Deaths in comics are an interesting thing because for the longest time, publishers never killed off characters.
The Silver Age of comics during the 1950s and 60s strictly prohibited mature content that involved things such as killing.
It wasn’t until the Bronze Age of comics where mature content and killing would be accepted as we saw multiple characters in comics being killed including the likes of Superman in Death of Superman written by Dan Jurgens and Jason Todd in Death in the Family written by Jim Starlin.
Continuity in DC Comics is a bit convoluted with everything going on in the multiverse, but it seems as though DC Comics is killing off the Justice League.
DC Comics has officially announced that the Justice League will die in the newest title Death of the Justice League written by Joshua Williamson and art done by Rafa Sandoval. Though we don’t know anything about the story overall, the story releases in April.
Death of the Justice League seems like a cool idea for an event, but will this event have substance? Will this event actually have meaning and value moving forward in DC Comics? The biggest thing this story has going for it is the commitment to actually killing off the members of the Justice League which DC Comics has done before, but individually through solo runs.
I just don’t understand the need of killing off the Justice League because DC Comics has never fully committed to killing off their biggest characters. Death of Superman only happened because Superman sales were not meeting expectations, so DC Comics had no choice but to kill him eventually bringing him back when Death of Superman boosted DC Comics’ sales. It’s different looking at a character like, for example, Jason Todd who was a character fans hated back in the late 80s.
Fans voted to kill him and it was still a huge deal, even before the idea of bringing him back 20 years later in Infinite Crisis written by Geoff Johns which had started the rebooting phase of DC Comics.
Not to mention, I know that DC Comics wants to avoid killing Batman because Batman is DC Comics’ cash cow.
Batman is the sole reason why DC Comics sales were fine last year and that’s not including comics like Nightwing written by Tom Taylor and Infinite Frontier written by Joshua Williamson.
But, everybody seems to forget DC Comics “killed” Batman off in Final Crisis written by Grant Morrison only for them to pull a fast-one and say Batman didn’t die, but a clone of Batman died which we saw in Blackest Night written by Geoff Johns and Batman had actually been travelling through time in The Return of Bruce Wayne written by Grant Morrison.
Some context: Final Crisis was all about Darkseid obtaining the Anti-Life equation and conquering Earth, the Justice League fought Darkseid and won.
During the battle, Batman and Darkseid clashed with Batman shooting a god-killing bullet and Darkseid shooting his Omega beams. Batman was struck with the Omega beams and killed him.
Whatever this story is, I’m sure it’s going to be interesting considering it’s being written by Joshua Williamson.
However, there’s no doubt in my mind that DC Comics isn’t willing to kill off the Justice League. I just can’t see this story holding any meaning and value in the long run for DC Comics and continuity.