Battling Death: The true villain of the American Comic Book

The way we fictionalize death is an extension of our thoughts on death. The attitude of death in our entertainment mediums reflect a snapshot in time of how out society and culture deals with death at that time, and the medium which can bring it to the mass market the fastest are comic books. Movies, novels, and most television shows can take months or even years to make it to the public eye. Comic books exist on a month-to-month basis, printed often not long after originally conceived, and thus give an image to the views on death socially and culturally at that point in time. They can also be a window into our feelings on death and on tragedies that happen and provide insight into our collective unconscious at the time. Because they can be produced so quickly, comics can often be produced in a time when feelings regarding an event are still raw and when the writer and we the reader have not had the opportunity to digest exactly how we feel about them. Comics can form a mirror for how society feels at a time: dismayed, horrified, or even vengeful: but it is a dark mirror, distorted by the fun-house nature and fun-house physics of comic books, making it hard to interpret.

The genesis of how comics deal with death started with the beginning of superhero comics themselves; during World War II. While many comic-book superheroes participated in the War (notably Captain America and Superman), the grim realities of battle were often spared. Even War-centric comics rarely featured much bloodshed as they were seen as material for children. Not only was this often used as propaganda for the ongoing nature of the war (with covers such as Action Comics #58, March 1943, proclaiming that you could "Slap a Jap" by buying War Bonds) but also sanitizing the reality of the war for a younger generation. This "protective" nature of the way death was dealt with in comics would continue through the decline of superhero comics in 1954 and even through to the end of the 1960s. Up until 1954 death in comics was common and often very gruesome, with some of the most popular titles being published by EC Comics that included Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, and The Vault of Horror. In these stories death was a common theme and characters were typically non-recurring, making for Twilight Zone-style anthology vignettes. Deaths during this time often carried with them the theme of poetic justice, with a cruel or malicious person receiving their comeuppance at the end of the tale, thus serving as cautionary tales in the same vein as fairy tales. One example was a man cruel to his wife who had an interest in taxidermy who ended up stuffed himself after killing her favorite cat. Stories at this time focussed on feelings of retribution with a strong influence from an eye-for-an-eye style attitude that was prevalent in World War II - era America. That all changed in 1954 when, under pressure from psychiatrist Fredrick Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent, a strict code was placed on comics and the manner in which they were produced. Some of the rules of law at the time in comics were that "good shall always triumph over evil," a rule which all but prevented the death of any main character and eliminated the horror comics genre altogether (along with code citations outlawing zombies, werewolves, vampires, and the use of the words "horror," "terror," or "crime" on the covers of comics). This shift almost destroyed EC Comics, with its only remaining publication, MAD Magazine (a humor magazine) being the only title to have survived to this day. The vacuum left by horror comics were quickly filled by Western comics, though their gunplay had to be severely downplayed due to similar restrictions under the Comics Code, and eventually led to the resurgence of superhero comics in the early 1960s. This began a tightly controlled period of comic book history that lasted well into the early 21st Century, when all comics publishers eventually dropped the Comics Code Authority altogether. But in the interim fifty years death and rules regarding death would be strongly policed by those who enforced the Comics Code. Early drafts of the Comics Code Authority (a governing body which ensured that comic books remain "decent") prevented death to be shown or to have real consequences on the hero under its amendment that "good would always triumph over evil." Towards the end of the 60s this rule became more and more lax, and so failings could be introduced into the characters, with mortal consequences. The fact that these rules, which were at first to do be strictly adhered to or publication would not be allowed, were changed and made more lenient at all can be seen as a shift that happened around the same time that ideals regarding America's involvement in the Viet Nam War began to take place.

In the early days of Viet Nam many comics were to be much-more pro-war, as was the dominant view of the American people at the time. Many characters, including Spider-Man supporting character Flash Thompson, were seen volunteering for the war effort to much applause. These were seen as positive events, and comics were heading down a road toward again becoming something of a propaganda machine. But as news of the realities of the Viet Nam War began to hit American soil, attitudes in comics changed. Protests were often displayed in the pages and on the covers of comics, and the moral lessons at the end of these issues were rarely clear-cut. Heroes were often left questioning which side of a dilemma they were on. Marvel Comics flagship title The Amazing Spider-Man became especially socially conscious, with writer-editor Stan Lee portraying African-American-rights riots at Spider-Man's college campus, Spider-Man's best friend Harry Osborn succumbing to the effects of LSD (in an issue that was published without the Comics Code Stamp, a first since 1954) and with Flash Thompson returning from his tour in Viet Nam a changed man, succumbing to stress and alcohol addiction as a result of these events. The American public was growing up and superhero comics were growing up right along with them.

All this led to the Comics Code rules regarding death to become more lax, and to perhaps the most famous death in comic book history: the death of Gwen Stacy. The Night Gwen Stacy Died was a two-issue arc published in Amazing Spider-Man #s 121-122 (June and July 1973), and was the first time that an established character with a large fan-base had been killed in mainstream comics. It is seen by many as the end (or a part of the end) of what is collectively known as "The Silver Age" of comics, ushering in a darker and grittier side to superhero storytelling throughout the remainder of the 70s and through to the 80s and 90s. It also sparked a trend in superhero comics that has become known as "Gwen Stacy syndrome," in which the girlfriend of a male superhero will be killed in order to create drama in the male superhero's life. The enduring nature of the story has sparked many imitators.

While there were many editorial and narrative reasons for the death, Gwen Stacy was an innocent within the narrative of the comics at the time. Her death and the timing of it marked an end to innocence in comics. Good would not longer always triumph over evil: there was now ambiguity as to whether or not heroes were doing the right thing. This ambiguity and moral uncertainty was pervasive in American culture at the time in the end days of the American War in Viet Nam. America had lost its innocence, and so to had American comic-books; and in many ways the death of Gwen Stacy was the harbinger of that.

Comic books entered a dark period during the 1980s, with death becoming not only present but omnipresent. While the death of long-term characters was still uncommon, comic storytelling in general was much grittier and much more grim. Storylines like Watchmen dealt with death on a grand scale as a result of Cold-War circumstances gone awry in a world where superheroes existed but politics were much closer to real-world events. This grim-and-gritty tone was also influenced by the emergence of Indie (slag for "Independent") comics. Comic books like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did not shy away from death, blood, and gore in their pages; influenced by movies such as Dirty Harry. Mass media was becoming darker as America recovered from its time in Viet Nam and its doubts about itself and its intentions. Mistrust of government and authority brought on by the Watergate Scandal and the Exxon Oil Spill  began to dominate comics as fewer and fewer villains were mad scientists with ray-guns and more and more were lunatics and sociopaths, or power-hungry politicians willing to stop at nothing to achieve their goals. These shifts can be seen in DC Comics at the time, with Superman villain Lex Luthor being re-imagined from being a mad scientist to a business tycoon and Batman villain The Joker changing from a playful jester to a psychopathic killer. The American public and the American comic-book writers were less trusting of authority figures. Corporate America and insane killers became the villains fought, and death was often present as a result of their actions.

Even the perennially-cheerful Spider-Man was not spared this grim-and-gritty attitude, nor the increase in body-count. In a six-issue story published between October and November 1987 titled "Kraven's Last Hunt," recurring Spider-Man villain Kraven the Hunter successfully defeated Spider-Man and buried him alive, taking the hero's place for many weeks before ultimately graphically committing suicide via a shotgun blast to the head.

This attitude towards death in comics continued into the early 1990s, with comics becoming more and more focussed on the actions of sociopathic killers and the effect that fighting such people had on the heroes themselves. One such story, again featuring Spider-Man, took place in Spider-Man #6 and 7, January and February 1991. At this point in time Jeffrey Dahmer was still on the loose but was nearing the height of his frequency of victims, killing a victim almost every month, the majority of them young boys. During this storyline, long-time Spider-Man villain The Hobgoblin became a demonic literal goblin and kidnapped a young boy, not killing him but instead scarring one side of his face permanently  in the hopes of making him his "disciple." This train of thought is eerily similar to Dahmer's own. By the summer of 1991 Dahmer had gotten the idea that he could turn his victims into "zombies" - completely submissive, eternally young sexual partners -  and attempted to do so by drilling holes into their skulls and injecting hydrochloric acid or boiling water into the frontal lobe area of their brains with a large syringe, usually while they were still alive, (Dahmer, 211).

While villains were becoming less and less cartoonish and become more and more terrifying, new heroes began to emerge and become popular that were born of a desire to stop acts like this on the part of the North American collective consciousness. New heroes that came to prominence during the late 80s and early 90s were not stalwart and true like the heroes of earlier generations: they were very often killers and vigilante anti-heroes that killed villains indiscriminately. Can comic books be attributed to this? Or is this a case of putting the chicken before the egg, blaming comics for starting the problem of desensitization to death when their content really only reflects a trend already present in the society it mirrors and represents? Sarah Brabant wrote: "The use of comic strips as cultural artifacts to identify prevailing beliefs, norms, and values has long been recognized. The recent depiction of death and grief in three family comics strips, "Curtis," "For Better or Worse," and "Sally Forth," presents a unique opportunity to identify current culturally accepted attitudes toward death and grief," (Brabant, 33). Looking at comics as these types of "social artifacts," can we discern anything about the feelings of our society in decades past? Can we learn anything about ourselves from the way death is portrayed in comics now? One character to focus in on to examine this question and the phenomenon surrounding it is The Punisher.

Comic writer Frank Miller has called The Punisher "a Rorschach test for writers," (Punisher DVD). Though created in 1974, The Punisher reached unparalleled levels of popularity in the early 1990s, with five monthly comic books published chronicling his war on crime, as well as numerous monthly guest-appearances in other titles and a major motion picture.   Throughout the years The Punisher has been written as a sympathetic character, a villain, a psychopath, and eventually a heroic amalgamation of all three. He also reflects revisionist history on the part of American culture, retaining his status as a Viet Nam War veteran within the comic's narrative but succumbing to the stereotype of the "spit upon soldier" in that, in many ways, society has been to blame for his actions. More than any other character, The Punisher has changed to suit the ideals of the world he lives in, killing thinly-veiled versions of real enemies of American culture.

This view of death in comics was in no way limited to The Punisher. While heroes such and Spider-Man and Superman still retained their iconic code-against-killing, many other titles and characters emerged that had no such qualms regarding the act. Comics and the comic medium was again a form of escapist fantasy, but the fantasy was no longer to fly or swing throughout the city: it was a revenge fantasy targeted at those that would harm the American way of life. New comic book companies were founded and rose to prominence based on these ideals, such as Image Comics, with their main character of Spawn openly killing a child-molester in his fifth issue and hanging him from hooks. Heroes had begun to deal with death in non-heroic ways even as more and more characters began to fall victim to "Gwen Stacy syndrome," a term which was replaced by "women in refrigerators" around this time with more and more female supporting characters becoming victimized by increasingly-violent villains in an attempt to repeat the success of the death of Gwen Stacy. But the reason Gwen Stacy's death had been so poignant was that it was the death of an innocent timed to coincide with the end of the innocence of a nation, something that could not be said of the high body-counts perpetuated by mainstream comics in the 1990s.

Death in comics took a sharp turn in the early 2000s with the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Different comics from different publishers dealt with the issue of the real-world attacks in different ways. In Amazing Spider-Man #36 (published October 2011 but dated December), native New Yorker Spider-Man attempts to come to grips with the grief and loss he felt at the severity of the attacks. At the same time in Captain America's fourth volume, Captain America returned to his roots as a wartime hero and began a one-man war on terror, openly rejecting US foreign policy while battling terrorists and anyone who places America's people in harm's way. Other companies took different stances, with superhero Ex Machina rewriting reality and stating that the superhero mayor of that title had saved the second tower from falling. Superhero comics were becoming socially conscious in a new millennium, dealing with real-world death with feelings of grief, retribution, and fantasy. The overarching villains shifted again from businessmen to terrorists, and an inherit mistrust of government was subversive once again. Death became a real subject in comics, becoming less an event to fuel sales but once again a part of a narrative  and to mirror American culture, with the ultimate expression being the Civil War; a comic event in 2006 that involved all titles and focussed on two factions of heroes warring with one another over a bill not-unlike the Patriot Act, with long-time allies Captain America and Iron Man on opposing sides and culminating with the most publicized comic-book death of the decade: the death of Captain America, and symbolically the death of the American dream in an age  when America was engaged in actions that the character, and many of the readers, felt were contrary to it.

Since their creation, death in comics has become something of a misnomer. Characters are often killed and then "brought back" through a number of narrative devices and for a number of narrative conveniences. In fact many of the examples cited above have, at one point or another, returned to life - Gwen Stacy through cloning and Kraven through black magic. But through my research and through writing this paper, I have discovered that how permanent a character's death is is not the cultural lesson we get from comic books. Comic book characters fight death and are a part of our desire to achieve symbolic immortality, fighting death both symbolically in their refusal to age and die and literally as the villains they fight change from generation to generation to reflect the fears of death present in society at the time. Comic books represent a society that wishes to be above death, and in which death is rarely the end of a characters life or journey: a world in which the gate to the afterlife is not a prison but a revolving door.

Bibliography

·         Bender, L. (1944) The psychology of children's reading and the comics. Journal of Educational Sociology, JSTOR.

·         Brabant, Sarah. (1998) Omega - Journal of Death and Dying, volume 36, n1. p 33-44. 

·         Dahmer, Lionel (1994). A Father's Story. William Morrow and Co. p. 211

·         Diehl, Digby. (1996) Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives, St. Martin's Press, New York, NY.

·         Goode, Erich (2009). Moral Panics: The Construction of Deviance. Wiley-Blackwell.

·         Lembcke, Jerry (2000). The Spitting Image. New York University Press.

·         Miller, Frank. (2004) Taking Aim, documentary, Punisher DVD [film).

·         Nyberg, Amy Kiste (1998). Seal of approval: the history of the comics code. University Press of Mississippi.