The new issue of Fantastic Four comes out this week. This is the issue where one of the four dies. Does anyone give a shit? Comic deaths really aren't a big deal because comic characters usually always come back. Maybe the current writers have no plans on bringing the dead back, but a few years down the road, some writer WILL bring the character back. I've heard that Vegas bookies are really taking bets on who will die. I'm going to say it will either be Reed or Johnny, but I'm not placing any money on that.
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Now here is some comic death news that I do care about. I care not only because I read the title, but I think it was really well handled. There was very little hype leading up to it, and had I not seen a spoiler on another site, it truly would have caught me by surprise. Here comes the SPOILER: Cobra Commander is dead. Shot through the head dead. IDW, who publishes G.I. Joe comics, has stated that he really is dead, and that it wasn't a clone or an impostor. This is NOT the Cobra Commander that you remember from the Marvel books from the 80s and 90s. IDW rebooted the series in it's own continuity, so your precious Marvel based CC is still kicking. Even so, I think this is real ballsy on the part of IDW. In every other G.I. Joe show or book, Cobra Commander gets away. He ALWAYS lives to fight another day. Not this time.
Not only is his death good because it's shocking, but the writing leading up to it has been pretty damn good. Chuckles (Yes, Chuckles is in it) killed Cobra Commander after doing HORRIBLE things to gain the Commander's trust to get close enough. Is the issue before the shooting, Chuckles wiped out an entire village because they might have learned of the Cobra base. Yes, Cobra Commander is dead, but the price paid for it has been incredibly high.
The only problem I have with this is the timing. IDW has only been publishing the Joe books for about 2 years now. Cobra Commander hasn't been fleshed out very much, so I would have liked IDW to expand both the character and his role in everything before killing him.
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The last issue of note is that both Wizard and ToyFare magazines are dead. Staff for both have been let go. The plans are for an online magazine covering comic and toy news to launch in February. This is sad news for the employees, as well as the industry in general. Magazines just aren't selling that well. I remember buying my first Wizard magazine at my local grocery store. It was issue #32. I continued to buy every issue for the next 8 years or so. I bought every Toy Fare until about 4 years ago. When I started buying Wizard, I loved it because it provided me with a LOT of knowledge on the comic industry before all of that info was available online. RIP Wizard and ToyFare.
If I had to guess a FF death, I'd call it Johnny. Reed was already dead for a while in the 90s, and Sue was dead for a while a couple of years ago, and I read somewhere that Ben was dead at one point but also he's in The New Avengers so it's unlikely that he'll go. Johnny's the only one who hasn't actually been dead at one point already (far as I know!), so I'm going to call it Johnny. That said, I hope it's Reed. Because honestly, Reed is the most boring of them. No chance it's Ben, I suppose it could be Sue but I don't think they'd kill off one of their few major female characters.
ReplyDeleteCalled it!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=30493
Oh, and here's a quote from Joe Quesada:
ReplyDelete"Whether the [character] comes back or not is really a question that will be answered in time... While I will never discount that a character can come back from the dead because it is one of the staples of comic book story telling . I'm not going to tell you if he will, or when he will and if he does, how he will, but I can assure you that it's going to be very, very interesting and not what anyone expects."
I give it 18-24 months.