Monday, June 26, 2006

Sacrificial offerings to the god of crossovers

Hey, Marvel and DC, there's something you need to know. There is no god of crossovers and you don't have to sacrifice your firstborn to them in order to make your event comics succeed.

When I say "firstborn" here, I actually mean the second or third string characters that you don't care about, and yet somehow think that killing them off will be a big deal. No, killing off the ones you do care about would be a big deal. Killing the easy targets you always go for just upsets the few fans who liked them and has no effect on the rest of the audience because they didn't care either, and the shock value of killing off any hero has long since lost any power because you keep doing it.

See, this is the big secret that you have somehow failed to grasp in all your history: offing Namorita or Pantha will not make your event comic more successful or more memorable. Only good writing will do that.



Rest in peace, Little Avenging Daughter. 1971 - 2006

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

They killed Namorita? I had begun to think about taking a look at "Civil War" as some reports were quite positive. Won't now. Will look at old comics by Bill Everett instead...

CalvinPitt said...

You know, I'm still trying to figure out how Nitro was conscious enough to blow up after she slammed into a bus hard enough to leave a Volkswagon-sized dent in it.

It really does drive me nuts that she survived fighting Terrax - twice! - only to get killed by a lamewad like that.

Like David M., I'm gonna go read some older comics - the early New Warriors stuff.

Anonymous said...

Well said! You are my hero.

It's especially dead-on considering, of all those killed in Infinite Crisis, Johns protested Nightwing being planned to die.

Marc Burkhardt said...

Namorita always struck me as a cool character and even dated Johnny Storm for a time.

I was bothered that:

a. she took time out for make-up before taking on a super-villain.

b. Got blown up by Nitro when, as calvinpitt said, she had survived worse before.

Can't these characters at least be portrayed more truthfully to past incarnations before they're offed?

Oh, yeah. Stuff like that interferes with "good" storytelling.-

Anonymous said...

The Kree Captain Marvel's cancer was a result of being exposed to nerve gas in a battle with Nitro.

Anonymous said...

What bothers me about the death of the New Warriors is that again, the heroes fail to save anyone (see also Coast City, Bludhaven, Genosha, the Savage Land, Orando, et al) and more annoyingly, this was the opening of DC's Kingdom Come. Ill-advised modern super-hero slugfest resulting in a huge explosion, killing thousands, because the youngsters involved Did Not Understand What Was At Stake... Of course, Kingdom Come itself was just Marvel's Squadron Supreme rewrit larger. SS was a plagaristic "homage" to DC's Jusstice League, if the JLA were self-involved, unethical screw-ups who would "modify the behavior" of foes who drew blood against them. Wait, that is the JLA of "Identity Crisis" right? Well, congratulations to the late Mr. Gruenwald. The decades have made quite the prognosticator of you...
Killing Bill Everett's Namorita is merely collateral damage when you're compounding crimes against imaginative writing on this scale.