Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site noao.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!princeton!astrovax!noao!parks
From: parks@noao.UUCP (Jay Parks)
Newsgroups: net.comics
Subject: no danger / no drama
Message-ID: <423@carina.noao.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Jul-85 19:26:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: carina.423
Posted: Tue Jul  9 19:26:37 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Jul-85 08:19:21 EDT
Organization: Natl. Optical Astronomy Observatories, Tucson, AZ USA
Lines: 71

Comics will never be dramatic.  Mainstream comics, that is.  Partly this
realization was spurred by the comics journal article on "Dark Clairmont",
partly it is my own observation.

     Mainstreams *can* be humorous, tragic (though rarely), and
romantic, but they will never go beyond a sort of cheap melodrama.  The
problem is, there is no danger in mainstreams.  What does a character
have to fear?  In real life, there is maiming, madness, disease, old age, 
and death.  Comics seem to have the impression that things like that
are unpleasant topics and they refuse to deal with them.  These 
subjects are avoided.  Sgt.  Fury wears an eyepatch, sure, but he never 
actually lost an eye.  He went off-stage, and returned later with a dashing 
looking patch.  What character has even been permanently scarred by one of 
his life and death battles?  And let's not even think about old age.  
Admittedly, Aunt May is old.  She always was, always will be.  She never 
*got* old, though, she always was old.

     The only danger that a comic character really has to worry about is
death.  Not only do other dangers hold no threat, they are ignored in
the mainstream comic universe (OK, Captain Marvel died of cancer, but
that was in a special "look! we can be realistic, too" issue).  The only
danger that is acknowledged is death.  Now, for a minor trivia question:
name a major mainstream comic character that irrevocably died.  I am
defining "death" to be:  The character never secretly survived, was never 
cloned, didn't have an alien shape-changer take his place, won't have 
his spirit brought back, and wasn't regenerated from beyond the grave. 
He won't have adventures in the afterlife, and will never communicate to
either the living or the readers.  He is DEAD AND GONE (just like in
real life).  I'm not counting the earlier mentioned Capt. Marvel.  "The
Death of Captain Marvel" was advertised for so many years that even big
Jim Shooter would probably blanch at reviving old Mar-Vell.

     Villains cannot die.  The hero's code doesn't permit killing,
and even when it does (Wolverine) a good villain is hard to keep dead.
Remember the goons old Wolvie killed in the basement of the Hellfire
club?  They were brought back later with bionic parts.  Give me a break!
Villains are invulnerable.

     Heroes are even more invulnerable.  They just can't be killed.
They will always escape, have the Starjammers arrive in time, be saved
by the ancient one, etc.

     So.  What are we left with?  There is NO DANGER.  This is not
necessarily bad, in the 30's all the cheap serials did this (the hero
would fall off the cliff and die.  Next episode, it would turn out that
he had been saved at the last second.)  The problem is that this is not
dramatic writing -- it is melodrama.  

     The point behind all this raving is that there IS hope for serious
comic writing.  It isn't in the mainstreams, though, it's in the
independents.  The only acceptable brought-back-from-the-dead scene I
have ever liked was in Elfquest.  When One-eye was (almost) brought
back, I could have believed it.  From the very first, we were told that
these people were not human.  The rules they lived by were not the same
as those governing human beings -- they lived in an immortal, magical
world.

     The next closest scene was CAMELOT 3000, when Guenivere was dying
and Lance brought her back by the power of his faith.

     Both of those scenes showed us a lot about the characters and the
world they lived in.  The deaths were NOT arranged for a quick thrill, or
to give a catchy ending.

     If you disagree, I would be glad to hear examples of a good dramatic 
scene in the mainstreams.

                                     Jay Parks
             (decvax!hao!ihnp4!seismo)!noao!parks  :uucp

P.S.  The irrevocably dead character was Spider Man's Uncle Ben.