As far as literary and cultural studies go, comics are often overlooked.\u00a0 They\u2019re seen as too childish, too commercial, too commonplace to have any sort of relevance to grand cultural narratives. Now, in recent years that has started to change, but the fact remains that when people think about the \u201cartistic\u201d and the \u201cintellectual,\u201d comics often get the short end of the stick. However, I believe that to omit comics from these sorts of studies is to neglect a subject full of points to make and questions to ask. Comics, and the place they hold in our culture, are unique. They straddle the line between high art and low art, form and content, picture and text. They cross boundaries and borders, bringing people together in support of a diverse cast of heroes and villains. As opposed to a book or a movie, where the plot is self-contained from the very beginning, comics give readers ongoing storylines that continue week to week and month to month. However, what happens when those storylines are broken? What happens when death, the great disruptor, interrupts the stories and fictional lives that millions of people hold so dear?<\/p>\n
For my project, I wanted to look at death in comics, specifically how fans react to it. It\u2019s no secret that dying in a comic isn\u2019t exactly the most lasting of things, with about the same level of severity as a slight fever, with a quicker recovery time to boot. Still, when a fictional character dies, that tends to mean something to people, no matter the medium. However, in a place where characters are killed and resurrected with alarming regularity, does death begin to lose its impact? How do people grieve or mourn when they expect to be seeing the deceased in next month\u2019s issue? What does a para-social relationship look like when it goes both ways? Where does the willing suspension of disbelief enter into all this? These are all questions I was seeking to both pose and answer with my project, Death is Cheap, an online compilation of the lives, deaths, and resurrection of comic book heroes.<\/p>\n
The title of my project comes from the tvtropes page on this very subject, and I felt it fit. I wanted to create something that compared the grieving of both the fictional comic world and our own reality. To that end, I chose multiple heroes from both DC and Marvel, whose deaths (and resurrections) I felt were unique and meaningful enough to have significant impact in both their world and ours. I wrote in-universe tributes and memorials about each hero, immediately following those with comments and thoughts taken from different comic-related message boards, internet forums, and blogs. There is a definite tonal shift, a change from open grieving to a sort of cynical analysis. To be clear, it\u2019s not that people didn\u2019t miss or mourn for the fallen heroes, but rather that they were genre-aware, secure in the knowledge that their idols would eventually return, whether in a few months to a few years.<\/p>\n
One subject I wanted to explore with my project was that of online memorials, of how grieving and mourning sites on the web differ from those in real life. Now, obviously it\u2019s probably a little different when the mourning subject in question is in fact fictional, but there are still many themes that carry over. The article \u201cGravesites and Websites: a Comparison of Memorialization,\u201d by Connor Graham, Michael Arnold, Tamara Kohn, and Martin Gibbs, talks about how \u201ceach and every gravesite has, on one hand, a static, enduring component and, on the other, a dynamic, changing on\u201d ( Graham 49). There is the unchanging tombstone, and the flowers that cycle week to week. However, for \u201cmemorials\u201d of dead comic book characters, this dichotomy is altered. While the posts and tributes are indeed constantly changing, with fans constantly weighing in with their opinions and feelings about the character, the \u201cstatic, enduring\u201d part is, in fact, the comic itself.\u00a0 Even though the character is \u201cdead\u201d, the comic continues to be printed, continues to serve as a lasting memorial to their legacy and impact. The digital forums serve as places where fans can gather to discuss the comics, acting as a sort of permanent wake for the dead character.<\/p>\n
When it comes to online memorials specifically, there is a definite ongoing sense of \u201ccontinuing relationships with the dead\u2026a sense that the dead are receiving messages\u201d (Graham 50). Memorial and tribute sites are, by their very digital nature, constantly changing and updating, always revising and renewing themselves. However, the key difference in regards to comic books is that the dead are, in fact, receiving messages. Comic writers and artists are known to habit different popular forums, trying to see what is and isn\u2019t working for their fans. If a character is killed off and there is a massive outcry, that character can be brought back. The dead, for these memorials, are very much \u201cactive listeners\u201d, as Graham puts it. To reflect that, I created a space on my site where users could submit characters they felt particularly strongly about, or whose death (and resurrection) they felt had an especially large cultural impact. Digital memorials are not static like their physical counterparts, and I wanted my site to show that.<\/p>\n
Another aspect of comic book fandom I wanted to explore was the para-social aspect, specifically as it relates to the willing suspension of disbelief. \u00a0In their paper \u201cMass Communication and Para-social Interaction,\u201d Donald Horton and Richard Wohl define a para-social relationship as one between a \u201cperformer\u201d and an audience, wherein the audience feels connected to and invested in the performer, despite a lack of any actual contact between the two. Think about the cult of celebrity that is so prevalent in this era. We have entire magazines, TV shows, large portions of the web, all devoted entirely to what famous people are doing, where they are doing it, and who they are doing it with. \u00a0Remember how the world reacted when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie got divorced? People were distraught, crying about how love was dead, how their faith in marriage was shattered. Now, obviously some of that was tongue in cheek, but for many people those feelings were very real. That<\/em> is what para-social interaction refers to, the imagined give and take between celebrities or icons and their fans. As Horton and Wohl put it, \u201cThe more the performer seems to adjust his performance to the supposed response of the audience, the more the audience tends to make the response anticipated. This simulacrum of conversational give and take may be called\u00a0para-social interaction<\/em>\u201d (Horton 215).<\/p>\n It is no great revelation that many people have this relationship with comic book heroes. However, since in this case the \u201cperformers\u201d are fictional, the \u201csimulacrum of conversational give and take\u201d has a much wider range. The audience has the freedom to imagine their heroes in any scenario or situation, can shape them to fit their own personal narrative. While Ryan Gosling can only ever play \u201cRyan Gosling\u201d, Batman can mean many different things to many different people. In this way, comic heroes paradoxically have both much more and much less symbolic meaning than performers in \u201ctraditional\u201d para-social relationships. While they can appeal to a wider range of people with their ability to shift and stretch as the times and customs demand, they also do not have one singular personality, making it harder to find one defining aspect. It\u2019s an interesting question. Is it better to be a monolith, powerful yet inflexible? Or is it better to be amorphous, adaptable yet thin and diluted? There\u2019s no \u201ccorrect\u201d answer, but it does raise some interesting questions about the nature of fictional para-social relationships.<\/p>\n Another way comic-based para-social relationships are different is that, rather uniquely, the relationship actually goes two ways. Typically, a para-social interaction is \u201cone-sided, nondialectical, controlled by the performer, and not susceptible of mutual development (Horton 215). However, comic heroes need their fans, in a very real and literal sense. After all, if nobody reads or buys the books, then the character dies the only true death that can be found in comics: cancellation. Comic characters need fans just as much, if not more, than the fans need the characters. Actors and actresses aren\u2019t competing for our attention, they will have it no matter what. \u00a0Yet every dollar we spend on a Superman comic is a dollar we aren\u2019t spending on a Fantastic Four comic.\u00a0 Even in movies and TV shows, which are self-contained with an expected eventual end, the characters (and actors) don\u2019t need our attention in quite the same way. Comics are expected to go on in perpetuity, there\u2019s no anticipated \u201cseries finale.\u201d Indeed, if such a finale does occur in comics, it\u2019s usually not a good thing, meaning the book has been cancelled or the writers fired. When you look through the real-world tributes on the site, notice how many talk about \u201cdropping\u201d the book, or buying a death issue merely as a collector\u2019s item. Money rules determines everything in the comic world, a fact of which readers are often uncomfortably aware.<\/p>\n This brings up my next point, the role of the willing suspension of disbelief. In her article \u201cLarger Than Life: Digital Resurrection and the Re-Enchantment of Society,\u201d Alexandra Sherlock states that \u201cWSOD relies on a tacit understanding and cooperation between the author and the reader, or director and audience. The audience members let down their defenses and skepticism, and the director includes elements of reality in order that the imaginary parts seem more believable\u2014all resulting in the increased enjoyment of the production\u201d (173). We all know that being bitten by a radioactive spider most likely wouldn\u2019t actually give someone spider powers, but isn\u2019t it more fun to pretend it would? WSOD is more present in comics than perhaps any other medium, and requires a constant balancing by the writers to make sure they don\u2019t stray too far in either direction, towards fiction, or towards reality. As a result, comic fans have become accustomed to separating the \u201creality\u201d of comics from the \u201cfun\u201d of comics. However, the issue with WSOD is that, over time, people can build up a tolerance of sorts. Comics are always looking for greater and showier events, flashier and more complex heroes, anything to wow the fans (and get a leg up on their competitors in the process). Sherlock also writes about media consumers\u2019 increased appetite for the spectacle\u201d (174), about how we are always looking for something bigger and better than what came before. \u00a0So, when comic studios realized killing off a major character could be such a \u201cspectacle\u201d, they pounced on the opportunity.<\/p>\n While that worked at first, the fans soon built up their WSOD tolerance, to the point where no any death feels like a marketing ploy or a cash grab, no matter how it moves the plot or motivates characters. Comic deaths are events now, something for people to tweet and blog and post about, to anticipate feverishly before dissecting it in a myriad of ways. Sherlock\u2019s article mentions how participation in online memorials or death rituals is motivated \u201cless by the loss of the individual and more by the sense of social solidarity that generates around their death\u201d (169). We react to comic deaths not just because they may or may not be affecting, but because we know others are reacting as well. We feel involved, part of something greater than ourselves. However, we are only able to react as such because<\/em> of our knowledge that, eventually, things will return to normal. If DC announced that Batman would be dying in a few issues, it would of course be a big deal. Yet the only reason there wouldn\u2019t be a torch and pitchfork mob storming the DC offices is because we know that it is only a matter of time before Bruce Wayne is alive and well again. Comics are an ongoing story, one where the status quo is king. Everything will reset. It has to. \u00a0Clark Kent will always be Superman, Peter Parker will always have Mary Jane, no matter what the comics might actually say. Comic characters belong to the readers as much as the writers, are part of the popular imagination as much as they are the intellectual property of the studio. When a superhero dies, that means something to people. What is happening in modern comics is that the constant cycle of death and resurrection is starting to drain those deaths of any meaning at all.<\/p>\n I realize I\u2019ve said a lot here, and rambled on a bit more than I should have. I guess I just wanted to press upon you just how much comics and the worlds they give us mean to people. We forget just how many relationships and interactions we have with fictional creations, how much they can represent. I wanted to explore those relationships in a field that appeals to our innocence and allows our imaginations to run free, yet is also driven and informed by a materialistic culture that demands instant gratification. \u00a0They push us to be the best we can be, yet also shows us how low we can sink. They\u2019re full of laughter and weeping, hope and despair, compassion and cruelty, life and death. In a word: they\u2019re fun<\/em>. We know they aren\u2019t real. But that doesn\u2019t stop us from looking up at the sky, seeing a shadow pass over a cloud, and thinking \u201cCould be a bird. Probably a plane. But maybe, \u00a0just maybe\u2026..\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited<\/p>\n Graham, Connor, Michael Arnold, Tamara Kohn, and Martin R. Gibbs. \u201cGravesites and websites: a comparison of memorialisation.\u201d\u00a0Visual Studies<\/em>\u00a030.1 (2015): 37-53.<\/p>\n Horton, Donald, and R. Richard Wohl. \u201cMass Communication and Para-Social Interaction.\u201d\u00a0Psychiatry<\/em>\u00a019.3 (1956): 215-29.<\/p>\n Sherlock, Alexandra. “Larger Than Life: Digital Resurrection and the Re-Enchantment of Society.”\u00a0The Information Society<\/em>\u00a029.3 (2013): 164-76<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As far as literary and cultural studies go, comics are often overlooked.\u00a0 They\u2019re seen as too childish, too commercial, too commonplace to have any sort of relevance to grand cultural narratives. Now, in recent years that has started to change, but the fact remains that when people think about the \u201cartistic\u201d and the \u201cintellectual,\u201d comics … <\/p>\n