Restoring Comic Books: This Time it Counts

Comics have lost credibility with fans around the whole issue of death. With each passing superhero death, it's garnered less public notice and been taken less seriously by fans. When you know a character will live on no matter what.

And how can DC and Marvel keep characters and concepts fresh and regain fan credibility. Two big suggestions come to mind:

1) This Time it Counts: The 2002 MLB All-Star game was an unmitigated fiasco. Running low on players, it was decreed that the all-star game would end after 11 innings. It ended in 7-7 tie to the boos of the fans.

Fans felt players weren't taking it seriously, nor was the MLB. That's when baseball decided to make a change with the, "This Time It Counts" advertising campaign and the decision to have the league that wins the All-Star game get home field advantage in the world series.

Comic book companies need to have their own, "This Time It Counts" when it comes to superhero deaths. Next time a superhero dies, it should be actually be their swan song. Yep, they're really really dead.

Now, of course, their needs to be wiggle room. Far be it from me to suggest that every time a book ends looking like the hero died that he has to be dead.

What I am saying is that if a hero: 1) is considered to die in the superhero universe and 2) is dead as far as we know, and 3) you put out special funeral issues: the character better not be alive under some lame deus ex machena.

That doesn't respect the readers or the characters. Next superhero or supervillain death should count for keeps.

2) Give Heroes an Ending

Superheroes are different than other characters developing in that the companies think their stories can or should go on forever.

This leads to a lot of implausible reboots, as well as a rapid unrealistic changes in the character.

Most characters should be brought to an ending: perhaps it's death, perhaps it's a debilitating injury, maybe it's retirement, maybe it's discovering a greater purpose for their life. The idea that their career continues forever and that we change the characters in hackish ways is pure folly in any other type of writing.

Comic book companies should commit to ending most of their major characters within the next 10-20 years while ushering in a new generation of heroes.

There are probably a few exceptions: Captain America and Superman remain strong symbolic characters who really represent a type of archetype that's going to be needed. As long as they don't mess it up, than that's fine. Batman is probably one they can't shake as a comic book series. But the rest? Replace.

Tell their stories, bring them to an end: happy, sad, or indifferent, but respectful of all the character is and stands for and open up creativity: Heroes and villains alike.

If companies do that and they hire talent that can create really great characters, they'd actually put some dynamism into a genre of graphic arts that needs it.

Such an idea would not affect their efforts in other media. For example, If the Spider-man character were brought to a fitting end, it would not stop anyone from making a Spider-man TV show as these shows are their own universe.

It also wouldn't stop a spin-off comic based on the show or another volume of Untold Tales of Spider-man. DC has shown with Tales of the Dark Knight and now Adventures of Superman that you can make a good comic selling non-continuity stories.

Such an approach would revitalize the superhero universes and show respect for readers and fans. While I doubt Marvel or DC would take it, an upstart company would be far smarter to follow this model than the traditional one that has created impossibly tangled storylines.