The cast of Marvel and DC might as well be a bunch of superpowered Kennys from South Park. At some point almost all of the Big Two's flagship heroes have been killed off only to be resurrected through some ill-explained means a few issues later. Wolverine's the latest to go through the rigamarole of being sent off to join the choir invisible in order to boost sales now and when he is inevitably raised from the dead. Because permanently burying one of your biggest characters would obviously make no sense! So why do they do so persist in doing it, when there are no consequences to death, unless you're somebody who needs to stay buried for specific reasons (ie Uncle Ben)? It does sell more copies, as the phenomenally popular Death of Superman proved. It also gets comic books some mainstream coverage it might otherwise not have been afforded, as was the case for Supes and is now the same for Wolverine. Outside of providing a cheap shock, a shot in the arm for revenues and some publicity, there is no reason to kill a character. Especially when everybody knows they're going to be revived at some point down the line. Everybody's in on it, readers and publishers alike, and yet we all follow blindly along with it. It means that no death ever really has an effect when it happens, no matter how dramatic it looks in the moment, because we know it's never permanent. There's plenty of other, much more interesting and exciting and just as publicity-driven turns superhero stories can take - increasing diversity, for example, has afforded comic books as many column inches and new readers, whilst being a wholly positive "twist" - and yet comic book death remains the number one most overused hack move. We need to kill it and make sure it never, ever comes back. Especially not as a robot clone.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
