Death Of A Tragic Hero

When someone reads a book and a character dies, they feel devastated. They might not think about anything else for hours or even days. Anyone who didn’t feel sad when Rue died in “The Hunger Games”, or when Romeo and Juliet died is a soulless monster. In movies, the audio and visual aids make everything sadder. Not even a twisted, evil person could resist crying when Mufasa died in “The Lion King”, or when Jack died in “Titanic”.

In comic books, that feeling of grief is lost. There are only a handful of superheroes that have died and not yet returned. The only thing that comes back more than heroes is the sun. They have died and came back so many times, “Comic Book Death” is a page on Wikipedia. What is the point of killing all these heroes if the only thing they do is come back to life?

Well-known superheroes are hard to replace, especially when readers grow attached to them. When Superman died in 1992, he was “replaced” by 4 Kryptonian heroes. His death was treated as permanent for the better part of a year. Many fans stopped reading it because the hero died, and he was the main reason they were reading the comic. Readers want to watch the good guy beat up the bad guy, and if the …show more content…
One reason is that they are hard to replace, but also because they are important to the plot and to their nemesis. For example, Batman has fought tons of different villains, but only the Joker is classified as his “arch-nemesis”, which is why he has died and came back over 10 times across movies, TV shows, and comics. In the 1950’s, Batman killed himself by drinking poison, only to come back to life minutes later. Batman has also suffered from a heart attack, been electrocuted to death, been killed by the Joker several times, stopped his own heart, and died 15 times in total, but is still alive and well because Gotham City needs him. If Gotham City had other heroes, Batman would’ve been dead long