Nothing is sure in life except death and taxes. Seemingly, however, only one of those universal certainties holds true for comics story-telling. Spoilers follow for the current "event" series "Identity Crisis," but before we get to that, let me remind everyone that the notorious gangster Al Capone was eventually nabbed on tax evasion charges. Apropos of nothing, of course.
As I used to say "Spoilers, ho!" (Oh, and this is not a review.)
Well, maybe apropos of something. I'm starting to get the sense that comics writers are trying for a slot with the writing staff on "The Sopranos," because every so often they just whack somebody. I am displeased with Sue Dibny's murder within the context of the shared DC Universe for any number of reasons, but a top one is the lack of originality. Death is one of the great universal certainties of life, but comics writers get to make things up, so they need not have these universal certainties in their pretend reality. At this point death has gone from meaningful sacrifice (Ferro Lad) or tragic impetus for heroic action (Jean DeWolfe) to sorry, event-driven cliche (Johnny Quick, Hal Jordan.) I would, therefore, submit that it is time to find something else to write about. "Taxes" is, perhaps, a viable candidate. "Batman: The Alternative Minimum Tax," "Superman: The Cayman Islands Accounts,""Wonder Woman: W-2, W-4," "Iron Man: The Audit." Okay, perhaps taxes are not ideal story-telling fodder; however, killing off characters has been done to, well, death, so to speak.
Another problem I have with killing Sue is that I don't think one story, even a great story, is by itself a good enough reason to kill off an established character in the context of a shared universe. This factor is more telling with Sue Dibny than with other characters for a couple reasons. First, she is wrapped up in Ralph's personality and character motivation. There's forty years of Ralph and Sue continuity that mandates that Ralph cannot be the same character with Sue murdered. Ralph should be an emotional wreck without Sue. She was for years the only thing keeping him with one foot in the rational. Frankly, if the reactions were honest, I'd expect Ralph to turn into Adrian Monk, except that Ralph will solve his wife's murder, and I suspect the murderer will meet some gruesome end even if Ralph doesn't go nuts and kill him/it/them/her.
But after that, what do you do with Ralph? Ralph has been a superhero for a long time and is very familiar with the superhero universe. He's met Etrigan. He's seen Ollie and Hal come back. More importantly, he's seen Iris Allen come back. He would probably not rest until he found a way to resurrect Sue, or perhaps join her in death, since he knows of the afterlife. A superhero with a subconscious -- or even overt -- death wish might make for an interesting story, but sadly Ralph doesn't have a monthly title to explore that reaction and I doubt "Identity Crisis' will touch on it, which brings me to my second point about sharing the sandbox.
If a character is essentially the property of one title, like Gwen Stacy in Spidey, then killing that character off in service of one story in that title may or may not be a good idea, but it is obviously the perogative of the particular creative team. Ralph and Sue Dibny were a shared character complex within the narrative structure of the DC universe. Killing her serves to destroy that creative option for all the writers that come afterwards, and frankly, I don't care if the story is "Watchmen," it's not fair to remove the option to use those characters from later writers unless it is necessary for some other over-riding reason. (Possibly the 'sole survivor of Krypton' motivation for the post-Crisis Superman mythology counts here, though I'm not a fan of the post-Crisis version.)
However, let's assume for the moment that killing off a character was a good idea, and even that killing off half the Sue/Ralph team was a good idea and necessary for this story. Why Sue? Why not Ralph? If we are going to pick the character with unexplored potential to keep, it seems to me that Sue is the ideal candidate. Ralph is a favorite of mine. A noble Justice leaguer and a good alternative detective to use when Batman is in his "doesn't-play-well-with-others" phase, and natural comic relief, plus he always brought Sue to the party. (One of my favorite Ralph moments was an old JLA issue where he and the Flash stopped a train.) Ralph's a good, solid character. He's also derivative of Plastic Man, Nick and Nora Charles and is usually played for laughs, which doesn't always work well because comedy is hard. (In the Thin Man movies, Powell and Loy could fall back on their chemistry when the script wasn't working, see "After the Thin Man.")
Sue, otoh, was the straightman, and a good straightman always gets 60 percent of the take.
I ask you:
What sounds more interesting, Sue gets murdered, and her husband the superhero Elongated Man, the world famous detective and Justice Leaguer, and his buddies Superman, Batman and Flash solve her murder and *yawn* bring her killer to justic..zzz. sorry, dozed off there.
Or
Ralph gets murdered, and while Batman and the others are on the case, Sue -- risking a fatal allergic reaction with every swig of Gingold -- defies their intructions to stay behind (she's a civilian, of course) and assumes the identity of Elongated Lady! It even has the alliteration Ralph never had! Using her detective skills honed over the years of helping Ralph solve mysteries, Sue tracks down Ralph's killer, and in a heartwarming scene, cannot bring herself to exact the ultimate revenge, and so brings the killer to justice instead, and earns Ralph's place in the league with Ralph smiling down from the clouds. Now *that's* a comics story.
(We'll just forget about how they manage to kill off women left and right in superhero comics stories. After all, they've killed off Robin, Johnny Quick, and a few others. Of course, they brought a few of the men back, as well.)
Posted by Mike Chary at June 12, 2004 9:19 AM