As for superhero deaths, I think for me part of why they don’t have much impact, anymore, is that they’re too often a substitute for drama. When characters were killed off less often there was also more build-up because the writer didn’t get to do this kind of dramatic event often… and a return from the dead similarly had big repercussions.

The one title I can think of that does death well is Runaways, which has had at least two deaths and one return and in each case the moment managed to be shocking.

To make progress, you’d have to show you were genuinely committed to telling a good story (instead of merely using that as a tagline) by adhering to the rule that stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Marvel only exists to develop properties for other, more lucrative media and has no intentions of telling good stories. Good stories have finales.

Where do you go in the context of Marvel’s current model? Nowhere… none of their cash-cow characters are at risk and everything is predictable.

Charles: “Re superhero resurrections – the returns from the dead are one of the reasons why I’ve developed a ‘meh, it doesn’t matter’ approach to DC/Marvel superheroes and buy less of them. (Which isn’t that bad a deal really, I can get the same ‘itch’ scratched in different comics)”

I agree. A lot of other comic fans either agree or are starting to, which is why I don’t have a very rosy image in mind when I think of Marvel and DC’s future sales.

He was EIC when Morrison stated there were 16 million mutants and would replace humanity in five generations. Presumably this is one of those changed-his-mind deals and he can’t admit it as that would imply the previous stuff he let in, he’s since decided was wrong to let in.

Re superhero resurrections – the returns from the dead are one of the reasons why I’ve developed a “meh, it doesn’t matter” approach to DC/Marvel superheroes and buy less of them. (Which isn’t that bad a deal really, I can get the same “itch” scratched in different comics)

There have been a lot of times in my life where something I believed or believed in. I later as time went on and I learned and changed changed my mind on.

Doing so in business is logical and a way to keep up with the times you live in. Otherwise you become a dinosaur and are soon extinct.

Where the hobgoblins of consistency and “realism” end up intersecting with the superhero genre, the hobgoblins will die a horrible, bloody, nasty death at the end of the genre sword. The genre tropes are too powerful and the contingent of fans who want “dead” to actually mean “dead” is much smaller than the fans who want “dead” to mean “dead” EXCEPT for “insert character Y here, who shouldn’t have ever been killed in the first place because writer X was a jerk/hack/The Devil and killed her/him off stupidly”.

What’s more, it’s pretty clear that the current crop of WRITERS falls more into that latter camp than the former, which makes it far more likely that “back from the dead” stories will get told.

Personally I prefer Grant Morrison’s approach to the whole mess. It’s a superhero comic. Certain tropes in superhero comics are as powerful as the laws of physics are in the real world. You might as well roll with it and explore how the inhabitants of the fictional world deal with living under those laws rather than trying to force the fictional world to try to be exactly like the real one. But then, I tend to think character death is about the laziest form of drama a writer can reach for in a superhero comic, so I’m sure my bias colors that judgment.