Welcome back, everyone! Just a quick reminder of what our goal for each and every Saturday is: Stirring the pot is the act of causing trouble for the sake of your own amusement. So we here at Comic Booked would like to formally invite you to discuss, debate, and start some shit talkin’ about the characters, the creators, and the storylines given to us from the industry we all know and love, hate, and love to hate. So let’s quit wasting time and start the mud (or web) slinging!
This Saturday’s question: Which characters were destroyed by creators who obviously didn’t like them?
Did Brian Michael Bendis really need to kill off Hawkeye, bring him back, kill him again, bring him back again, make him crazy, bring his long-thought-dead wife back when he was in the middle of what might have been a healthy relationship, and then basically make him a worthless character in the period of less than a decade? Was it really necessary for Geoff Johns to kill off so many characters in Infinite Crisis? Did Joe Quesada and J. Michael Straczynski break the one rule of superhero comics (don’t let the bad guy win) with the ending of One More Day, the now infamous Spider-Man story? And how many X-Men writers have proven time after time that they simply hate the character Gambit? Or is it just a coincidence when characters who are most likely someone’s favorite hero or villain are so senselessly and utterly destroyed?
So go forth and debate! But be sure to back up your responses. Don’t be scared. And don’t give up. After all, no one likes a quitter. And you’re not a quitter, are you?
I don't really understand the whole Gambit thing. He's always been a fan favorite, and used to be a writer favorite… then, at the height of his popularity (the whole "trial of gambit" thing), they kick him off the team, bring him back with a weird ghost thing so he can't be normal, depower him, repower him, blind him, have him become "death" and kick him out again, and then bring him back half-deathed up (which was never really resolved). and yet, he's still cool when writers who like him write him.
oh, also, bishop. wtf happened there?
Death in comics is a joke. It has no meaning anymore. I think when and or if a writer does kill off acharacter it should be to change the dynamic. For example, have Dick Grayson become Batman. Have Bucky become Captain America. Or most recently have Otto Octavius become Spider-Man. Death means nothing in comics because they never stay dead. If they would kill characters and they would stay dead I would respect the death 100 fold even if it was my favorite character.
I hate to say it, but I can't think of any writers I'm aware of that had an axe to grind with a character. Granted, it just doesn't register on my radar.
I think this week's issue of Uncanny X-Force is starting to address what the hell happened with Bishop over the last… oh, 3-4 years.
The whole Gambit thing was a hot mess…
Finally. I would also add Banshee to the list of characters that writers obviously hated.
I feel there are a lot of writers out there who really hate certain X-Men or Avengers characters and just want to ruin them instead of not use them. I've always admired the writers who say in interviews that the reason so-and-so wasn't in their run on the team book is because they didn't like them. Why can't all writers just assume that EVERY character is someone's favorite and write them to do the character (and fan) justice or just leave them alone? Sigh…
Glad to see that his own series is pretty much sticking to the basics. Hopefully Marvel will learn before they alienate the rest of their X-Fans by ruining, villifying, or just plain killing off fan-favorites just because they're too lazy or just don't want to write them.