No One Stays Dead...

It was commissioned by an ad company. Spider-Man had no clue what he was doing, so he went to Johnny for help. Johnny did most of the work building it.

I love the Spider-Mobile. You know who else loves it? Peter David. And Peter David's awesome. So if he loves it, then that makes it awesome by extension.

On comic revivals, I remember the weirdest revival I heard in recent times was Black Swan from Deadpool. To reiterate, Swan was a Big Bad of two miniseries back in 2003, by the end he was dismembered and taxidermized [and Pool took his mangled corpse in vacation in classic Pool style].

Then, almost ten years later, he is revived [WITHOUT ANY EXPLANATION AS TO HOW THE HELL HE CAME BACK, MIND YOU] at the latest miniseries. I mean, I thought he was the best deadpool villain ever, but it was still surreal to have him returning without any warning.

Specially bizarre was that later on, two other classic Deadpool villains are brought back, but both are Killed Off for Real in the same storyarc, while Swan remains alive.

There were also two members of the Neo who were ripped to shreds my Magneto on-panel and then came back for what amounted to a cameo ten years later. One of the Handbooks did a patch-job on this; two of the other Neo present in the scene had pre-established total-sensory illusion powers, so they just went with that.

That ended up happening with Kurt Busiek. He accidentally had Madame Masque show up in an issue of Iron Man when she was supposed to be dead (allegedly he had no idea), so he basically had to come up with some retcon about the Masque who died having been a clone.

It's funny how often comics end up having to essentially use Fix Fics.

edited 18th Mar '13 7:40:37 AM by comicwriter

I'm shocked that happened to Busiek, who is normally quite the continuity conoisseur.

First Law Of Resurrection. Hell, this does not even apply only to characters but entire plot points. The Ragnarok cycle is broken (yay!), Ragnarok will come again (ya...booo!)

And it applies double to super villains. Blackout stabbed to death, exposed to the elements on the top of a skyscraper and then incinerated? Hey look he's alive again, and so is the other black out, what do you mean how? This is civil war, it's supposed to be stupid. Oh there is deathwatch, stabbed to death and buried under rubble, how as he brought back? Did I not tell you this was civil war?

Blackheart, offed by the angel of death? That's harsh but I am bringing him back anyway. Ba'al, killed by God you say? Well since I am writing the comic I am god now so there, he comes back! Jack-O-Lantern (because), Dracula and all the vampires (BECAUSE), Thanos was in another "universe" that no longer exists (BECAUSE)

Nobody stays dead except Uncle Ben and Captain Marvel, the latter having four successors anyway unless with luck Peter Parker will stay dead (both of them).

Steve signed up for the treatment because he was a patriotic weenie, and got his powers before he even set foot in a theatre of war.

I'm fairly unfamiliar with comic books but from my basic understanding, most everyone that has died in the Vigilante (1980s with Adrian Chase) series has stayed dead. With JJ being the only major exception that I can think of. (Though, JJ didn't come back from the grave until years later after the series has already ended. I wonder if they ever explained how he managed to come back from the dead.)

Can't ever imagine that they'll ever bring Adrian back from the dead. Not after the way he went out...

I imagine the best way to ensure that someone dies and stays dead depends on several different factors.

One: If your death is important to a superhero's origin story, don't expect to come back from the grave. Two: Unnamed or unimportant civilian or character. Yep, staying dead. Three: A character from a less popular or forgotten series? (By that, I mean a series don't won't ever be revived anytime soon.) Probably likely to stay dead. Four: *Can overlap with Three.* A relatively minor or obscure character? Maybe. If no one remembers you, then they can't bring you back. Five: Death had a major impact/change on the story? Not sure about this one. Might stay dead longer than most, since I imagine that most wouldn't want to ruin it by bringing the character back, but if the character was fairly popular...

Anyways, if we pick our brains for more minor and/or obscure or unpopular series, I imagine that there's plenty of examples where a character has died and to this day has managed to stay dead.

No one stays dead except for Solomon Grundy and Uncle Ben.

Wait...

Speaking of, did Grundy ever come back before the reboot after Bizarro threw him into the sun, or did that kill him "permanently" until then?

Grundy is made out of plant matter from a swamp so probably not. Unless they destroyed the swamp too.

"And so, Solomon Grundy was done by his greatest enemy ever, the Gotham Urbanizing Commitee. The Solomon Grundy Mall built over Slaughter Swamp would like to remind you of his bloody legacy with these nifty Solomon Grundy T-shirts in all sizes, even extra-large ones!"

There's no way 616 Peter is staying dead. They've more or less acknowledged that Superior Spider-Man is temporary by keeping his "ghost" around. There's simply no way they'd permanently allow him to stay dead considering how much money Peter nets Marvel and Disney. Ultimate Peter has a far better chance if only because he's just an AU character and DC and Marvel have no problem with letting their A-listers die in AU tales.

It's like, did anyone, even in the 90's, ever expect Death of Superman to be permanent? Or the Azbats period where Bruce was crippled?

From what I understand, the Superman and Batman replacements were largely experiments; if they sold better than Clark and Bruce, they'd stay, if not, they'd go. No prizes for guessing what happened.

The replacements worked, and stayed around forever?

. . . Well, Superboy and Steel at least hung around for a while, didn't they?

Steel I think hung around until the reboot, no idea about after. And Superboy... eesh. Poor bugger was retconned into unrecognizability. Went from being a cheerful, if somewhat 90s-cliche, character, to a wangsting brooding nitwit rehashing the whole nature/nurture thing that he'd already dealt with, except with Luthor instead of the head of Cadmus as the 'bad seed'. Bleah.

Yes but not as Superman. You're wrong about the idea of any of the Reign of the Supermen being permanent. The whole point of Death of Superman was to stall for time so Clark and Lois could marry at the same time as the TV show.

As for Az Bats, he was a middle finger to people who wanted Batman to be more like Punisher.

The Death of Superman was a replacement event for the marriage of Clark and Lois, and the replacements a way to fill up time. Superboy and Steel were just new DC characters really, even though the conceit was one of them might take Superman's role. DC owned the name but not the character for Superboy and Steel added much needed diversity.

Knightfall was sort of a deconstruction of darker and edgier superheroes and Bruce was meant to return. but if fan reaction and sales had been good the creative team would have kept Az Bat for the rest of their runs. That sort of thing is true for a lot of comic storylines.

. . . Do people not actually understand when something's meant as a joke unless it's tagged?

I knew that the Reign of the Supermen didn't last long. About a year, as I recall. I was reading the comics at the time. And I was aware that Azbats, as people are calling him, didn't last long, either. It was a joke. Hamburger said no points for guessing how the replacements worked out, so I made a blatantly incorrect guess.

I was serious about Superboy and Steel hanging around for a while, though honestly, it didn't take long after Superman came back from the dead for me to stop giving a damn about DC entirely, so I have no idea what was done with them. I just knew they were still showing up for a few years after the whole thing.

We were correcting Hamburger. Unless he' was joking.

Death by Origin Story is a virtually guaranteed way of killing off a character and keeping hir dead. Popularity Power is also a guaranteed way to a revive a dead character. Seriously, have you ever seen C-List Fodder come back to life once they're killed off?

Depends what you class as C-List really. Plenty of lesser known characters have been revived. There's cases like Unus the Untouchable when the writer hadn't realised they'd died.

As an addition to the rule: Villains are much more likely to be brought back than heroes. Honestly, it's not even worth considering villains when it comes to people who stay dead, because they can be brought back at any time, sometimes without explanation.

IIRC, the plan with Death of Superman was bringing him and it was intended from the start. That's why, for instance, his body was snatched almost as soon as he was buried.

With Azbats, IIRC, Denny O'Neil and his team of writers planned a Return of Bruce arc the whole time, but DC had made clear to them Azbats would stay if he proved being more popular than Bruce. The writers were relieved when he wasn't.

Responding to one of the posts above, the replacement Superman and Batman were never meant to be permanent, even if successful. They always intended to bring the originals back and, if it warrented it, give the new guys their own books. Which is exactly what happened.

As far as Az Bats went, they actually went out of their way to make him distasteful. Batman editorial even said they had heard so many people say stuff like "Make Batman darker and grittier" that they decided to show people what that would be like.

edited 19th Mar '13 9:49:00 PM by Robbery