Posts Tagged ‘death in comics’

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Not The Man He Used to Be…

by admin on October 5th, 2014
Not The Man He Used to Be…

After I typed that line of NanoMan’s dialog, I had the Beatles’ Yesterday running through my head continuously.  I probably date myself terribly with a Beatles reference….

I was really happy with the way the large second panel came out after I drew it, inked it in and colored it.  I really hated to cover it up with all the dialog  boxes and balloons, but the story wouldn’t advance much if I spent the entire panel with the two of them just ‘looking’ at each other in silence.  I may post a link to the page artwork without any dialog just so you can see the whole thing in its original form.

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Don’t Reboot – Just Let Them Die

by admin on June 11th, 2011
Posted In: Blog

I’ve been a comic book fan long enough that I don’t want to try to count the number of ‘reboots’ of superheroes that I’ve seen over the years. People always rave about the creative efforts that go into the re-imagining and repackaging of the same heroes to make them fresh and new for another generation of readers. But I’ve come to the conclusion that if the comic companies wanted to REALLY do something radically creative with their characters, all they would have to do is let the characters age and die naturally.

I’ve commented before about how death has no meaning in comics. Age doesn’t mean anything either. Spider-Man should be getting ready to retire right about now, but he’s still a teenager. If you want to challenge your creativity, let Peter Parker grow old and have a new generation of heroes take over. And make THAT storyline the REAL one….

For the most part I’ve enjoyed the Grant Morrison run on Batman. I think Dick Grayson as Batman and Damian as the new Robin have made for some interesting character interactions and great stories. I’m hoping that all the good new stuff doesn’t get tossed out of the window with the reboot, and we don’t end up back with a re-telling of the same origin stories that we’ve seen so many times before.

So don’t resurrect them and don’t reboot them. Let them die. It’s the creative thing to do.

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Death is Cheap in Comics

by admin on March 8th, 2011
Posted In: Blog

I was just reading about what  a big event the impending death of  “Ultimate Spider-Man” is going to be.  All I can say is “yawn.”

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/03/07/ultimate-spider-man-160-to-be-polybagged/

When I was a little-kid comic reader,  nobody signifigant died in comics unless it was during the origin story, and that was to give motiviation to the hero to don a batsuit or otherwise pick up the mantle of great responsibility that came with  great power…. 

Nowadays, it seems like EVERYBODY is on the dead/reborn list. Spider-man, the Human Torch, Captain America, Superman, Batman, Robin, Green Lantern, Flash….  And they all come back as good as new.  It’s like killing Kenny in South Park, but with a collector’s edition poly-bagged release version….

It just feels like a lot of  cheap exploitation and bad writing to me.  Need some drama?  Need to generate some excitement for a fading character?  Kill him/her!  Then bring them back for an even more dramatic resurrection!  It’ll draw attention and sell a lot of copies.

But to all those comic readers who complain that nobody outside of fandom takes capes and powers seriously, killing characters with no consequence is just another reason for mainstream readers to snicker at comics and treat it as a juvenile medium.

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