Originally published December 18, 1992, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #996
There’s definitely something wrong with me.
I’m missing the boat. I’m out of the loop. I’m just not with it.
Why? Because I’ve gone beyond the saturation point with the marketing surrounding the death of Superman. I am now solidly repulsed by it.
I just received a kit from DC (which, after this column, will probably take me off its kit mailing list). There’s a cover sheet describing the contents, complete with such goodies as:
1) A cardboard coffin. I believe it’s just large enough to accommodate my old Captain Action-costumed-as-Superman figure;
2) A set of stickers, including one showing the grotesque image of a sobbing Lois Lane cradling the dead, blood-soaked body of Kal-El—certainly a portrait that every spiritual, life-celebrating American school kid would want plastered on his or her spiral binder;
3) A press release and ad slick, which are guaranteed to “generate excitement in your local market” (“Hey Timmy! Superman’s dead! I’m so excited!”)
Plus posters, rack header cards, etc.
I’m sorry. I guess I’m being squeamish. I guess I’m being old fashioned. But this whole thing is really starting to sicken me.
This is no criticism of the stories. I haven’t read the stories yet. I don’t begrudge DC the success; I don’t begrudge the royalties for the creative teams, or the opportunity to be part of what the promotional kit refers to as a “landmark comics event” (and I guess they’re right. I mean, hëll, back in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Wonder Woman—who is only a few years younger than Superman—was turned into a lump of clay. That didn’t rate so much as a six-graph obit—or even a promotional glazed ash tray which, DC might have claimed, was made from genuine Wonder Woman).
But what’s starting to get to me is the chop-licking joy that, boiled down, is: “Wow! People are really upset and grieving! Let’s wring every nickel we can out of it!”
I mean, I like angst as much as the next guy. But good lord, the “grieving Lois” sticker and the coffin (which can be used to display the lovely clip-on Superman R.I.P. pins) are the last straw.
I’ve written before about how we have a new breed of heroes who revel in pain and suffering. And now we know what they do in their off hours. They work for the promotional and marketing departments of comic book companies. (And I’m not singling out DC here; I’m sure that if Marvel caught a PR tiger by the tail like this one, they’d be riding it for all it’s worth.)
I’ve also written before about a tendency in this country to enjoy tearing down icons. How people seem to enjoy dragging that which is great and wonderful and “better” down to a level that will make them feel comfortable about themselves. Some people wrote in and said I was being overly sour. But the Death of Superman is merely the latest incarnation of that trend.
And the biggest aspect of all this is that, although comics fans aren’t really buying into the notion that Kal is gone for good, there are a lot of civilians that do believe it and are genuinely upset (as was pointed out in a CBG editorial cartoon).
I was at one public place where I heard some guy (who was not a comic book reader but, instead, had gotten all his information from news reports) talking with utter conviction about how Superman was gone for good, and that Doomsday was going to be the new mainstay at DC Comics—which the guy declared was “cool.” And there have been people who have struck up conversations with me (not knowing of my connection with comics, but being prompted to do so because of my Spider-Man jacket) who are clearly quite distressed by what they perceive as the permanent demise of one of their childhood friends.
No doubt, in their mind’s eyes, they’re seeing George Reeves lying lifeless in his black-and-white Superman outfit, with Noel Neill sobbing over his prostrate form.
And DC is sending out toy coffins and stickers.
But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Only the intensity and glee with which Superman’s death is being pushed can be considered new. CBG pointed out at length the number of times that Superman has been killed. Knocking off dearly-beloved popular idols, however, is hardly limited to Superman.
One need look no further than the end of the 19th Century, when Arthur Conan Doyle decided to rid himself of a literary albatross named Sherlock Holmes. Convinced that the master detective was drawing attention away from work that Doyle considered less frivolous, ACD crafted “The Final Problem,” in which Holmes went over the Reichenbach Falls, locked in mortal combat with his arch enemy and “Napoleon of Crime,” Professor Moriarty.
Unlike (presumably) Superman`s writers, Doyle didn’t develop the story to answer the question of, “Well, what do we do that’s new and exciting with Holmes this year?” He didn’t intend to bring Holmes back—although, let’s face it, he could have put a bullet through Holmes’ brain “on camera,” and shut the door completely. Obviously he left himself an out. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and presume that he really did intend for Holmes to buy it.
I think, however, we can agree beyond doubt that Doyle did not manufacture arm bands with the letter “H” on them or did not distribute magnifying glasses with RIP inscribed on the glass and that the Strand magazine did not develop a special Reichenbach Falls counter display with a Moriarty header card. Londoners were in genuine mourning for their fallen hero. What Doyle did do was attempt to placate them by giving them the “untold tale” of The Hound of the Baskervilles. But that wasn’t sufficient, and when (as I recall the story) Doyle’s own mother started ragging on him, he finally resuscitated Holmes. Then again, Doyle always was obsessed by life after death. Maybe this was just a manifestation of that.
More dead icons (besides Elvis, I mean)? Let’s jump forward three quarters of a century to 1976, and Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest.
Although Robin’s accomplishments (robbing from the rich, splitting the arrow, defeating Sir Guy/The Sheriff/Prince John/whoever) were widely known, less celebrated were the stories of his demise. So screenwriter James Goldman wrote the singularly downbeat Robin and Marian, a 1976 Columbia picture. Starring Audrey Hepburn, radiant as Marian, and Sean Connery as an aging Robin (presaging his cameo fifteen years later in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, in which he would be more effective in his thirty seconds of screen time as King Richard than Kevin Costner was as Locksley in the preceding two hours), this was a no-holds barred tear-jerker.
Returning dispirited from the Crusades after the demise of an aging Richard Lionheart (Richard Harris), Robin and Little John (Nicol Williamson) link up with Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet, played by Ronnie Barker (of The Two Ronnies) and Denholm Elliot (which, with the third Indiana Jones film, means that there were two movies in fifteen years that featured Sean Connery, Denholm Elliot, and a “last crusade.”) They engage in one final campaign against the Sheriff of Nottingham, played with dignity and elan by Robert Shaw.
The climactic battle between Robin and the Sheriff was absolutely heart-stopping, and the final scenes of that film made one of the few times I’ve actually gotten misty-eyed in a theater. It was funny, sad, beautifully acted, well-directed—
Yet, as I recall, Robin and Marian did not do particularly well in the box office. Clearly it was a movie made before its time. Release it now, and we would see Columbia flood the market with black arrows, memorial swords, and the like. Action figures that can actually die a variety of ways would hit the toy stores.
Death, destruction, misery, and shattered dreams are big business, and Robin and Marian would be a smash. As it is, it’s consigned, dusty and forgotten, to video shelves and occasional appearances on cable.
Obviously, milking death for all its worth is tremendously effective. At comic stores, 90% (and, on some days, 100%) of the phone calls are inquiries about the Death of Superman. People were lining up for blocks when the comic hit. CBG editor “Dan and Margie” Thompson were flooded with calls from newshounds.
Even Saturday Night Live took the opportunity to haul the super-hero costumes out of mothballs once more and stage a Superman funeral service. (Please, God, let Tony Isabella have been watching Sinbad as Black Lightning, the super-hero they wouldn’t let in. Me, I was getting off on the dead-on accurate Hulk gag.)
I think, then, it’s only a matter of time until other licenses and properties start tumbling to the marketing possibilities and develop death scenarios, along with attendant marketing strategies to pump up interest.
Perhaps, within the next couple of years, we’ll thrill to:
“The Death of Spider-Man”—Harry Osborn, the Green Goblin, goes berserk one final time and teams up with Venom to destroy Spider-Man. Aunt May is killed as an innocent bystander, and Spider-Man goes completely berserk. He kills Venom and is about to kill the Goblin as well, but restrains himself at the last moment—at which point Harry blows them both to kingdom come with a pumpkin bomb.
Harry’s young son, Norman, is grief-stricken over the misery that his father has caused. Then Norman is kidnapped by an enraged Doctor Octopus, who is infuriated that he didn’t have the opportunity to kill Spider-Man. Doc Ock subjects Norman to a series of experiments which causes him to age nineteen years and acquire the powers of a spider—at which point Norman beats the stuffing out of Ock and becomes the new Spider-Man.
Look for cans of specially made black webbing, black Spider-Signal flashlights, special cardboard “Death of Spider-Man” dioramas, Spider-Man’s widow`s black veil (got to have something for the female readers) and ten different editions of the new Spider-Man #1 featuring the debut of Norman as Spider-Man.
“The Death of Tarzan”—Tarzan is updated, and the saga of La of Opar is turned into a redo of Fatal Attraction, including such gut-wrenching moments as Jane discovering Cheetah the monkey (or, for purists, Manu the Monkey) floating dead in a pot of bouillabaisse. La then kills Jane, and a final battle results in a climactic elephant stampede during which the enraged Tantor inadvertently steps on both Tarzan and La. Korak, the son of Tarzan, in whom no one is remotely interested, becomes the new Tarzan.
To be marketed with black loincloths, bagged stuffed monkeys, fake gold bars (straight from Opar) with RIP engraved in them, clip-on daggers, and elephant foot umbrella stands complete with genuine Tarzan and La smear on the underside.
“The Death of Steve Urkel”—Please. Somebody. Anybody. Kill this character. Slowly. Make him suffer.
“The Death of Mickey Mouse”—Black Pete, enraged by his being completely diluted on The Goof Troop, cuts off his leg, replaces it with a peg leg, and then goes berserk attacking the other characters by beating them with his severed limb. In a devastating three-hour battle that levels Disneyland, Mickey valiantly fights to the death. Mickey’s nephew, Morty, vows to change his name to Mickey and maintain the ideals that Mickey stood for.
To be accompanied by Mickey memorial cheese, little black shorts with black buttons that say “RIP” on them, special displays shaped like mouse traps, souvenir peg legs, a special reunion/funeral TV special of the Mouseketeers, all theme parks throughout the world shut down for a 24-hour period of mourning, and the various Enchanted Castles festooned with black wreathes, the slogan of Disneyland officially changed from “The Happiest Place on Earth” to “Life Sucks”, the official theme song changed from “When You Wish Upon a Star” to “Nowhere to Run To, Nowhere to Hide.”
Also, announce preparation for next year’s release of “Death of Pinocchio,” with trailers featuring Pinocchio becoming infested by termites while Figaro eats Cleo in the background, all set to the tune of “Funeral March of a Marionette.”
“The Death of Charlie Brown”—Lucy pulls the football away from him once too often. Charlie lands wrong and dies from a broken neck, shattered spine and cerebral hemorrhage. Lucy is arrested, tried as a minor, and sent to reform school. Schroeder composes his first funeral dirge. Pigpen is contacted by the National Enquirer and dishes dirt. A devastated Linus hangs himself with his blanket. Snoopy starves to death waiting for Charlie Brown to feed him.
Look for the special black memorial football, the special black blanket, a special CD featuring every Peanuts-related song including “Snoopy and the Red Baron” (original and Christmas-themed sequel), an updated version of the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, revised to You’re a Dead Man, Charlie Brown, special line of Peanuts figures in black mourning clothes; dead Snoopy keychains, and, if it happens around Halloween, special trick or treat bags filled with rocks.
And then, in a shocking twist, a new strip is begun in which the ghost of Charlie Brown is denied entrance to the hereafter and condemned to walk the earth trying to find someone who will like him—and he changes his name to Casper—which would explain a lot.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, hopes he gets royalties if any of the above ideas are used.)
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I would just like to say that I hated Goof Troop.
I’m disgusted by what’s been done to Pete over many years.
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The way he’s been further and further sanitised.
I wonder how many people who grew up watching Goof Troop know that Pete started out as, among other unsavory occupations, a drug runner (opium, if I recall correctly).
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Chuck
Hey, as a kid we take what we can get. In fact, we still do. Just try getting old Disney comics here in the US. Though, Boom Studios is trying its darnedest.
I’m sure that if Marvel caught a PR tiger by the tail like this one, they’d be riding it for all it’s worth
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Nah, these days Marvel just tells the media what’s coming, and then let’s the media spoil it for everybody (see: death of Captain America).
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Beyond that though, I can’t think of a lot of ‘cashing in’ on the deaths of super heroes after the stuff with Superman. Or even with just their big moments, like Wolverine getting his adamantium yanked out.
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Although, I think you could argue that Marvel’s successes at the box office has changed how Marvel does things as a whole. The X-Men 2 film directly lead to the writing of the Wolverine Origin mini-series. Spider-Man “Back in Black” (imo) was due to the Spider-Man 3 film. Getting past Civil War so that Thor, Cap, and Iron Man – including Cap’s resurrection – are once again the core members of the Avengers is pretty much all about not confusing potential new readers when the Avengers film finally hits.
I think you’re mistaken about the X-Men 2 movie’s connection with the Wolverine mini-series. The first issue of the Jenkins/Kubert comic book came out in 2001; the second X-Men film didn’t come out until 2003. (In fact, the final issue of the Origin mini came out nearly a year before X2.)
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There is, however, some speculation that the first X-Men film led to the creation of the mini-series.
There is, however, some speculation that the first X-Men film led to the creation of the mini-series.
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My point was that Marvel knew that the X-Men movies would likely address Wolverine’s origin sooner or later. Thus, the mini-series before a movie (which happened to be X-Men 2) got to it.
Re: Death of Superman. Some of these things seemed a bit over the top – and PAD’s speculation that many fans felt like they were burying the black and white George Reeves Superman from their childhood was undoubtedly correct in some cases, I would not be TOO offended by things like the stickers and coffin – though PAD makes good points regarding those as well.
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I simply feel that Lois cradling the bloody Supes was an iconic moment and was certainly not THAT much worse than stuff like “Garbage Pail Kids” and other stuff kids were playing with at that time.
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And all this stuff really, think, helped you see it for the event that it was. More importantly, I think it drove home that no matter how many people say he’s antiquated, Supes was still relevant. If DocSavage or even captain Marvel had been killed off, there would not have been nearly as much reaction from fans and press.
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Re: All were funny. the Steve Urkel plea made me laugh out loud.
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The thing that gets me is that death has become SO cheap in comics. Morethan once a month, you’ll see an ad in Previews, “In this issue, an X-Man dies! Can you guess which one?”
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It seems t have lost it’s impact, even before the “DOS”. That “DOS” had such a apparently huge impact is, I think, a testament to the character.
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Oh, and Joe Quesada came up with the idea for “Origin” right after the FIRST “X-Men” movie. he saw that Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine was quite popular and likely would be in a lot more films. He had a feeling they would tell his origin onscreen eventually, so he wanted to beat them to it. “Origin” came out in 2002 and “X-Men 2” came out in 2003. Tour point is still somewhat valid, though.
To me, the most bizarre consequence of the Death of Superman was the brief appearance of Superman Red and Superman Blue. Remember when we were told that these would be “the Superman through the new millennium?” Not even close. Further, *why* exactly were the new ones red and blue? Sure, Superman’s costume was mostly red and blue — but not his skin. That’s like me wearing blue jeans and a green shirt and somehow turning into JamesLynch Blue and JamesLynch Green.
Keeping characters from becoming static is one thing, but this was New Coke in the comics world.
Actually Superman-Red & Blue came along so far after DEath of Superman that I don’t think there was any connection.
And I don’t think the New Coke Analogy works with Red and Blue because it didn’t jumpstart widespread interest in the older product (the classic suit and powers) as far as I can tell, whereas New Coke, intentionally or not actually served Coke well, just not in terms of selling the new version. That is, I don’t think the Red and Blue era caused absent readers to run out and grab traditional costumes/powers appearances.
Yeah, Surfer Hair Superman was the first incarnation after his death. Electric Blue came later, and then Red and Blue.
Ultimately, there appeared to be no reason for the colors other than an homage to the classic “imaginary story”, “The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue!”.
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Chuck
I agree with you Peter, some of those Death of Superman press materials were pretty tacky to say the least (says the man with a Reanimator decapitated head paperweight on his desk). But looking back, I think there’s an obvious, if not justifiable, reason for them. In these ‘death of (insert name here)’ stories, there is bound to be a huge disconnect between the casual fans and general public who get themselves all riled by the news that X has just been killed off; and just about everybody that works in the DC or Marvel office in question, who know perfectly well that said death is no more than a short-lived publicity stunt. Think about it: DC is no more going to kill off Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman than Marvel is going to ice Spidey, Cap or Iron Man. These are not just characters; they’re corporate assets and both companies make millions from licensing their likenesses for all manner of products. And to a large extent, the same holds true for their likenesses. Did anybody really think Spider-Man was going to stay in the black costume when there were countless Spider-Man Underoos out there with the classic red and blue design? The notable exception, interestingly enough, is Iron Man who seems to have gone through countless design iterations with little or no effect.
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But let’s say for the sake of argument that the DC marketing department knows perfectly well that Superman will be coming back in, say, 18 months. For those folks, there is no real emotional investment. They know it’s just a publicity-generating event, so let’s have some fun with it. Mind you, their idea of fun and ours could be completely different- those aforementioned Grieving Lois stickers are a great example. In the end, I think the only folks that were truly upset were the members of the general public who bought thousand of extra copies of the Death of Superman books thinking they were going to cash out in a couple of years and buy a chalet on the Riviera. If you’re that stupid, you deserve to be parted with your money.
One of the ongoing gags in the webcomic LETHARGIC LAD is that whenever a character dies, their last words are “I smell bread” — that the death of a character automatically makes more money for the comic. Granted, this doesn’t work so well for a free webcomic…
I never saw the “Death of Superman” as anything other than a cynical marketing ploy. What was really sad was how suddenly so many noteworthy characters went through something unusually traumatic that was temporary. Reed Richards is dead like Bucky and Captain Marvel, Hal Jordan went psychotic, Batman gets paralyzed, Peter Parker was a clone, and numerous other events that would “change (insert hero’s name here) life forever” if they survive it.
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I was spending roughly $200 a month in comics and then around the time Magneto ripped the adamantine out of Wolvie’s skeleton, I quit cold turkey. I think it was almost 15 years before I even bought a graphic novel.
That was 1993. Seems like only yesterday.
The 1990s drove A LOT of long-time readers temporarily out of the hobby. I was one of them too.
Same here….well, I stopped buying new comics, anyway. My last straw was the endless tinkering with one of my former favories, the New Warriors, to bring it in line with the “Spider-Family” sub-group that it was inexplicably shoehorned into. (Little did I know that the Warriors were getting off easy, compared to the permanent tarnishing of the Warriors name roughly a decade after volume 1 ended!)
So I stopped visiting the local shop, and would occasionally buy back issues at yard sales, flea markets, etc., to fill holes in my collection. I only looked back in on comics when a friend started gushing to me about some book drawn by Mark Bagley that featured the Masters of Evil masquerading as heroes. (Thanks, by the way, to Bagley and Kurt Busiek, for bringing me back into the fold!)
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Chuck
Me, too. I pretty much skipped the entire decade. Not intentionally, of course, in the sense that I never thought to myself, “Well, it’s the 90s, I’m not buying any comics until 2000.” I actually quit in 1989 because of financial reasons (that, and I had no easy way of buying comics, being not quite old enough to drive and no good comic stores in my area). Then when I went off to college in ’93 I went to a comic store and bought a huge stack of comics, read a few, stuffed them in a drawer in disgust, and then never went back for more. Interestingly, though, I really didn’t buy another comic until 2000, but the fact that I chose that particular year to come back was purely coincidental and meaningless.
I stopped buying comic books in 1995, although for the previous year I hadn’t been buying very many. (Mostly I’d just been getting back issues.) I’d gone through periods before when I barely bought any for a year or two, and there was no real intention on my part to stop. It was primarily due to the comic-book store closing, and lack of money.
But then Marvel did that stupid Onslaught and Heroes Reborn stunt. I had no connection to a wider fandom in those days (I still don’t have much), and all I knew was what I read about it in the newspaper. Of course, the mainstream press knows little about the comic industry, and they don’t report on it often, and as I’m sure you know, they don’t always get their reporting right, even when the facts are accurate. So I didn’t know it was a temporary stunt involving a few titles. So I was under the belief that Marvel was starting all their titles over from the beginning, kind of like DC had done after that original Crisis.
And that was just too much for me. I didn’t want to have to learn a whole new history for all the characters I liked. I did flip through a couple of Avengers issues at a bookstore, and I didn’t like what I saw.
Gradually, after the new century began, I started occasionally looking at a comic-book at the bookstore, and some of them did look good, but for years I was still under the impression that Marvel had started all over and the stories I remembered had been erased from history.
It wasn’t until 2005-2006, after I read a few issues that a neighbour kid had, and then the first volume of New Avengers that I found at the library, that I started to realise that maybe the old history was still there. It was also around this time that a new comic-book store opened, and I occasionally stopped in and bought an old issue.
And then, towards the end of 2006, I heard that Peter David was writing a series called Friendly-Neighborhood Spider-Man, and being unable to resist the combination of Peter David and Spidey, I bought #14 despite having just learned that his identity had been revealed (possibly the stupidest move in Spider-Man history, which is really saying something).
Yes. The first new books I bought in over a decade were by Peter David, and his name was one of the reasons why.
I also bought some non-PAD stuff soon afterwards, and then that Wonder Man series appeared and I bought that, too. Since then I’ve gradually started buying more and more stuff (helped by the return of a stable income, even though it isn’t much).
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I guess my point is that these big marketing stunts that the hard-core fans know are temporary, can drive away a lot of the less-involved readers. That wasn’t going to be the point of this comment, but everybody else was talking about how they quit reading in the ’90s, so I thought I’d mention my experience (which I think I’ve told before here). I didn’t realise it would get away from me and run so long.
I should probably shut up now, huh?
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I wasn’t trying to kiss your butt here, Peter. I just mentioned all that because it’s what actually happened.
Mary, I’m not sure Heroes Reborn was meant to be temporary from the beginning. I think Marvel meant to keep it going for as long as it was sucessful, but it wasn’t as sucessful as expected.
Unlike most of you guys, money wasn’t a factor with me. The Brazilian issues of Marvel and DC Comics were really cheap, it was easy to buy them all, and it still breaks my heart to think how devoted I was to my collection throughout the 1980s.
And then the 1990s happened, with Reed “dying” and Sue dressing šlûŧŧÿ, Spidey revealed a clone, the Claremont-less X-Men becoming more and more kewl and repetitive, the Harras-written Avengers becoming X-Men clones, Iron Man becoming a revamped teen, Cap becoming a werewolf and then “dying”, and all of that drawn in the kewl Imagey style that I came to loathe.
Ironically, I don’t think DC was as horrible as Marvel, despite the obvious gimmicks of the “Death of” and the “Fall of”.
I kept buying the comics in the 1990s out of habit, since they were so cheap. But one day I realized, in horror and disappointment, that I had a 3-month pile of unread comics. That would have been unthinkable a decade earlier, when I voraciously read everything the second I got my hands on it.
I kept buying them, expecting my enthusiasm to return, but about three months later it didn’t, and I gradually stopped buying. I think it was during Onslaught. When Heroes Reborn started, I had already walked away in disgust.
The thing I regret the most is that I became neglectful even of my old collection. 15 years later, and I’ve moved three times, and my life is completely different, and many of my old comics were damaged by storing them in places open to exposure or rot, and lots of other comics that were kept in good shape I abandoned in the old houses or left it to relatives of mine to move and store, and now I have only a handful of comics, most of them imported American issues.
So yeah, I’m bitter about the 1990s.
It’s funny that, while Hero’s Reborn was not a success; creatively speaking; it did convince Marvel that handing their propeties to people out-side the company was a step in the right direction. It seemed to me that after the initional sucsesses of Image, Marvel just built this wall around them-selves to keep every-one else out.
Reuben, I didn’t see it that way. I think Marvel after Image’s founding was bogged down in a pathetic attempt to replicate what they perceived as the Image style, but making it even worse than what the Image guys were doing it.
Heroes Reborn seemed to me the final surrender. “Let’s give up and just give the reins to the Image guys, so that they can remake Marvel into Image.”
Irony of ironies! By them, the tide was turning and retro was coming back with a vengeance. So Heroes Reborn thankfully didn’t last.
I am intrigued by your Comments about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He never did any of those things, as you say. But do you think he would have if he thought he could get away with it? ie do you think the only reason he didn’t do it is because he didn’t think of it?
Those Spider-man comments are eerily prophetic though. Spider-man beaten to death? Check. Aunt may killed as an innocent bystander? Check. Goes berserk? I wouldn’t call making a deal with the devil an act of a hero. (and then Criticizing Hawkeye who wanted to kill Norman because “heroes rise above adversity”). This isn’t one of those things like where you said “haha, lets have Magneto yank Wolverine’s bones out!” …was it? lol
When I die, I want there to be commemorative ashtrays available.
Arthur Conan Doyle … pwned by his Mom.
PAD, I’m curious to know if you’ve ever seen the 1984-1986 British fantasy series, “Robin of Sherwood,” which is, for my money, the definitive version of Robin Hood. The series combined disparate elements of the Robin Hood legend with pagan myth, and boasted a terrific cast, gritty storylines, music by Clannad, and authentic production values. The first two seasons starred Michael Praed as Robin of Loxley and the third starred Jason (son of Sean) Connery as Loxley’s successor, Robert of Huntingdon. Ray Winstone played Will Scarlet and Nickolas Grace was the last word in portrayals of the Sheriff of Nottingham (apologies to Alan Rickman. Actually, the series featured Robin Hood with a Muslim in his band, and battling witches, years before the godawful Kevin Costner movie). The final episode of season two is pretty dámņëd tear-jerking, more so, I think, than the “Robin and Marian” film.
Yup, did see it. Thought it was really amazing.
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PAD
Robin and Marian is a good movie, although it’s really the ending that makes it memorable. I think my favorite Robin Hood movie is actually the Disney cartoon, with the foxes and bears and so forth. They really captured something indelible and lovely with that film.
My favourite ‘Death Of Superman’ thing was David Letterman’s ‘Top Ten Things Overheard At Superman’s Funeral’. Number one– Say, has anyone seen Clark?
He also had a pretty good list of Reasons Superman and Lois Are Breaking Up, back when DC had them call off the engagement for no reason I could ever discern.
I feel a filk coming on…
(to the tune of “Pore Jud is Daid” from OKLAHOMA!)
Pore Kal is daid,
Pore Kal-El is daid;
Ye heroes hang your cowl’d heads down and cry;
(Down and cry)
He was the Man of Steel
And our comic book ideal;
Oh why did such a hero have to die?
(Have to die?)
Pore Kal is daid,
A candle lights his haid;
He’s lookin’ all so purty and serene,
(And serene)
For truth he always stood;
Was the paragon of good;
Whoever could’a done a thing so mean?
(Thing so mean)
Pore Kal is daid,
Pore Kal-El is daid;
Ye fanboys don your solemn bands of black;
(Bands of black)
The Super-est of men,
We won’t see his like again;
At least ’til they decide to bring him back;
(Bring him back!!!)
I’ll give Heroes Reborn credit for this much: by creating a hard break in things, it gaven Marvel a chance to reconsider many of their 1990s decisions, and a lot were corrected during the Heroes Return era.
I agree that the 1990s were horrible overall for comics (for Marvel, Incredible Hulk was the only title I never dropped during that decade, so for a time PAD was my entire connection to Marvel Comics, though due to mini-series and occasional decent runs like PAD’s X-Factor I can’t say how many consecutive months I read only one Marvel title). That said, I think 1998 rather than 2000 was, at least for Marvel, the point where things noticably started to turn around for the better (though Thunderbolts the year before did signal that change was coming).
I’ve gradually been buying various issues from the decade that I missed, and while I still haven’t read very many from the late ’90s, it does seem from what I’ve seen that 1998 was the year in which things started getting good again.
I wish I’d known that at the time.
Andy, you’ve hit the nail on the head on both accounts. Heroes Reborn was’nt the big success that Marvel was hoping for; and it was obvious that it was’nt going to last long; but it did change Marvels thinking. You could say that there would’nt of been a Marvel Knights, Ultimate universe, or even an All-Star Superman with-out it.
Those don’t really seem like fun stickers. These ones were more fun: http://cgi.ebay.ie/DC-Comics-Young-Justice-Promo-Stickers-Robin-Impulse_W0QQitemZ330380364522QQcmdZViewItemQQptZArt_Posters?hash=item4cec344aea. I had some. I put them on my notebooks. 😀
“Mickey’s nephew, Morty, vows to change his name to Mickey and maintain the ideals that Mickey stood for.”
They should use Ferdie instead, just as a big twist. No one ever uses Ferdie (not that Morty’s had a ton of appearances recently either, but still).
Regarding Heroes Reborn, obviously I have no way of knowing for sure, but wouldn’t common sense suggest it was a massive and more importantly, ongoing success, would it not have been in everybody’s interest to keep it going as long as possible? I really didn’t mind the Iron Man or FF issues, but the Captain America issues really left me cold. Stylistically, I found them as jarring as the Frank Robbins issues many years ago, when I had been used to the solid if not remarkable work of Sal Buscema for so many years. That’s strictly a subjective opinion of course; I’m sure there were readers who loved the Rob L run, mercifully brief though it was.
I echo the previous posters who quite enjoyed Robin and Marian, although my enjoyment is probably less the actual story and more the fact that there were some superb accing performances in that film. One of the best pieces of work I’ve ever seen from Sean Connery. And D.N., I also quite enjoyed Robin of Sherwood, although maybe not as much as the rabid fan following that sprung up here in the mid eighties. I do remember the day I was going to do an interview with Phil Rose (Friar Tuck) so my wife and I invited him over for dinner, and over rather a lot of wine, he told the story of how he had to go off for a pee in the middle of filming and just happened to be nearby when a heavily-hidden Jason Connery was sneaked up a path through the woods to shoot his very first scene. When you consider how many months passed before the ‘new’ Robin Hood was actually revealed, it was quite a long time to keep that secret.
That’s a cool story (and keeping that secret for so long these days would be near-impossible, what with the internet and more intense media scruitiny and all). I was also sort of impressed by the fact that, on the 2002 DVDs of “Robin of Sherwood,” the cast revealed that they are still close friends, roughly 20 years after the they worked on show (I also remember years ago, on the old Jump the Shark page, there were loads of comments about how “Robin of Sherwood” took a turn for the worse when Jason Connery succeeded Michael Praed. I don’t share that opinion; the third season wasn’t necessarily better or worse than what came before, it was just different. Like the post-John Cale Velvet Underground).
Just quickly: On the subject of the Adamantium being ripped from Wolverine’s body – I’d heard the original idea was to kill him off (naturally bringing him back a year or so later, in much the same ploy as we’re discussing DC using here), but they got cold feet mid-story arc and changed it to a mere de-metalling.
Certainly the art seems to back this up: In the issue where Magneto actually did the deed, Logan ends up looking like a mangled climbing frame, yet a mere one episode on he’s Adamantium-less, but otherwise perfectly fine. How on Earth did the Xmen manage to remove the rest of the ‘indestructable’ metal from him?
Can anyone confirm any of this?
PAD?
Peter,
We’ve spoken before (a few years back) about your books. I’m a film producer (and a fan)…
I would like to get in touch with you. I believe you can retrieve my email from this post.
I look forward hearing from you.
Best, Juan Castro