Death Becomes Them...Or Does It

A post on Millarworld.biz by A. David Lewis announces an interesting study about the relationship between comic books, death, and resurrection.

"No other storytelling genre besides Passion plays and, to a lesser degree, vampire tales deals with death and resurrection as such prominent narrative conventions," says Project Leader A. David Lewis, Editorial Board member for The International Journal of Comic Art and national lecturer on the comic book medium. As a comic book creator and fan himself, Lewis notes that "now is an incredibly fertile time to study these phenomena. Whereas this could just as easily have been done in 1992 with 'The Death of Superman' storyline or, say, 1986 with Crisis on Inifinite Earths and Dark Knight Returns, the current deluge of character deaths and returns really begs to be examined: Hawkeye, Colossus, Sue Dibney, Jack Drake, Asgard, Retro Girl, Magneto, Phoenix, Prowler -- all within the last year."

Like many fans, this topic has been on my mind lately. What is it about some characters that fans just cannot accept their deaths? For example, people were in an uproar when Hal Jordan went crazy and eventually died, going so far as to create websites and send in petitions. But what about Green Arrow? Is there only room for one emerald themed character in fans' hearts? Who knows. I think that death in comics can be done really well (like in Identity Crisis) or it can be done in order to merely shake things up (Avengers). You want a simple reason for resurrection in comics? We love these characters. They've been around longer than some of us, but we can't stand to lose them, especially if they're heroes. After all, good guys aren't supposed to lose.

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