far more interesting and well-written than it had a right to be.
When done right, these things can make great reading and be both critical and commercial successes. Jean's death remains a classic, no matter how much damage subsequent events have done. Colossus's return this past year was great. And while I have reservations about Jason Todd being among the living, I can't deny that its good reading.
What this says to me is that looking at mainstream comics the way you look at a novel (or series of novels) or a movie is probably not quite right. They're really more like folk tales that are managed (for better or for worse) by corporations. We all want to hear more stories about our favorite characters, and a lot of readers come on for a few years and then move onto other interests, never getting into the decades of backstory. Others will only ever read stories from a particular era in the past. But they're all valid stories even if they're not quite mutually compatible. The difference between comics and a set of folktales about the same/similar characters is that our way of producing them creates a linear continuity. No one tries to fit all of the appearances of Coyote from all Native American stories from all tribes into one framework. But in comics we don't have built-in ways to say "oh, that story's done, but here's another one you'll like just as much even though they don't fit together". Or do we?
Next time I'll talk about how universe resets fit into all of this.
*retcon == retroactive continuity. This refers to the practice of retroactively changing what had been assumed to happen before. Usually this is done by weaving in some non-original plot behind the scenes, but occasionally they just completely wipe out an old story and replace it with something new. It can be anything from the sudden appearance of a previously-unknown sibling to a major character, to a statement that "oh, that wasn't really so-and-so, it was an insane clone from an alternate dimension. yeah. the real character was over here all this time". You get the idea.