comics
Marvel Comics Promises That Deaths Will Be Permanent From Now On
No more resurrection this time. Thanos meant it.
Throughout the journey Marvel heroes went through, there has been very few significant permanent deaths that happened. Loki, who was thought killed off in Thor: Dark World returned back to steal the throne of Asgard. Before that, he was thought killed off in the Abyss in the first movie, although it wasn’t explicitly said that he was dead.
The third death Loki experienced came with a warning from Thanos: no more resurrection this time. Even then, Loki returns during the time heist, escaping with the Tesseract to God knows where.
Death was never the end with such a popular series and fans screaming and crying every time a favorite character is killed off. It boosts sales, to put it bluntly. But C.B. Cebulski, Marvel Comics Editor in Chief, wishes to change that all.
“I don’t want death to be used to boost sales or to use as a shock value so people go ‘Oh my God, Johnny Storm is dead!’ or ‘Wolverine is dead!’ knowing that they’re going to be coming back. If we choose to do it now, we’re going to add a little more weight and permanence to the situation.”
In Marvel Comics, the death of characters give the story a shock value that piqued everyone’s interest: how did he die? Why did he die? What could have done to not let him die? Let’s do some fanarts to honor his death!
What’s really unfortunate about these deaths is that they were never really honored; the dead never stays dead much. It’s the same with DC Comics, such as when Superman was killed and brought back to life.
Half a century ago, killing off the main character of a story may seem like a major move to make. But today, it’s an overused trope that is so dense that people know, “Nah, he’ll come back. We just need to figure out how.”
“We always say there are two characters that will never come back and that’s Gwen Stacy and Uncle Ben. We even said back in the day that Bucky would never come back and now we have the Winter Soldier.”
“There’s a lot of debates that happen because if a writer suggests that we should kill a character, it always has to be story driven first. It can’t just be for shock value.”
Unfortunately, the death of several heroes done in the world of superhuman never stray far from shock value.
Out of the 14 million ways the Avengers could have done it, Doctor Strange decided that they could only win in one scenario. And that one involves Iron Man dying to do the last saving.
That’s a pretty good shock value and I’m still buying it.
