SNIKT!: Thinking about Wolverine....

   

It is safe to say that those are as close to my first visuals of Wolverine as I can find on Google images. The first from Marc Silvestri & Dan Green and the second from John Byrne & Terry Austin.  Technically my first Uncanny X-Men issue was #224 but he's not on the cover and image finder was no help getting an interior page of Wolvie from that ish.  The second image is originally from UXM #113 but I first read it as part of the wonderful Classic X-Men series...ish #19 to be exact.  That series enabled me to essentially read the entire history of the All New, All Different team from their Giant Size intro until the Classic issues and my back-issue collection met up somewhere around issue #170.

They were a great way to immerse myself in the history of the team plus, for the first 44 issues, they contained great back-up stories that further fleshed out the characters.  Several of them are quite memorable for me including the Magneto back-up from #19, several great Wolverine back-ups with him & Crawler, him and Jean, a story about what happened between panels when Jean became Phoenix, when Proteus played with Wolverine, not to mention awesome covers & page art like these from John Bolton:

It was a phenomenal introduction as an 8 or 9 year old kid to these characters and while this blog is not intended as a a reflection on that series (the back-ups are largely available in the X-Men:Vignettes collections), it is because of stories like these, and in the way in which he was presented, that I fell in love with Wolverine.

I imagine the hairy little (at least back then) Canadian guy with his adamantium claws was a gateway into comics for many a kid.  He was tough, hell everything about him screamed tough.  He fought tough, talked tough, healed from everything, and HE HAD FREAKIN' CLAWS!  Created by Len Wein and first drawn by Herb Trimpe for an Incredible Hulk story, he immediately demanded my attention more than any other character in that first UXM issue I bought (Longshot and Havok were distant seconds).  I followed him everywhere, into Alpha Flight, into his own solo on-going series (the Claremont/Miller book was before my time so I read it much later), into Marvel Comics Presents, basically if Wolverine was there so was my (dad's) money.  I even remember him freaking out when I asked him to buy me the Wolverine Saga books because they were priced at the insanely high tag of $3.95!!!!

So yeah, suffice it to say that I was a huge fan of Wolverine...I'd dig up my Halloween costume picture if I had the slightest clue where it was located...so it slightly saddens me to realize how little I actually follow the character anymore.  I mean I still put my money down for Wolverine & The X-Men every month, or rather twice a month now, but I haven't purchased a single issue of his solo books in several years.  What happened? 

I suppose I'll show you some of the highlights of a text conversation between me and my friend that put this whole thing in my head in the first place:


ME: I want to write a Wolvie tale but despite reading the guy for 20+ years I find I have nothing original to say

RYAN: That's probably part of the problem...

ME: Aside from Jason Aaron...I can't think of the last good take on Wolvie

RYAN: Last Wolvie run that stick in my head is Millar

ME: Old Man Logan?

RYAN: Yeah

ME: All I think of was how insanely delayed it was because they though McNiven could do a monthly...

RYAN: Or even Enemy of the State

ME: Enemy of the State was good

 

 

RYAN: They need to treat Wolverine like Spidey...make it a flagship title, put one committed writer on it with a long-term plan, like Slott, and rotate a few regular artists

 

2004/5 and 2008/9....comics from eight and four years ago respectively were the last standout Wolverine story arcs either of us could think of...that's not a good thing for someone who is such a flagship character for Marvel and the X-Franchise.  Look at other flagship characters; you have Captain America under Ed Brubaker, Spider-Man under Dan Slott, Daredevil under Bendis/Brubaker/Waid, and Iron Man under Matt Fraction who have had lengthy, critically acclaimed runs.  They have told long form stories with their characters and I find myself unable to think the last time this happened for Wolverine.  I suppose it would be Millar's run from #20-#32 of Volume 2 or perhaps Jason Aaron's extended tryst with Logan across multiple books over the last several years that still continues in Wolvie & The X-Men. Still, as much as I love that book, it's not so much a Wolverine book (despite the title) but more an ensemble piece.

 

Oh wait!

 

 

Daniel Way wrote all 50 issues of this book! That's the longest run I can remember on a Wolverine book since Larry Hama wrote basically every issue save four from 31-118 and yet, despite that four year run, Origins has largely faded from my memory.  Started with lots of promise to unravel the ridiculously convoluted history of Logan and somehow managed to make it even MORE convoluted with the stupid Romulus character's involvement (which now Jeph Loeb has made even worse and I hope everyone who touches a Wolvie book from now until the end of time pretends it never happened).  Also, Way is not the caliber writer in terms of skill and recognition that a Brubaker, Bendis, Fraction, or Aaron are...

 

Anyway, before I move on, let me say that Aaron is responsible for what I think is the best single issue in recent memory of a Wolverine book:

ME: I gave up on Wolvie after its first relaunch...picked it up again after House of M...dropped it again and have DL'd ever since...bought some Weapon X

RYAN: Aaron started out great, got silly towards the end. Bunn started out ok, got lame. I'm gonna DL the new titles, not buying. "The Best There Is" kinda scared me off extra Wolvie titles

ME: Best There Is was awful...and Loeb's arc was shit. I hated that story where his memories got cut up too...was that Bunn?

RYAN: Yeah, think so. Bunn continued the Dr. Rott thing which started w/ Aaron...but I think Bunn screwed with his memories. Don't remember.

ME: It just pissed me off...like he thought "I like Wolvie better when he couldn't remember stuff" so he just found a way to make it happen

I read an interview with Mark Waid where he said "...the next guy who does Daredevil will either drop a safe on everything I did, or go back because he remembers what Ann  Nocenti did with great fondness and he wants to do that". 

It immediately came back to my mind when we were talking about Wolvie and Bunn's decision to erase his memories (I am not even sure if Aaron has incorporated that into his book now that I think about it). For the longest time, right up until post-House of M and this:

Wolverine had little memories of his past prior to the Weapon X program and the adamantium bonding process.  It made for a fun sandbox for various writers to play in because, since he had no concrete origin or history, it was possible for Logan to have been everywhere and seen everything.  He could know anybody, could have had experiences and adventures in every country around the globe, and it was a game that writers milked to death. 

It made for fun stories as Chris Claremont, Larry Hama, Fabian Nicieza, Scott Lobdell, and a slew of others over the years explored the endless possibilities that Wolverine's tabula rasa state provided.  So when the moment happened, when Marvel showed some balls by having Logan remember it all, it closed some doors creatively I imagine.  Essentially writers were now in the game of creating a true history of Wolvie, of cementing his memories as fact, and sorting out the chaos of a history that had been created over the years. 

It all really started with the Origin mini written by Paul Jenkins that predated this memory unlocking.  That story set-up his age, his true name, his love for redheads, and then it was the Origins series by Way that spun out of the returned memories that was supposed to explore this stuff.  Instead it gave us Dakken, Romulus, and a whole lot more confusion if you ask me.


RYAN: I actually think its his character in general that people have trouble with. Too man contradictions over the years. He's a killer...he's not a killer. He's a loyal boyfriend...he's a ladies man. He's a team player...he's a loner. It changes writer by writer. Doesn't help that his very memories keep changing writer to writer

ME: Yeah...it helped when you only had two writers handling him for his first 15 years but now...Remender may be the closest to what I think of

RYAN: Yeah...everyones got diff idea for what he's like, its confusing. Its easier with a character like Spidey
 
ME: To me he is Claremont & Hama's failed samurai...loyal and cares about the kids, the guy who stayed loyal to Mariko until she died

RYAN: I actually really grew to like Morrison's version.

ME: I did too...Its Grant after all

RYAN: Yeah, Just felt...different.

ME: Wolvie stripped down to his "I am 200 yrs old and have seen it all" badass core

RYAN: Yeah, I mean seriously, he's THAT old and he's still trying to "find himself"...

Peter Parker is largely the science guy for whom nothing seems to go right a vast majority of the time (except for his ability to attract the hotties), which is actually why the Big Time arc was so different.  He got the job, the girl, the respect, etc.
Reed Richards is the genius & family man, Tony Stark is the genius playboy industrialist, they all have a very concrete identity and although they may slightly stray from type occasionally, they always come back to form.

Wolverine, on the other hand, is a huge contradiction in almost every aspect of his personality.  As Ryan pointed out, and as the recent X-Force books have played up, he is a killer...for awhile he was the only true killer on the X-teams.  Sure other X-people had killed but part of the struggle of Wolverine's life was his battle with the killer inside, with the berzerker. It's part of where the Claremont ideal of "failed samurai" came into play.

He's a father figure...very evident now with the running of the school and whatnot...but it is a role he has always filled to some degree.  The list of children he has mentored or played big brother/father for is endless...and filled with females.  Kitty Pryde, Rachel Summers, Jubilee, Black Widow, Psylocke, X-23, one of my favorite Uncanny issues of all time is basically all about this:

It's Barry Windsor-Smith art for one, but the story by Claremont is amazing as well.  On the surface it seems like another tale of Wolvie fighting baddies while on the run and at the end of his rope, but the true beauty of it is in his interaction with Katie Power.  Despite being in what was essentially an animal state, he still does everything in his power (no pun) to protect Katie just as she protects him to the best of her ability until he recovers. 

He adopts a daughter in Amiko after finding her in the rubble of a building and Tyger Tiger came into existence because Wolverine chose to save a woman, a complete stranger, who the Reavers mentally violated.  He treated a robot child who tried to blow him up named Elsie Dee (ya know I don't think I go that LCD pun when I was 10) just as a normal human girl. Even in the movies he takes care of Rogue.  Simply put, he is a caretaker for the next generation and that is why the idea of him running the new school is actually perfect.

Wolverine is a loner but yet is friends with the entire Marvel U.  Captain America, Spidey, Thing, Fat Cobra, fn Squirrel Girl (which is a whole other creepy story considering she is likely very young), he has some relationship to any every character you can think of.  He had an extraordinarily close friendship with Nightcrawler and was also quite tight with Colossus. 

RYAN: Felt to me like he wanted an excuse to write Melita out

ME: That too

RYAN: Or like he didn't wanna deal w/ the relationship so he contrives a way around it

ME: Yeah

RYAN: Kinda felt like Aaron botched it with Melita too, which is odd because he created it

ME: Yeah...part of me feels like writers have little clue how to handle his love life

He is a "ladies man" but also one of the most loyal men to have on your side.  His sexual resume is quite lengthy including Mystique, Yukio, Melita, Silver Fox, Domino, Gahck (Savage Land woman with whom he has a forgotten child), someone compiled a list here and here. Yet, despite all of those women, I will always think of these:

 

Mariko Yashida will always be the love of Logan's life.  He tried to be a better man for her, he wanted to marry her of his own free will (as opposed to Viper who he was obligated to marry), he was different...for her.  Jean Grey may be his biggest unrequited love, but Mariko is the one who truly had his heart and I wish some writer would occasionally bring back the idea of Logan visiting her grave every so often (Silver Fox's too).  It may seem like continuity porn but I think it is a way to remind everyone of who Wolvie is, where he came from, and a way to let newer readers into his rich history.

Ultimately I think that's what I am looking for...that sort of powerful story like ish #57 of Volume 1 up there. A story that resonates with me and I still remember vividly fifteen, twenty, thirty years later.  Maybe it's the tenure I have with comics, maybe it's the volume of comics I read now as opposed to back then when it was maybe four books in an entire month, but there are so few stories that linger for me.  It's not just a Wolverine thing, it's a comic book thing in general, I guess I just choose to filter it through the lens of Logan since he who I was a fan of first.

Before Batman, before Brubaker's Captain America, before Johns' Hal Jordan, there was Wolverine. Chris Claremont, Larry Hama, John Byrne, Marc Silvestri, John Buscema, BWS, Romita Jr, just to name a few, they shaped the SHORT and hairy Canadian berserker samurai for me.

Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, the Kubert brothers, Jim Lee, the brought him to another life as I got older.

Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Jason Aaron, Nick Bradshaw, those are the guys who have defined, and are continuing to define, Wolverine for me as an adult, and despite the fact that he looks absolutely nothing like any comic book incarnation of Wolverine that ever existed prior to the movies, Hugh Jackman has done a pretty decent job of bringing him to life on the silver screen.

Wolverine is marketable, and just as well known to the masses as Cap or Spidey or Thor. He deserves greatness in both story and art, not to mention in cinema.  Now with Paul Cornell & Alan Davis on one upcoming book and Frank Cho on the recently released Savage Wolverine perhaps he will get that classic story for the modern audiences.  He deserves his "Winter Soldier", his "Big Time", his article in USA Today announcing something huge to the world. 

Hopefully that day is coming soon and with the movie on the horizon, I certainly wouldn't be surprised.  He is the best in the world at what he does after all....

X-Men: Schism....really? (SPOILERS AHEAD)

 

Pretty bad ass image right there huh?  Make you think Wolverine & Cyclops are going into a serious throwdown with one another doesn't it?  Makes you wonder just what could drive these two men who have essentially been the two pillars of the X-Community since the move to San Francisco & the founding of Utopia.  Cyclops has been the general, leading his army into war, and Wolverine serving as his first in command, carrying out orders with little question, willing to get down and do the dirty work with his secret X-Force cabal. Yes there have been some rough patches in the road, especially with Cyclops' insistence on X-23 & Wolfsbane being a part of the initial incarnation of his X-Force, but for the most part Wolvie acted like a good soldier, taking care of the wetwork in secret.

Obviously that all got blown to hell when X-Force was outed during "Second Coming" but it didn't stop Wolvie from forming Version 2 underneath Cyclops' radar with a different band of mutants. 

So there's groundwork laid out I suppose for the philosophical tensions between Wolverine & Cyclops that are obviously the basis for Schism, shallow though they may be....it's the depths to which these issues are explored that I find shallow, not the issues themselves.

So there's lots of death in X-Force, there are various attempts to salvage the mutant race as depicted in Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine is running off with pretty much every team that exists in the Marvel U, and there's very little done to push a burgeoning issue between the two X-Leaders, certainly nothing that justifies the image I started this blog with.

"Second Coming" comes and goes, Wolverine has some issues with Hope that are weakly, at best, laid out an issue of Uncanny X-Men, shows a minute interest in the Generation Hope cast as a whole, and then we're dumped into the whole "Prelude to Schism" mini.  I may be skipping some beats here as I am doing this primarily from memory, with a little google referencing for accuracy to issue references (turns out that was actually necessary given that I couldn't remember if the Wolvie/Hope story was a UXM or GenHope story), but that's being done with purpose.  I really wanted to see how much of the build-up to "Schism" actually stuck with me in any sort of relevant manner.  

So the "Prelude" books dance around the impending threat that is heading toward Utopia (I guess this little aside takes place between issues 3 & 4? Sometime during issue 4? During GenHope 11?), but certainly presents that threat as the impending death of everything on Utopia, totally unavoidable annihilation of the mutant species, so much so that is requires four different issues from the perspectives of Cyke, Wolvie, Magneto, and Xavier to decide if it's a fight or flight.  Obviously they decide on fight, now it's just a matter of reading the actual "Schism" story to find out just what they're fighting.  Suffice it to say that when the two stories finally converge, "Prelude" really feels misleading...

Alright now it's time for "Schism"...the big event that we discover (can't quite remember if it's before or after the story starts) will ultimately tear the team asunder, shuffle Wolverine & crew off into his very own team book, and hit reset on Uncanny X-Men with a brand new #1 issue!  Honestly getting all that information prior to the conclusion of the story sucked and certainly sucked the life out of "Schism" for me because it boiled the story down to one question: what cause the schism?

It was a moment I kept waiting for throughout the first 3 issues; with the return of Quentin Quire (which should have felt bigger than it was), the baby Hellfire Club, the mutant museum, the rebirth of the Sentinels, none of it feels particularly important.  The moments of tension with Wolverine & Cyclops feel just like that...moments, moments that could lead to a bigger issue down the line yes (maybe if down the line was a year's worth of stories like this), but nothing to justify the huge rift we all know is coming by issue 5.  Wolverine & Cyke have bonded like never before in the years (Days?Weeks?Months? Who knows in comic book land) since Jean's death and none of this seems like a payoff, just more build-up.  As I read the first 3 issues I found myself constantly wondering "Is that it?", I was constantly waiting for something more to happen to give a logical reason for this rift in the relationship of Scott Summers & Logan.  It never came...

Idie killing the Hellfire Club goons to save lives is a terrible thing for a child to have to endure no doubt, and when that kid already thinks they're the Anti-Christ it only exacerbates the situation.  Idie is most certainly a damaged kid,  but what interest have any of the X-Men shown in these kids since they were introduced?  Cyclops & Hope both want them to be soldiers, Wolverine hasn't given a damn, the end.  Where does Wolverine's sudden interest in her mental state come from?  Yeah it's pretty brutal that she had to kill some people, yes it is awful when she later expresses that she thinks it's just part of being an X-Man, but as the whole foundation upon which a philosophical Grand Canyon is built?  Seriously?  I've been reading X-Books as long as I've been reading comics and Idie killing a few people is far from the worst thing that has gone down between Cyke & Wolvie, to say nothing of incidents that deservedly drove wedges between characters (say perhaps Prof. X hiding the existence of a brother from Cyclops).

And while the visual of a Wolvie & Cyke fighting it out while a giant Sentinel looms over Utopia is quite cool, the two of them scrapping after the robot makes landfall is pointedly ridiculous.  This isn't Wolverine & Angel from the added pages of Classic X-Men #1, these are two men who have gone through hell together for years now who are giving their personal grievances import over the impending doom of Uber-Sentinel.

A quick aside RE: Uber-Sentinel....really? Seriously? Go back to "Prelude" and see that this one Sentinel is putting the fear of annihilation into every living mutant on Utopia, including those on the Alpha power levels of Magneto, Xavier, Storm, & Cyclops?  These are the warriors who faced down Dark Phoenix, the entire Shi'ar galaxy, the Legacy Virus, X-Tinction Agenda, Cassandra Nova & her wild Sentinels, Magneto himself...and they are quaking in their boots over a one freakin' Sentinel!  Now go back to "Schism" proper, issue 5, and now that Sentinel is barely an afterthought, dispensed of by the populace of Utopia without anyone really being in danger of a stubbed toe at the hands of Uber-Sentinel much less death.  Wolverine & Cyclops do more damage to each other (Claws through the hand? Damn!)

The total lack of words, captions, sound effect, etc during the majority of this issue is a neat effect, I assume trying to put the emphasis on the violence being perpetrated by two friends upon one another, and it makes sense given that most people wouldn't speak in soliloquies while spitting teeth in blood.  It's just an odd choice given that X-Books tend to be overly expository, especially in combat situations.

So the Wolvie/Cyke knockdown drag-out ends, Uber-Sentinel gets beat, some caption boxes over the top of moving day lay out the aftereffects, and Wolvie's crew heads back to the mansion that has been left in complete rubble since..."Messiah Complex" I believe.  That was probably the coolest moment of the entire "Schism" series for me right there... but man, you'd think these X-people would care enough to at least rebuild their ancestral home even if they haven't been living there recently.  That's just rude...

So when all is said and done...I think it's pretty obvious I'm let down by this entire experience.  I don't think there was enough meat to justify the Scott/Logan rift, I don't think there is any question that the hype-job the "threat" got in "Prelude" was overkill, and I'm really disappointed that this was how the landscape-changing event went down.  "Messiah Complex" and "Second Coming" were far, far better stories that actually conveyed the possibility of a real threat to the mutant race, that actually paid off LEGITIMATELY built-up issues while simultaneously paving the road for future arcs.  Those stories did not feel forced, did not feel thrown together to accomplish some sales-boosting goal (What else would you call two new #1's?), and I would liken them more to "Messiah War" and "Necrosha" as opposed to the other two recent X-Overs.

All in all, I label "Schism" as a fail, not an absolute fail because I found the art in pretty much every issue to be quite good.  I absolutely hate having a different artist on every ish of a book like they did here (and DC did in "Return of Bruce Wayne") but at least it was good art.  Some small issues here and there, but it would just be nit-picky stuff, mostly with Acuna's art.  It also presented some interesting storyline points going forward as far as the overall fallout from "Schism" & its impact on the rest of the X-Family of books (it can't/won't be as simple as these guys hopped on this bus while the rest hopped on the other bus) as well as providing some intriguing concepts in the L'enfant terrible incarnation of the Hellfire Club, the reborn Quentin Quire, and the reemergence of a Sentinel program amongst governments worldwide.  I guess we shall see what Regenesis brings us in the coming months...I just hope the bricks building this new house turn out stronger than the foundation...

Death In Comics - SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FF# 587 SPOILERS CONTAINED WITHIN!!!!

Now that that's out of the way....

Above are a trio of images that have stuck with me throughout my comic book reading life.  Three images that coincide with death and sadness: two from the early 90's, one from this last year.  One of those images is definitely iconic and forever memorable to readers, while the other two are probably less so, but for me are much more powerful in the response they generated. 

Why? 

I think I know why but let's explore death throughout my own personal comic book history and see what pops up.

I think the first time I was faced with the death of a prominent comic character within my world would have been in 1989 when Madelyne Pryor died, willing herself to die, in an attempt to kill Jean Grey as well.  The effect on 10-year old me...sadness.  This was a character I had been reading for the last two years, one I had gotten attached to as she sacrificed herself alongside the X-Men during "Fall of the Mutants", as she became the eyes & ears of the team in Australia, and slowly became seduced by the "dark side" during the build towards "Inferno".  There was a bond, not terribly strong, but a bond to that character that made it rough to see her die, especially as part of a spectacular fall from grace.

As I moved forward in my X-reading years, I also backtracked into the "Classic X-Men" world which...although I already knew the outcome...brought about a great sadness as well by the time I read the historic "Dark Phoenix Saga".  The death of Jean Grey was so powerful that I can only imagine how it felt to those fans reading it as it happened.  This was the ultimate good guy, the heart of the X-Men, being corrupted by absolute power, and finding her only salvation (as well as that of the universe) in her death.  And with it coming only one or two issues after the proposal moment between Jean and Cyclops, it made it all the more heart-wrenching reading it for the first time several years after the fact.

The same was the case for Jason Todd and "A Death In The Family".  By the time I read that landmark story, the "Knights Trilogy" had occured, Dick Grayson had completed his 1st stint as Batman in "Prodigal", & Tim Drake had been established as Robin and was rocking it in his own regular series.  So why, before I even read the story, did I have an emotional connection to Jason Todd?  Because the Bat-Writers of the time (Chuck Dixon & Doug Moench among others) made sure that the readers knew of the impact JT's death had on Bruce.  It was included in flashbacks throughout "Knightfall", the presence of his costume in the cave, his "Zero Hour" appearance in "Robin", the memory of Jason Todd was ever-present to the point that he may as well have been an existing character in each issue.  So by the time I read his death, I felt like I was connected to JT and to this day, Bruce Jones run aside and thanks to Judd Winick, he remains one of my favorite characters.  I don't know how I would have voted though....

Sometimes, no matter how high profile the character, the death can hit you with all the impact of a feather.  "Superman 75" in all its media hyped, death armband packed, black polybagged glory was an amazing hit and sold some 6 MILLION copies (between the original run and reprint), only topped by "X-Men #1 (Vol.2)" (8 Million or so) and that had 5 different covers!!!

Yet, for me, that death was not so impactful.  It was crazy that DC Comics would kill off Superman, and I wasn't a cynical enough reader yet at 13 years of age to dismiss it all just because you knew he'd get brought back sooner rather than later.  I think it's the simple fact that I was not a reader of Superman comics, thusly I had no emotional investment in Clark Kent, Lois Lane, or any of the supporting cast.  Add that into the fact that it wasn't a surprise moment (the internet didn't own the world yet but the news did manage to become public in September in Newsday and other newspapers), but it was a comic that...while holding no emotional value for me...was something historic that EVERYBODY had to read.  Now that I think about it, I actually didn't even buy the issue, a good example of how little it meant to me, just read through it and bought the trade when it came out.  At least that way I had a record of this historic moment.  This was a huge moment in comics, but for me it wasn't even worth dropping a couple bucks to buy the book.

One year later (give or take) it was time for "Uncanny X-Men #303" and the death of Illyana Rasputin...a character that was, quite honestly by that point, window dressing in the larger character arc of her brother Colossus.  As a matter of fact, "UXM 304" came out before #303 so the whole damn story was ruined but that didn't take away from the emotional impact of watching the former Magik succumb to the Legacy Virus.  Here was a little girl who had been force-aged, now with an opportunity to live her life again after returning to her proper age, but fresh off having her parents slaughtered.  Now she's diagnosed with a virus designed to exterminate mutants, and she hadn't even developed powers yet.  The story was tragic as it was, but what really broke my heart reading the story was the character interaction.  The current youth of the X-Team, Jubilee, playing the hard-ass while Shadowcat, the once best-friend of teenage Illyana, cares for the youngster version as if nothing has changed.  The bedtime story reading, the shock as her body fails, and the page where they have to tell Peter what happened all led up to leaving me with tears in my eyes.  This probably would have been the most heartbreaking death in comics for me if it wasn't for "Identity Crisis".

See while "Identity Crisis" does get some critical panning for reasons I will never understand, I find it to be utterly heartwrenching.  It's a story of loss and pain, of betrayal and lies, and ultimately death.  The sad death of Sue Dibny and the utterly painful, shocking, tragic death of Jack Drake (Robin's father).  The build to Jack's death, given the relationship building in Robin's own comic, was probably the most painful thing I have ever experienced in comics. 

Maybe it comes from being someone who almost lost their father at a young age, but even as I write this and look at that panel, I find myself with tears in my eyes.  No bullshit, that's how hard this death hit me.  Not only was I connected with these characters from years of reading them, but the personal element of the way it happened made it so much more painful.  No one dies from battling a raging alien super-villain or being shot by lasers on the Moon, but people die everyday from gunshots.  And the utter despair from Tim, his right foot in the blood, Bruce so uncharacteristically holding him...all those little touches add up to the most painful moment of my life as a comic book reader.  I didn't read this, I experienced this.

The next time I felt that, though definitely not with the same level of intensity, was during "Second Coming" when Nightcrawler sacrificed himself to save the life of the mutant messiah Hope.  Here was a character that I had read since the very beginning of my career as a comic book reader, and now he was dead.  Noble and heroic as it was, he was dead.  And I cried, not hard, not like I did with "Identity Crisis" but certainly more than I expected to as it became increasingly obvious that Elf was soon to be shuffling the mortal coil.  This was a character I suffered through a crisis of faith alongside (his not mine, no worries there), went through devastating injuries with, saw the evolution of the character from supporting cast to team leader to bedrock of the team.  His trials and tribulations have been been a big part of my interest in X-Men & Excalibur (although let's forget the whole Azazel demon daddy thing...why "X-Men: First Class: The Movie" is using that character is beyond me and a story for another time), and his friendship with Wolverine is something I have cherished.  Yet it was the type of death perfect for 'Crawler's character as it represented the culmination of his faith in what Hope represented, and as it appears now, his faith was well placed.  Do I think 'Crawler will be back?  Probably in some fashion, but that doesn't make the storyline impact of his sacrifice any less spectacular nor does it take away from the impact his death had on me as a fan.  He is already missed...

Now, this brings me to the whole SPOILER ALERT that kicked off this little piece: "Fantastic Four #587" and the death of Johnny Storm.  This, for me, was like the death of Superman but even more so.  Superman is, at the very least, a character deeply entrenched in our cultural lexicon.  He is Americana in so many ways and as such, the impact of his death was a little more...felt....than that of Johnny Storm.  If I was disconnected from Superman, than I am light years removed from the world of the Fantastic Four.  In fact, the only FF issues I ever bought were the "Heroes Reborn" issues as well as the first 3 "Heroes Return" issues that followed.  I did purchase "Books of Doom", but that's a Dr. Doom story and even that was only on persistent recommendation.  But despite this total disconnect, I read the most recent FF issue to see just who died (managing to avoid spoilers in the process), and when it was done I said to myself, "Okay that's done".  I may as well have read the phone book for all the emotional impact it had on me.  Not because it was badly written, but because I have no context and no ties to these people.  In fact, the most intriguing thing in the book for me was Leech because I've been wondering what happened to him for quite some time.  I dig Jonathan Hickman's writing for the most part, and I do find myself interested in perusing his entire FF run to see what brought it to this point, so I suppose that's the best case scenario for a series I didn't have interest in.  Perhaps that will generate the emotional investment, but it won't be like the decades of connection I had with Nightcrawler.  But then again, I could find the same love for the characters that I found for Jean Grey & 'Crawler in reading "Classic X-Men".

So there's a little run through my life of....errrrr....death in comics.  And what's the one thing that connects the big moments: the connection.  I doubt that's something ground-breaking, a huge revelation, or a "holy shit" moment but that's my big idea.  The history between the reader and the subject creates one bond, if a story has an emotional resonance that's another bond, and if the writer can hit a truly personal connection that's the strongest bond I believe.  That's the "Jack Drake" moment so to speak, and that's the moment that can elevate a comic book death from "just another one" to "a historical one".

Before I go, let me quickly mention two seperate things that can ruin deaths: retconning and the internet!  With the first I'll just use Magneto as an example.  He had to two great deaths that I can think of; the first being "X-Men #3 Vol. 2" and the second being "New X-Men 150".  Each one was a great, appropriate death in my opinion, yet rendered pointless by retconning.  Resurrection isn't bad, but when it's done in such crappy fashion, it ruins the whole thing.

The second ruiner, the internet, is the place for everyone to find out anything sometimes before it even happens.  Look at the last FF issue where Marvel put it out early to try and counteract internet spoilers, but the internet just jumped it up a day anyway.  So here I am avoiding the internet in order for the purpose of avoiding spoilers, and Howard Stern spills the beans in such an off-handed fashion I didn't even realize he said it at first.  It's damn near impossible to avoid spoilers in this day & age, and that sort of thing can certainly ruin the impact of death in comics.

Neither of those things are something that are going to change anytime...well ever really...so we must suck it up and deal.  It amazes me though how strong an impact something like a comic can have on the reader.  Like a novel, a movie, or a TV show, comic books can linger just the same.