By
Jason Mott
September 3, 2007 - 12:02
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As I write this, the room is dark, the music low and somber, a waning candle flickers on the mantle above the fireplace and somewhere, somewhere in this young, expanding universe…the Silver Surfer is still dead.
The death of a superhero is nothing new. If Superman, the father of the entire superhero genre of comics, can be killed, then anyone can find themselves on the editor-in-chief’s chopping block. Over the years, like so many other fans, I’ve sat back and watched the death (and usual rebirth) of dozens of major and minor characters with varying degrees of interest and sympathy. When the Man of Steel shuffled loose this mortal coil, I took a moment to take stock of the industry. I sat and feared for all of my comic book heroes because if the pencil pushers could bemoan their disappointing financial bottom lines and finally manage to do what Lex Luthor and the entire Legion of Doom had been failing at for decades, then wasn’t it just a matter of time before every comic book faced dwindling circulation and publishers pulled the plug on my other favorite heroes?
But then Superman was alive again. A resounding cry went up from fanboys and fair-weather fans alike and, in the face of such a unified front, Superman was catapulted from the jaws of death just as he had been catapulted from a dying planet Krypton. And, afterwards, when other heroes walked proudly into the arms of the grim reaper, I was always hopeful and confident that, eventually, they would return with a new team of writers, artists and advertisers and regain their former glory.
And then they killed the Silver Surfer.
I was eight years old, spending another summer visiting my aunt, working at her fish market covered in the smothering stench of flounder and perch. I didn’t really know what a comic book was then. Sure, I knew who Superman and Spider-man were as much as any other kid, but all I knew of them came from Saturday morning cartoons, lunch boxes and colorful, hero-emblazoned underwear. Then, as I languished in that smelly, cold fish market waiting for my father to arrive and liberate me from what was a slow, agonizing lesson in torture, I found a ratty, old issue of the Silver Surfer and, from that point on, things were very, very different.
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It turned out my older cousin, who had left the nest the year before, was an avid Silver Surfer fan. When I asked my aunt about the small, tattered book with the thin, gleaming man on the cover, she led me to my cousin’s modest comic book collection comprised of dozens of issues of the Surfer, a few issues the Incredible Hulk, as well as the ever popular X-Men. Twenty one years later, comic books are a cornerstone of my life: my own comic book collection is several times larger than anything my cousin knew. As an aspiring writer, I’ve managed to publish comic-book-themed poems in various literary journals. And now I’m even in the process of trying to shop around a script of my own. And it’s not going too far to say that it’s all thanks to the Silver Surfer.
But now he’s dead and I’m partly to blame.
As I watched the death of the Surfer (Silver Surfer: Requiem 1-4) I began to realize how long it’s been since I actually read an issue of Silver Surfer. Years. I shuffled through my extensive collection of several hundred comics and only found four Surfer books. Is it any wonder Marvel pulled the plug? The simple fact is, the Surfer hasn’t been in the top tier of Marvel sales for ages. With all the flash and action of various titles like X-Men, Avengers and Incredible Hulk, it seems that no one cared much for space adventures with the noble Norrin Radd. But it wasn’t really my fault, was it? Isn’t Norrin’s blood on Marvel’s hands? Isn’t it their responsibility to keep the writing and artwork of their titles up to par so that they keep readers like me reading and, therefore, the heroes alive?
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Or maybe I should have been writing letters demanding that Marvel beef up the Surfer. Maybe I should have hung in there and kept reading the Surfer titles no matter how bad the writing or artwork became. Maybe I failed the hero who, ever since that day when I was eight years old, has never failed me. Who knows?
Either way, the Silver Surfer is still dead and the Marvel Universe is a little less beautiful, possessed of a little less imagination and nobility. In fact, my own universe is a little darker as I sit and reflect and wonder to myself: was it my fault? Did I help kill the Surfer? Will Marvel really bring him back like so many other dead heroes or is there just not enough profit in it? Is it really this serious? He’s just another comic book superhero, right?
No. He isn’t just another superhero. He was my first hero. And we never forget our first. We never forget the weight of the book in our hands that first time, the feel of the pages beneath our fingers, the way we were suddenly lifted away from the mundane, unfair, downright cruel, or simply less than beautiful moments of our childhood and allowed to visit that realm of the magical, the superior, the heroic…the world of the superhero comic book.
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But I’m a grown man now. And I know how the industry works. If enough fans raise enough of a ruckus, the Surfer will rise from the grave with new writers, new artists, but the same spirit and all will be right with my world. But that doesn’t mean I can’t take a moment to reflect, a moment to remember and imagine, a moment to be that eight year old boy aching for escape…and finding it.
Even in death, the Surfer lives. Like all great heroes.
R.I.P. Norrin Radd: 1966 – 2007 (tentative)
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