IC #1 - At last they return

[Captain Kal]

To be fair, Julian, Infinite Crisis also has the same sales-dependent motivations behind the supposed 'pointless' deaths.  Notice that none of the vast numbers of characters killed off in either IC #1 or the lead-in miniseries were salesmakers, held their own books, or otherwise were active characters in the DCU?  Much as we might miss Ted Kord, he was not a bright light in the DCU, for example.  The same goes for the Freedom Fighters.

And, just as in the original Crisis, the deaths were more for shock-value than anything else to show 'DC means business' with this supposed real change.

But Crisis did mean real change.  We've seen the evidence both good and -- mostly! -- bad since then.

What's in doubt is if (1) we'll see real change this time, and (2) is that change for the better?

[Captain Kal]

Part of those shock-value deaths may be a need to clean house at DC.

I mean, would many people miss the Supermen of America or Rocket Red?  Despite what the MM fanboys would have us believe, J'Onn hasn't done that well as he's repeatedly failed to hold his own book.  Killing him off is a sales-neutral action like killing off Blue Beetle.

[ShinDangaioh]

I couldn’t agree more, Dakota Smith. The reason so many of the creators that worked in the Silver Age were so extraordinary is because they had such a wide volley of amateur knowledge that came from reading and experience; Elliot Maggin’s interviews show him scattershotting, talking about everything from classic film to the Talmud. There was a story about how E. Nelson Bridwell repeated the “Tiger, Tiger burning bright” poem entirely from memory on command in the DC offices.

Most comic writers today on the other hand, read nothing but comics and watch only action movies. If Chuck Austen has actually read a single novel in his entire life (even one of the common ones everybody’s read that are sold in airports, like CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, DUNE, and JURASSIC PARK) I would be astonished.

Most comic readers don't read anything but comics or watch action movies.  

That's why a lot of this new stuff is considered great by them.

It was obvious that one of the old Green Lantern Corps writers was a fan of E.E.'Doc' Smith's Lensman series.  Arisia, Eddore.  Was there a GL named Boskone or Valeron(This is Skylark, but still...)?

I wonder if the DC writers have even read a single Greek or Norse myth in High School.

[Gangbuster]

Nothing has changed. I say that we lead a takeover of DC, then turn it into a nonprofit organization.

Blue Beetle and the Wizard Shazam, while not salesmakers, are classic characters who should have been left alone. However, the death of Shayera didn't even make sales sense...she's one of the main characters in Justice League Unlimited!!

DC is just going to piss off another generation of comics readers. While I prefer pre-Crisis Superman stories, I wasn't even alive in the 60s and 70s. I grew up with the Justice League that has just been killed...Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Fire and Ice, Maxwell Lord, etc. And while I have no giant attachment to these characters...I'm sure plenty of people do. It's quite similar to the death of Barry Allen, just a new generation enduring it.

[JulianPerez]

Most comic readers don't read anything but comics or watch action movies.

I wonder if the DC writers have even read a single Greek or Norse myth in High School.

Certainly not by Dan Jurgens; his THOR, LORD OF ASGARD actually makes me nostalgic for Electric Superman.

There was a joke around the Marvel offices back in the 1990s that Todd McFarlane had a vocabulary of 200 words, and 100 of them were "f---."

Part of those shock-value deaths may be a need to clean house at DC.

I mean, would many people miss the Supermen of America or Rocket Red? Despite what the MM fanboys would have us believe, J'Onn hasn't done that well as he's repeatedly failed to hold his own book. Killing him off is a sales-neutral action like killing off Blue Beetle.

I for one would miss both those characters. Rocket Red was a great Englehart creation. As for the Supermen of America, they were a concept that had potential to be developed in the hands of a good writer. The Martial Artist that used a bioelectric field to use Martial Arts at a distance was a really trippy concept; their ethnic and racial makeup was refreshing.

This is exactly the sort of reason that I'm generally against character death, even against characters "nobody will miss" (I for one will be up in arms if Marvel ever kills off the Living Pharaoh or Texas Twister or Squirrel Girl). Novelists, who close the book on the world they create when their book is done, can kill off whoever they like because they'll never revisit it. But in serial fiction, character death is doing the one thing you are never supposed to do: close a door.

Just because Writer A, does not see future story potential in a character, does not mean Writer B will not. Eliminating a character is a waste.

[TELLE]

It apparently happens in soaps all the time, without the philisophic justification.  And grossness.

[Captain Kal]

If anyone really, truly wants those characters back, the resurrection-well in comics is still fully functioning.

Seriously, creators routinely come up with ways to bring back killed off characters.  Witness the triumphant returns of Hal Jordan/GL and Kara Zor-El/Supergirl.  Sometimes they don't even bother to explain how they came back, esp. re: villains.

Also, nothing stops them from creating alternate or similar versions of dead characters.  DC used Metallo's brother to make a new Metallo after the original was killed.  Marvel used Thunderbird's brother to replace the killed off original Thunderbird.

Really, you're making too big a deal over this housecleaning.

If these guys stay dead and gone, given the above options that have been used before, that underscores how unusable they are.  The door is always open.

[Captain Kal]

Here's a thought:

If DC is returning the E-2 Superman to continuity, then arguably Superman could be once again the first super-hero, the legendary great grandaddy who started the whole shebang.

Surely, the different Supermen are just different incarnations of the same fundamental character.

In a way, since he and his companions helped 'create' the Post Crisis DCU, they might be considered predating the history of that entire universe.