Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Stop killing characters I like!

Idk if I'm being overly sensitive here., but why is it that people tend to hate the characters that I jones for? Colossus: dead (he comitted suicide in a retconned!state of super-depression to cure a disease and finish a plot that had been ignored for about a decade). It was touching, and sweet, and oh-so awesome, but at the same time, kinda came out from nowhere. Shadowcat: Ok, so she was fused with the bullet so that it would pass through Earth and not obliterate it, and she was gone for a longish time. And, Whedon has a thing for martyered super-powered teen girls (see Buffy). There were other ways to do it. Ares: Gah, this one just chafes my willie. He's the freakin' god of WAR and he's ripped in half by a punk like Sentry. WTF? To top it all off, Sentry gets the freakin' hero's funeral, and no one says jack about Ares. Sentry literally almost killed the world, ripped Asgard a new one, and pretty much fricks everything up to Hell in a handbasket. Not because he was brainwashed or mind-controlled, or whatever, because he was so STOOPID he believed Norman Osborn! WTF?! Alex (Phobos): why the Hell did this guy need to die? It didn't really drive the plot at all. There's NO ONE to mourn him or do anythign about his death since the only people who cared about him were Ares and Fury. So, again, why off him? He was a cool kid and had potential. Cable: Ok, awesome death, but still. Wtf? Cap: and then to take it back so *quickly* Sammy: WHY did Austin need to have Tom kill him? It;s not like he fed any sort of angst or was any sort of inspriation for Cain. Juggy was already a good guy, was already doing the right thing. So, WTF? I think that's the point i'm tryign to make in this blog/rant: The writers are killing off characters for 2 reasons: 1) to make a point that This Is A Big Deal. The villains/badguys/antagonists/non-focal characters, are for real real, and that they can and will do anything to achieve their ends. 2) To legitimize a weak plot: Wow! He killed this chaacter! This Plotline Must Matter. Now, as a comcis fan, I understand that my beloved heroes (and villains) can and will die from time to time. Heck, Jean Grey pretty much has discount rate at the local cemetary because of the number of times she's been offed. They off'd Cyke, too, in that ill-fated the Twelve storyline and, I gotta admit that was pretty powerful stuff. But such events were the culmination of a entire story arc spanning MULTIPLE tie-ins and events and near-misses. And the characters were always central to the storyarc. And, while Kitty and Cap were major players in the arcs that resulted in their "demise", Colossus was only tangentially involved in the Legacy Virus; Ares was a mere soldier in the Siege storyline (and he actually realized he'd been duped and turned on Osborn unlike someone else i could mention *cough* Sentry; Sammy's only real plot was "abused kid that Cain identifies with", and Alex's was more along the lines of becoming Fury's super-assassin kick ass go to guy. So, again, why the off? It's not like Marvel is suffering from a glut of characters. It's got a lot, but, really, it's managable. There are other characters to kill, better choices, that actually fit the plotline. And, it's just plain bad writing to off characters willy-nilly. So marvel, please, stop killign my faves!