Comics / Spotlight / Progressive Panels

Death and Rebirth: Superhero Style

By Andy Frisk
November 9, 2011 - 19:41

Anyone who has had a parent, spouse, close friend, comrade in arms, or any one who was beloved pass away knows the pain and anguish that can accompany such an event. Death is part of life though, and we all must face losing someone close to us at one point or another. Seeking comfort in one’s friends and loved ones is the best way to deal with, and eventually overcome, the grief and come to grips with one’s own mortality in a healthy and profound way. Much of the greatest literature and fiction written by the greatest authors deals with death. In the works of classic authors from Edgar Allan Poe to William Shakespeare to John Milton, death and humanity’s reaction to and relationship with this inevitable aspect of our nature, has served as a profound and powerful theme. Obviously, mainstream superhero comic books aren’t always quantifiable as great art or literature, but as I’ve shown often times here in this column at The Bin, many superhero comic books, namely the ones written by the best writers, often are literary in theme and scope. Several superhero comic books take on some pretty relevant political, social, and literary themes. Most superhero comic books deal with one of the most important and relevant themes, that of death, almost cavalierly though. Superheroes die, get reborn, die again, and often get reborn again. One current DC Comics’ New 52 comics even focuses entirely on a character who dies several times an issue, and is reborn each time with a new superpower (Resurrection Man), all the while spending his time in between deaths and resurrections fighting angels, demons, and two well endowed femme fatales that can’t die. While Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, as well as Paul Cornell, George Perez, Grant Morrison, and many others obviously do not attempt to stake a claim to being the greatest prose writers of all time (although some on that list arguably approach the aforementioned prose writers’ glory), what they and others write in the pages of superhero comics is often, and often unfortunately, more widely read than Paradise Lost or The Fall of The House of Usher. While I obviously don’t have the answer as to whether the cavalier treatment of death in superhero comics is an overall a good or bad thing, it is a question that needs asking, and exploring.

Yeah, let me try to drown myself in order to get a glimpse of my loser boyfriend...

Let’s take a step back from superhero comics for a second and look at how more widely viewed pop culture products, like movies and popular prose fiction, treats the subject of death. Often, the most widely acclaimed (in turns of money not necessarily artistic value) of the like treat the subject of death and, even more frighteningly, a casual disregard for life almost as if they were jokes. I remember, as an old example, being completely turned off from desiring to finish watching Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1990 action/sci-fi flick Total Recall because Arnold’s character so easily used humans and innocent bystanders as human shields, and murdered people incredibly easily and without a second thought. Granted, one can try to make some kind of argument about the film purposely being over the top in order to make some sort of satirical statement on humanity’s disregard for humanity etc, but it was just disgusting to me. In the horrible Twilight series of books and films (a favorite whipping boy of mine in my writing), the heroine of the story, Bella, who is in love with a dead teenager, attempts suicide so that she can catch a glimpse of her beloved while he is hiding from her in order to try to keep her safe. Wow, talk about your emotionally unhealthy and co-dependent relationship. This “heroine” is admired by millions of tween girls (and in some cases their pathetic moms). A violent, possessive, and death fixated relationship really isn’t something that young girls should be aspiring to. Not every girl who jumps off a cliff is going to have a shirtless werewolf dive in after her in order to save her. While the two examples aren’t necessarily representative of how pop culture in general deals with death, they are both highly lucrative examples of pop art that deals with the subject specifically. There is a very casual disregard for what many believe might be our only trip around this old world.



In superhero comics, death is often used as a sales gimmick used to garner extra sales dollars through a sensationalizing of a character’s death, which is almost never permanent or profound. One glaring exception that I can think of was Jean Grey’s original death back in the pages of Uncanny X-Men during the “Dark Phoenix Saga.” (Although, this was already technically Jean’s believed “2nd death.” She died once saving the X-Men by piloting their aircraft/spacecraft into a crash landing that saved the team, but during which she had to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to do so.) Jean committed suicide, sacrificing herself in order to save her teammates. Her death was seemingly permanent for about seven years of X-Men story publications, and had a profound and deeply moving impact on several characters. At this point in Jean Grey’s now long termed career of dying and being reborn, her death was a poignantly and intelligently handled development that shook her teammates, friends, and lovers to the core, and was dealt with within the pages of Uncanny X-Men with dignity and thought. Of course, once she came back to life, and died again, then came back again, and once again died, the original tale of her ultimate sacrifice sadly became the fodder for the first in a long line of "dead again" jokes surrounding Jean.



The next major superhero death to rock the comic book world, and be treated somewhat dignifiedly, was Superman’s death during the “Doomsday” saga. Superman, like Jean Grey, made the ultimate sacrifice by laying down his life in order to save the world from the murderous assault of the alien berserker dubbed Doomsday. The heartfelt and profound, “World Without a Superman” that followed was well written and executed by DC Comics’ then Superman assigned writing staff. Of course, Superman, a character much more renown and visible than Jean Grey, could not stay dead. He returned shortly thereafter to the land of the living, but the story of his death and return (now foolishly wiped out by the “soft rebooted” disaster that is the DCnU Superman), was a reverent and thoughtful look at what the loss of a great man, and the consequences of selfless action are, even when one makes a conscious choice to engage in such actions and subsequently be truly considered a hero.



Superhero death and rebirth gimmicks quickly went further downhill after Superman’s death. Both Captain America/Steve Rogers and Batman/Bruce Wayne “died” and while Roger’s death lead to some great storytelling starring the no-longer dead Bucky Barnes, Cap’s sidekick during WWII who apparently died saving the US from the final Nazi super weapon along with Rogers, only to be captured, brainwashed, and used as a Soviet operative under the name of Winter Soldier (and who was the owner of perhaps the most profound and longest lived death in comic book history until this point). Roger’s death was also packed with some brilliant, and with what should have been permanent, allegorical meaning on the changes that America is undergoing. Sadly though, Rogers returned to the pages of Captain America comic books just in time to coincide with his big screen debut, only to witness the death, yet again, of his former partner Bucky. (Who is now revealed to have faked his death so he could go back to being a good version of the Winter Soldier). Batman/Bruce Wayne’s death had no sense of profundity to it, and completely reeked of sales gimmick. In fact, Wayne suffered two different deaths at the same time that even Morrison’s usually brilliant writing did a poor job of reconciling. Dick Grayson, the first Robin, took over as Batman for a while, and even retained the role when Bruce came back, but all this was quickly undone by the events of Flashpoint and the onset of the New 52’s DCnU. Looking back upon the Batman R.I.P. storyline, there really is nothing that resonates as profound or even entertaining about it. It was a cavalier treatment of a serious theme, that of the death of a loved one, that really did nothing to immortalize or even tell a profound or even good story about the characters involved.



Fictions and stories help us deal and learn about and how to deal with real life tragedies and events. As evidenced by the most recent superhero “deaths,” what of benefit is the medium of superhero comics, a medium that can be quite literary and profound when written well, telling its readers about the relevance of death in the world of their characters? If these deaths are a sales gimmick, then what are the lives of these heroes? 

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12