http://www.newsarama.com/comics/hey-thats-my-cape-marvel-deaths-for-sales-110216.html



They recently killed off Johnny Storm which resulted in the usual media coverage, and a spike in sales for the title.

I love how blunt he is about the whole thing. Comics are truly going back to the 90's this decade. The industry crashed in the 90's after they tried to artificially create collector value by saturating comics with "shocking" events all the time, relaunching titles as #1 and overproducing them to keep up with the demand from everyone buying them hoping they'd be worth a lot of money after a bunch of years. This in turn made the comics worthless instead.

This guy is dumb, why would you kill off characters that can get you money. It's a stupid idea I hope he enjoys a huge loss of sales.

So short term $$$ but when everone is dead no $$$, great business plan.

What happens if this plan succeeds and they make even more money? I'm sure they've got much more insight than us.

Then they bring the characters back to life through some ridiculous deus ex machina (that involves time travel, or multiple dimensions, or ancient Chinese secret magic, or something), or just kick-start another series with the exact same characters doing the exact same things they did in the old series.

Company-owned comic book franchises are so [censored] stupid.

Quarterly resurrections after that is more or less a foregone conclusion.

It's not as if comic characters stay dead for long.

Take DC Comics for example.

Batman: Back broken - Came back. More recently died (Or appeared to) - Came back.

Superman: Died - Came back.

Green Lantern: Died - Came back

Green Arrow: Died - Came back.

Hawkman and Hawkgirl: Died and come back several times.

Raven, Donna Troy, Wonder Woman, Hawk and Dove (The first Hawk and second Dove in this case), Lex Luthor, all the Flashes, several members of the Justice Society of America, the core members of the Doom Patrol, Uncle Sam and a whole host of other major and minor heroes and villans have all died and returned.

Not to mention the events of Blackest Night and subsequent Brightest Day has resulted in several heros and villans being returned to life, though their final fate is still unclear.


Didn't Marvel kill of Captain America following the events of 'Civil War' and he's since come back? Plus the members of the X-Men seem to have access to a revolving door to and from the afterlife.

Once sales start to slump again, the dead characters will be quickly resurrected in some 'shock' storyline.

Oh Gods, it's happening again. The Dork Ages are back. Run, run, run, everyone!
*rolls into fetal position in the corner of the room*

I quit collecting comics becaause it became too unafordable. I was thinking of starting to collect again, but now they just wiped all the history away and started over with redos. Gone was the Fantastic 4, they were like issue 500s then they started in the 1's again, back again in the 500's and now I have no idea. This also happened to other issues as well but I can't be bothered to recall what they were. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if the kept the same history timeline, but when you reset the entire univers all over again, then anyone can die and just come back to life.

I guess the comic industry thinks its' like a video game. If you die, you get to load up a save and start all over again. The Human Torch will come back alive soon enough. As everyone said before, nobody stays dead in comic books.

Well maybe the second Robin. I don't know if he came back from the dead or not. I am sure someone resurected him withing the 20 years I quit collecting comics.

Every single member of the Fantastic Four has already died at least once. I laughed for a few minutes when I heard the "big" announcement that soon a member will "die".


Uh, yeah, Jason Todd, second Robin, second Red Hood. Then trying to be Batman while Bruce was "dead" (Who did DC think they were kidding? Please. Even being killed by Darkseid is not possible for him.), losing to Grayson, rivalry, Red Hood becoming a counter-Bat... You get the idea.

I'd be okay with them killing the Fantastic Four. And most of the characters in their other comics too.

I mean come on, it's 2011, we've had these characters for how long exactly? We need new heros for a new time.

This is why the rebooted the franchise. I think Marvel just did this, and DC did it twice, maybe 3 times now? So instead of heros for a new time, they recyle everything for the new times. Pretty sad, they can't do anything new anymore.

Yup. Iron Man fits pretty well with our times if you think about it, but the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man just don't.

Brand recognition, that's the name of the game. They did give us new heroes for the new time, as I think the Ultimate Marvel series' are quite good at what they do - take old heroes, freshen them up for a new century, and start from the beginning again. The Ultimate versions of X-Men and the Avengers are among my favourite recently created comics.
But then they have to do something like Ultimatum... :meh:

Comic book characters die and come back so often Dragon Ball Z finds it a little obnoxious. I don't see how this announcement does anything but make it even MORE predictable by telling us it's going to happen.

Well it is hard to create more new characters these days , then again I am not knowledgable about comics and I only know the classic super heros. I think the comic industry needs a new hero to get in public figure .

Thing is, if a new hero gets popular, they start selling them out. Happened to Spidey, happened to Wolverine, and right now it's happening to beloved 'Pool. Business, you have to love it. :meh:

Huh, I didn't know that the Torch was extinguished, in a manner of speaking.

I dunno, I guess this is alright. They are just coming back anyways... maybe if Marvel actually kills some of them for good, I would be okay with it. A culling of the herd, if you will (like M-Day, but more serious).

Meh, the only comics i read are Garfield and Donald Duck. No one ever dies there :hehe:

I remember reading some people think garfield was starving to death and halucinating everything...

I wouldn't mind some perma-deaths, as long as they introduce some new characters instead of just resurrecting old ones. It's at the point where to be a comic book character means you have resurrection based immortality.