I’m a DC Comics fan. I like Marvel, but I tend to prefer Marvel’s movies and TV shows rather than their comics. So, I’m over a month late to the announcement that Marvel intends to kill off a character every quarter.
Apparently, every comics blogger and comics forum have talked about this.
The problem is this: people who hated the characters probably weren’t reading the book, so they don’t care. The people who do like the characters are going to be ticked that their favorite character was killed off.
Since these deaths are presumably editorially mandated, chances are that the stories surrounding them are going to be pretty lousy. If a writer decides to kill off a character for story purposes, that’s fine with me. I will complain if it was poorly done, but I can understand it. However, having the character killed off because the editor thought it would boost sales is a bad idea. The job of editors is to edit, not to write. Whenever you start getting editors meddling, you get comics like One More Day, Cry for Justice and Countdown. Those are not examples you want to follow.
