If I ever get to any level of professional status, I can assure you I WILL be bringing back Barry Allen. I don't care how it happens. I don't care if Barry Allen is a zombie, the Fastest Man Dead, he WILL return. Or I'll kill Wally West and replace him with someone else entirely.

Oh, and I'm going to kill Tony Stark, bring back Steve Rogers, and make Moon Knight non-psychotic. All in one issue.

***

Hey Chad, if you get there before I do, do me a favor and give Cyclops his balls back while you're at it.

Robert Bradley wrote: Are there any characters that died that you feel should never be brought back or should have stayed dead? Aunt May

Yeah, sorry, but I don't get that.  Aunt May is so integral to Peter Parker's story, such a great shorthand for Spider-Man's reason d'etre, and a constant living reminder of why he is who he is ("With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility") that I'll never understand people who think she should stay dead let alone have died in the first place.

"If I ever get to any level of professional status, I can assure you I WILL be bringing back Barry Allen. I don't care how it happens. I don't care if Barry Allen is a zombie, the Fastest Man Dead, he WILL return. Or I'll kill Wally West and replace him with someone else entirely."

**********

Chad, c'mon. You don't like that a favorite character of yours was killed so you'd kill a character which is potentially someone else's favorite? I understand where you're coming from, but you did say that Barry Allen is THE Flash to you. Since Barry died before I was able to walk, Wally West will always be THE Flash, to me. I probably wouldn't be as upset as you were when Barry snuffed it if Wally was killed off, but to make a generation of fans as angry as the previous generation of writers made you seems silly and, as you're an aspiring writer and creator, it seems unimaginative. 

And to answer the question at the start of this thread: I guess I really don't feel that ANY deaths should be sacrosanct nor should any ressurections be off-limits. The suicide of Phoenix and the suicide-by-SNAFU of the Green Goblin made for wonderful stories, but if they hadn't been ressurected, we wouldn't have X-Factor nor Mark Millar's excellent MK Spider-Man series or Warren Ellis' great portrayal of Osborn in Thunderbolts (Ellis writes the best Osborn that I've ever read). I have no problem with the death of Barry Allen or Captain America as I find the stories of Wally West and Bucky more compelling, but I don't think that either company should refuse to ressurect the previous Flash or Steve Rogers if a great pitch is given that could lead to stories which I would enjoy. I loved the death of Aunt May in Amazing Spider-Man 400, which, when I read it, was possibly the most touching comic book that I had read, but if JB hadn't brought her back, we wouldn't have had the fun interactions between her and some of the other Marvel superheroes that JMS wrote so well.

To feel that certain characters should never appear again is selfish; not only do these characters belong to corporations that can do whatever with their trademarks they see fit, but any story featuring these ressurected characters will be the favorite of some fan, somewhere. Likewise, a character's death: first off, why get in a lather about something that can and likely will be reversed within a decade, anyway, and, instead, hopefully enjoy the twists and turns which preface that character's ressurection in the meanwhile, or at least give it a shot and wish the creative team well.

 do me a favor and give Cyclops his balls back while you're at it.

Aaron, some day there's got to be a change in the status quo, and it starts at the top of those companies. Now that's as optimistic as I'll ever get about anything. I hope somebody will come along as an EIC and decide to make comics Fun, Non-Event, Plot-Driven Iconic Adventure Serials again...I don't think by saying that I'm suggesting reverting to the 1950s. Hell no. Some EIC will redefine the company's policies in order to pay attention to character integrity and pride.

Now, in the meantime, you can create an analogue to Cyclops, maybe even the X-Men, and give the world the Cyclops you're looking for. Kind of like JACK STAFF, just obvious enough to clue in the fan of the character without getting sued.

How about this: "The Death of Wolverine!" Not a dream, not a hoax! Wolverine dies this issue!

Oh I know, Chad. I've got plenty of analogues in me...but it still annoys the hell out of me how they've treated some of these characters.  

<<Jean also "died" when Portacio started on Uncanny, when the X-Men were split into Blue and Gold teams. The fact that she wasn't really dead is irrelevant because we still had to deal with an issue or two of "Jean Grey is dead".>>

That's UXM 281 and it's not irrelevant.  We didn't
have "an issue or two" of Jean Grey is dead.  UXM 281
ends with her being declared dead by I think Colossus.  Several pages into 282 we see that her mind was transferred into Emma's body. 

That's not a death, it's misdirection, an apparent death which turns out not to be true.  Cliffhanger apparent deaths are a longtime staple of comics.   

iF we're going to start counting them as deaths, you know how many times Wolverine has died?


<<He HAS to be a Skrull for X-Force alone!!

(This coming from someone who isn't a Cyclops fan)>>

Take it from someone who was a Cyclops fan, that series is an example of him having balls.  He's got brass balls to be doing what he's doing in that series.

As far as being a Skrull is concerned, from your keyboard to God's ears. 

but to make a generation of fans as angry as the previous generation of writers made you seems silly and, as you're an aspiring writer and creator, it seems unimaginative. 

Good point, David. I truly wouldn't want to fall into killing off characters because I didn't like them.

I think Wally West should have become his own hero, a Nightwing of the speedster set. I don't know how to reconcile the Flash of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s until CRISIS with Wally West. Wally already had a speedster identity as Kid Flash, and arguably a cooler motif on the classic costume to boot.

Kid Flash could have become Ultra, or Max Velocity, or something else entirely.

I can't dismiss history based on continuity issues; Barry Allen imbodied the Silver Age, bridging a gap between NOT the late 1950s modern with the Golden Age past, but the blossoming of the superhero as myth in a future of this business No One foresaw.

In that regard, not only is Barry Allen functionally the Alpha Hero of the Modern Age, the nature of the character demands a star status that the Flash STILL does not have. The Flash is not in the Big Three, he cracks the Super Seven barely...his Wally West iteration on the "Justice League" cartoon is the resident naive, or clod depending (see Gilligan). The Flash hasn't even begun to touch on his true potential from a superhero comics Modern standpoint, and I guess I don't think it's respectful.

If Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman became someone else (Connor Kent, Dick Grayson, or Donna Troy), there'd be no end to the vitriol DC Comics would receive for that kind of move (actually I prefer Wonder Girl myself, look and all). I'd be intrigued by a Dick Grayson as Batman, but you can't mess with perfection. Bruce Wayne IS Batman. Hal Jordan IS Green Lantern. Barry Allen IS the Flash.

When I was young, in the late 1970s, the Flash was as recognizable as any superhero in the world. He was right there alongside of the Bat, the Super, and the Wonder in any house ad, on any Slurpee cup. Like the Thing, the Flash's star has fallen far, far from where I remember it.

We've seen Hal Jordan not only returned to former glory, but the guy's comic is being lauded as the best DC has Period right now. And Hal was probably "dead" in comics, and buried as the Spectre, for many moons before someone fixed him.

To say that Barry Allen shouldn't receive a similar opportunity is just sad to me. If there's multiple Green Lanterns of popularity flying around, surely one more Flash, MY Flash, deserves his rightful place among the best DC has to offer?