An interview with the killer
Marvel Editor-in-Chief, Joe Quesada, is interviewed here along with Stan Lee about the death of Captain America.
Cap’s co-creator, Joe Simon, is still among us. He’s been quoted as saying that the death is a shame, because “we need him now more than ever.” Given that Mr. Simon lived through World War I, World II, the Cold War, McCarthyism, the Depression, and so many other assorted horrors and atrocities of the 20th century, this is indeed a troubling statement.
March 11th, 2007 at 9:58 am
The problem I have with the increasingly frequent killing of superheroes, as well as putting them through life-altering events, is that it could turn comics into soap operas. Once readers come to expect a steady stream of extreme happenings, it would be hard to regulate them. The situation would be like afternoon TV dramas in which, over the years, the same couple has been married and divorced three times. Or the same character has been ‘killed’ twice and then turned up alive both times.
I hope that, instead of that scenario, these changes will be used to enrich the storylines, and will be managed so that they don’t become a self-parody. We shall see.
March 14th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
The soap-operatic treatment dates back to the mid-60’s, courtesy of Stan Lee, as you’ve noted before (in fanzines of the late 70’s, as I recall).
I think the newer wave is attributable to two factors:
1. A desire to contemporize the characters, as happened during the Silver Age of comics, and the Bronze Age, and various ages since.
2. I definitely feel a shift in the zeitgeist at the moment, and comics, as part of the culture, are reflecting this shift.