The Four Color Media Monitor

Charles Soule's claim to "fame" was killing off Wolverine a couple of years ago. Now, he's repeating the same snooze-inducing gimmick with Daredevil, as if we hadn't already seen enough of this utter nonsense from Marvel:

He has previously killed off (and is currently in the process of resurrecting) Wolverine. Now, comics writer Charles Soule is setting his sights on Daredevil, with Marvel Entertainment announcing that Soule’s last storyline on the Daredevil comic book series will have the foreboding name "The Death of Daredevil."

"A lot of writers in the past have left Daredevil in terrible situations at the end of their runs," Soule said in a promotional video released by Marvel Friday afternoon. "Brian Michael Bendis put him in prison for Ed Brubaker to handle; Mark Waid, who preceded me, had Daredevil in San Francisco, his secret identity was blown, he wasn’t a lawyer anymore. I had to handle all of that. So, I wanted to carry on in the tradition of leaving Daredevil in the worst spot imaginable, and letting the next writer somehow deal with this impossible problem that Matt [Murdock] would never get out of. And I wanted to make mine the biggest one that has ever been done."

As I may have noted before, while resurrection is always possible within not too long a time for superheroes like these, mostly based on their rank-of-recognition status, it's still no excuse for what's become unintentional comedy at best, and a revolting insult to the intellect at worst. Who knows, this was probably even cooked up to compete with DC's Heroes in Crisis, which is supposed to come out soon too.

The notion a writer should make things difficult for a successor is also disturbing, as it may have even been done unwisely by Peter David before he left writing the Hulk in 1998, when he originally killed off Betty Banner. It was also the case when Kevin Dooley and Ron Marz turned Hal Jordan from Green Lantern into Parallax in 1994. And in one of the most notorious examples, if you think it counts, there's Joe Quesada's destruction of the Spider-marriage in 2007. Any writer/editor who goes out of their way to do stuff like that is not being helpful to corporate-owned superhero comics.

And since the topic of Heroes in Crisis comes up again, here's more about the needless new DC publicity stunt's confirmed character deaths:

Hotspot is one.

That’s Isaiah Crockett, formerly Joto, and Slagger, former member of the Teen Titans, created by Dan Jurgens for the second volume of Teen Titans. Half-alien, part Human and part H’San Natall, with powers over heat, initially increasing the temperature of anything he touches and using infrared vision. [...]

And, courtesy of Heroes In Crisis, no more…

So that's a minor character, one whom I assume Jurgens is fine with doing away with. And now, here's the first major one:

Basically, it’s the one everyone expects, Roy Harper. Speedy. Arsenal. Red Arrow. This seems to be the automatic go to, when in doubt, kill a Titan.

Created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp in 1941 as Speedy, the teen sidekick of the superhero Green Arrow, he is a world-class archer and athlete, he became a core member of the Teen Titans. He later reinvented himself as Arsenal, and Red Arrow, with membership of The Seven Soldiers of Victory, the Outsiders, the Justice League, and the Outlaws along the way. He’s also known as a drunk and a heroin addict. And now targeted for the chop.

And then, in yet another show of disrespect for the Titans, one who's sensationalized curtain call was predicted:

Because as well as Roy Harper, Hot Spot, Blue Jay, Lagoon Boy and Citizen Steel is … Wally West. The Flash, recently brought back to continuity and numbered among the dead of Heroes In Crisis.

Intriguingly, despite initial reports, this doesn’t seem at the hands of a gunman. No bullets mentioned.

It makes no difference. What matters is that again, we have a case of any major/minor characters the publisher sees fit to sacrifice for the sake of their narrow visions turned into cannon fodder for no good reason. And now the former Teen Titans are the latest victims of DiDio and company's publicity stunts, just to service a tabloid approach for desperate short-term sales. One of the commenters noted:

Wouldn't shock me one bit. Didio seems to have a real issue with the Titans characters. He said way back around Final Crisis, when he wanted to kill Nightwing, that doesn't understand their place in the DC universe.
Instead he seems to see them as perpetual understudies to their mentors. Characters who, because of the way comics work, will never be able to step fully into the limelight themselves, and thus they're completely disposable to his way of thinking.

And another said:

Somebody with that much of a lack of creative thinking shouldn't be in charge of any kind of creative company.

You got that right. I sure hope people have woken up since the mid-2000s, and will avoid buying something that disrespects the hard work of veterans, and is basically offensive to boot. This is just a boomerang back to an abominable concept that should've been stopped along with company wide crossovers long ago, and practically gives crossovers/events a bad name. It's the same with Daredevil's current direction by Soule, and nobody should finance either story from Marvel/DC. The time's come to send a message via voting with our wallets that we won't accept these atrocities anymore.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, Daredevil, dc comics, dreadful writers, golden calf of death, marvel comics, msm propaganda, Titans, violence