From: wyang@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (William D Yang)
Subject: Life and death in the comics... (was Re: superman)
Summary: Commentary on life and death in comic books...
Keywords: pseudodeath reincarnation reanimation ad naseum....
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 18:12:42 GMT

In article <1992Nov23.152158.9440@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca> aaron@space.ualberta.ca writes:

> "It doesn't particularly affect me at all that Superman 'died'.  Whoopee 
> ding.  I've never had faith in comic book character deaths since they 
> brought back Jean Grey, who had one of the best deaths in comic history, 
> and one or two false resurrections.  Or maybe it happened even earlier.  
> Although I must admit that one of the best 'resurrections' was in Alpha 
> Flight, after Guardian died and then came back with an outlandish story of 
> being saved by aliens from Jupiter and replaced with mechanical parts--and 
> then he turned out to be an android built to take his place and betray them 
> from within.  An obvious spoof on all those stupid miraculous saviour 
> stories.

I agree it's a spoof, but you got the details wrong about alpha
flight.  See, Guardian in fact WAS saved by aliens from Jupiter (or
was it Saturn?).  When he came back to earth, he was captured by Omega
Flight, who then built an android to look like him.  When the android
was defeated, Alpha got Guardian back.  THEN, the aliens that saved
Guardian (it turns out, some 70 or some other really outrageous number
of issues later) put in a "takeover" backdoor in the machinery they
used to save Guardian's life, allowing them to take over Guardian's
body.  They (the aliens) were trying to save themselves from the
coming of Galactus, you see... and, in possibly the most blatant
rip-off of Star Trek II's dialogue I've ever seen, Guardian (that is,
the REAL Guardian, the great guy who was supposed to have died saving
his team years ago) saves the Earth and (in a related statement) his
team again by sacrificing himself again, this time probably not dying
either, but being trapped in an alternate, parallel dimension.
 
Personally, just looking at that explanation, I don't see how it could be anything OTHER than a spoof.  But what do I know?  [G]

> "Feel free to disagree with me, though.  But the above probably contains the
> seeds of most of the reasons why I stopped, by and large, reading standard
> comics, and now stick to L&R, Sandman, and a few others.  (Grimjack, when it
> gets back into publication...now he's died three times now, and we'll know he
> will come back, but more because he's doomed to live than because he can
> miraculously survive.)"

That's Grimjack, -IF- it gets back into publication.  Ostrander's
getting busy with his MANY projects at DC (though, if you checked out
the first new Green Lantern Corps (is it a quarterly?), there is a
blatant Grimjack knock-off on the cover drawn by Flint Henry having a
story 'bout him by the talented John Ostrander ;).  

Last I heard, also, DC's having more trouble getting the rights to
start anew publishing Grimjack.  I hear Darkhorse got the rights,
along when they picked up (was it Nexus or Badger?)...  Though, I
admit, this is all third-hand knowledge which could be in error.
 
Actually, speaking of Grimjack and great spoofs of comic-book death
scenes, there was this one Munden's Bar in the back of Grimjack, once,
about a guy who died.  I remember giggling about it at the time... I
think it was called Jeffey or Muncy or some other name like that...
 
  "Digressions away, captain!"
 
	-Bill