We Interupt this Blog.

This is not this weeks regular post but I had to write about it. This is the first picture that NASA's MESSENGER probe has sent back from the orbit of the planet Mercury. Though not the first probe sent to Mercury, MESSENGER, only the second in thirty-five years is the first to go into orbit. And send us pictures of this quality of this least explored planet. On it's way MESSENGER also did flybys of the Sun, Earth, and Venus Giving us some of the first pictures of Earth from deep space since the Apollo Program. Since space exploration doesn't get the front page too much these days I just thought I'd show you what NASA does with less money than the military spends in a day.

Continuity

Modern Mainstream comics have been creatively ensnared by a trap of their own making. Continuity. Now I'll fully admit, I'm a comic geek, I remember little details of many of my favorite comics. It's great that comic fans choose to enjoy their passions this way. I mean I can still tell you the ins and outs of the characters of 1980's X-men (I stopped regular reading in the 1990s). The problem is that the writers and readers began to take to continuity with religious zeal.
Now, there is nothing at all wrong with a group of creators taking pride in the consistency of their work. It's good that characters act consistently, and common places are the same. What works once should theoretically be consistent within a created world. But when a work of fiction is developed and continued in a open ended fashion by a number of writers and artists, there will be places where things will get a little weird. And in comics, boy will the fans let these people have it. Right now so called mainstream comics is allowing themselves to be policed by these fans, and I think that it stifles creativity. You see when a new writer comes on board a series that has been going on, twenty, forty, seventy years there is bound to be a moment when a writer will do something that had been done before or contradicts a story that the writer may have never even read or heard of. You can't seriously expect a writer to have read every single issue of a comic that has been around for forty years. But fans, who usually have more familiarity with a book than writers, seem to expect it. And comic editors try to please this fandom, giving impression that this line of thought is reasonable. I'm not saying a writer shouldn't do their homework, I'm just saying that the writer is writing the comic now, not then.
This sort of fan editor was actually encouraged by Marvel comics in the 1960s by the creation of the no prize. You see when Marvel noticed that fans cared deeply about their work, deeply to the point where the fans where willing to point out where the writers got it wrong. You see at this time Marvel was a small company, and telling the readers to blow, was not a good business practice, so editor Stan Lee came up with a playful way of handling it. If you where able to explain away a continuity error by using continuity you won a “No Prize” which was literally that, an empty envelope and you name in print. And a monster was born. Ever since both writers and readers have been trapped in a cycle of checking the continuity of the work to the point where continuity has become the point of whole story arcs.
Now the “big two”, have realized this inhibiting factor on the stories they sell, and have created many series and stories with their own continuity, like Marvel's Ultimate line. Or that exist alone from a major universe like DC's All star line. This is good for new or casual readers and it offers fresh takes for regular readers. But what the “big two” should be thinking, in my opinion, is “if these alternate takes are so successful with both types of readers, why should we be so tied to this canonical devotion to continuity.
Continuity, should be a tool for the superhero writer, not a crutch or a pair of handcuffs. A good example of how continuity can be used is the British television show “Doctor Who”. “Doctor Who” is a long running science fiction show. in it's course of almost fifty years, it has had a number of writers, producers and directions. But through it all the writers and producers kept the core principles up and often overlooked continuity errors. There have been a number of origins for various characters, including the main, so how does “Doctor Who” deal with this? By doing nothing at all. You see the writers decide to live in the now and use the back story only in the ways that aid the story they are currently telling. And you know what. The fans are on board with it. I think that is because too much adherence to that much continuity makes the reader live in the past. And no new story is ever going to live up to a beloved old one if it keeps reminding you about it. What the writers of “Doctor Who” concentrate on instead is that the characters and ideas, not the list of events, stay consistent.
I think that if we allow “mainstream” comics to go on similar track. The writers and artists who currently write the comics will be free to make good quality stories with a broader appeal. They'll be able to use the past without being beholden to it. And more securely and creativley carve their own path.

No One Stays Dead in Comics Except Uncle Ben.

One of the more interesting things about so called mainstream comics is the way death is used and averted. There are a lot of people that think that it's just another fun quirk of the genre, some think it cheapens the impact of a comic character's death. While others like the writer of the above quote have just taken a snarky cynical attitude to it all. I've been thinking a lot about this since reading Joss Weadon's Astonishing X-Men in which one of my favorite characters gets “killed off”, I already knew she had come back (was four years late on reading this book, but that's another post) so this got me thinking I need to weigh in on this topic.
We all know the story. Mega Comics' beloved hero Captain Awesome is in a story arc of great importance. Maybe he's being written by a major author, maybe he's getting a little stale (Captain Awesome never! Cry the fan boys), or maybe editorial just needs an “event” Whatever reason, the only way for the story to logically conclude is for Captain Awesome to take the big dirt nap. Maybe he has a big show down with his most hated enemy, or sacrifices himself to save the world, universe, multi verse. And he's dead, the stories great, every one mourns, maybe if he really was that popular the news mentions it. But then comes the catch. The fans want their Captain Awesome, or maybe Mega Comics realizes he's too important to the narrative of their “universe”, and what about the three titles that feature the Captain. They need Captain awesome the fans wouldn't mind reading about him, whatever to do? Bring him back from the dead.
It's easy to be cynical about it. “oh they'll give into the fan boys” I heard a comic store customer say the week Human Torch got killed. It's too easy in this Internet driven fan world to see everything in big comics as just the business. And while the “big two” of comics are cold calculating machines, they do try to keep their numbers up by giving us readers big deal stories every now and then. And death just works. Especially if it is a popular or more often cult followed character. And since a tradition of character resurrection has been established, we have now found out that bringing a character back from the dead is equally “big”. Which brings me to the first view. It cheapens death.
Comic book resurrections do cheapen the deaths of the characters no if ,ands, or buts about it. But by how much? There have been many return from the dead stories that are great, and there are some that are just terrible. It's all what you do with it. Take for example Jean Grey. This X-man is probably the poster child for the “Super Hero Death” in fact she probably has a time share at her cemetery. I do however think her first revival was a good one. I have to say I'm not that emotionally involved with the character, in fact I believe that her best moment was when she died (the first time) that was a great story. Her first revival was a simple retcon, it wasn't actually her that died. Jean's revival, wasn't however why the story worked, it was what happened because of her rebirth that was interesting. the world around her had changed and all of the characters had to deal, in a very realistic fashion, with what her being alive again meant to them. With actual effects on their lives. In other words they made her return as big a deal as her death. On the other side, is in my opinion, the worst Superhero death and resurrection, Superman. First everyone knew he wasn't going to stay dead, second it was just a garbage story, two months of thinking he came back as a variety of legacy characters only for him to be “just resting” to the status quo being returned the next issue. So it really all comes down to the question is there a good story?
Personally I am in the camp of it's just a quirk of the genre (with a touch of cynicism). People of the “it cheapens death camp” often say people stay dead in real life, but Superheroes don't exist in real life either. Superhero comics exist within the genre of fantasy, and I believe that as long as the characters stay true to themselves and the narrative stays true to the rules of it's “world” anything can happen, and in the superhero “world” death is not an absolute, but, and here's he big but. it needs to matter, just as Death matters. So in order to address this I'm gonna make my David's Wonder Blog's Rules of Superhero Death and Rebirth.
First, the story of the rebirth has to be as big as the story of their death. As noted above bringing a character back to life cheapens their death. Since this is an inescapable fact, the story of their rebirth has to be as good if not better than the story of their death. Make it matter to the characters around them that the character is back. Have the family and loved ones deal with the crushing emotional weight that the person that they have grieved is suddenly not gone, how have they moved on? Is their girlfriend married to their best friend? If the writers don't do this, it will never seem to be anything except a business decision or fan boy pandering. If done well however, it will always seem like a creative decision even when it's not, and who knows if the writer does a real good job it may even seem “planned all along”
Next, the best rebirth is the “they where never dead after all” storyline, with minimal retconning the writer can make a character's return very organic to the story. Of course this only works if you never see the body so to speak. This of course is out the window if the character was buried, cut up, or disintegrated. Falling down a chasm of course is all good, though in the real world this is certain death we usually take for granted more outlandish in the main premise of the story.
So If the character is definitely dead, the writer can only bring them back via “Magic” or science that regularly exists in the comic's “world” For example, God can't bring the character back unless heaven and hell are facts in the story, like wise Magic is not allowed unless there are magic characters, Science can't work unless there is some great science (most likely alien lest anyone can come back from the dead) that can beat death. These are not stifling ideas as most every Superhero comic universe has at least one of these things in it.
That's it! three basic rules that will make any superhero rebirth worth it, make it a good story, as good or better than the death. don't cheat death if you don't have to, but if you do. make sure it's in good standing with the world you're working in. If these three rules are followed I don't think anyone would care about “Super Hero Death”

*Update 3/24/11*
I tried to fit this in an edit, but it never seemed to flow with the rest of it. This is not really a "David's Wonder Blog Rule" so much as a suggestion that helps Rule one. Keep the character dead for a while. This is easy for a character that is "really dead" at the time they are killed off, but not easy for the planned death and rebirth (read Superman). The longer you keep the character dead the more the story "moves on" and the better the return will be.

Art by Greg Land Dark Phoenix (C) & TM Marvel Comics

Welcome.

Hello, and welcome to David's Wonder Blog, I'm David Arroyo, comic book writer and Illustrator. I've made this blog to talk about all of the things that I love, but mostly comics. This Blog is a continuation of my previous blog neuropsychosiscomic.blogspot.com/. My comics writing will be from three angles. That of the fan, reviews of books, discussion about characters etc. That of analysis, this will be the more scholarly of my posts, more so about structure storytelling etc. And that of comic culture, cons, fandom and other such things. I will also be writing about other things that interest me such as movies (especially animation), books, science, beverages, and maybe even a little politics. I'll be trying to post every Friday, giving myself a whole week to develop hopefully interesting posts, and I hope you'll all come along.

David