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It is strange that so little attention has been given to this.

I think that mainstream media felt burned when Superman came back. Especially when they had to try and explain to the casual reader how it happened.

Dead should mean dead in comics.

The media reported on the death of Captain America’s death a lot. Guess there are just more important things to the media to tell us every 7 minutes to the point of repeating themselves to death.

Dead should mean dead in comics?

I’m not sure how true this is. First of all, we should clarify that we are talking about on-going, superhero comics based on iconic characters, not comics in general. We’re not talking about small press or indie stuff, or even about self-contained super-hero material like Watchmen (I don’t think anyone is really worried that the Comedian will be brought back from the grave). We are talking about a set of stories about a character (such as Superman) that spans decades. The fact that new stories continually have to be manufactured makes it very hard for “dead” to mean “dead” permanently. There are obviously notable exceptions, like Gwen Stacy, but they are just that — exceptions to the general rule that no death is permanent in ongoing superhero fare. And when we are talking about the title character of a series, it is not only very hard to maintain a permanent death, it is almost impossible. Anyone who knew anything about comics, and had any sense whatsoever, should not have believed that Superman had died permanently, just like no one believes Bruce Wayne has really kicked the bucket.

The real question is: is that a good thing? If you like to read monthly stories about Superman or Batman that are in continuity, obviously you can’t have them dying for good. But its arguable that DC would have been just as well served by permanently removing Superman from its on-going, in-continuity projects back in 1992, and continuing to publish out-of-continuity Superman stories such as All-Star Superman, etc. It really just boils down to how wedded to the “monthly updates to a shared universe” concept you are, in the end.

Love the Batman armbands! A friend who was a Super-Fan wore his Superman armband throughout the duration of Reign of the Supermen…

My personal feeling about the Obama-Spider-man/Death of Batman popularity is the fact that ANYTHING with Obama is being snatched up by tonnes of collectors, both speculative and nostalgic, who couldn’t give a crap that it’s a comic, just that it had Obama on the cover… I bet magazines like Time and Newsweek have similar spikes in sales for any issues with him on the cover…

That and the whole R.I.P./Last Rites/FC #6 mis-communication crap took a lot of the ooomph out of any hype that might have originally set it up for big sales…

As a point of fact…didn’t the media cover Batman’s death when it happend 3 MONTHS AGO in his own title as part of the RIP storyline? The fact that DC has gone to the well on this one twice in rapid succession is probably the reason why it didn’t get picked up by the PR monster this time round.

Good toon btw….I especially dug the “he’s going to find a way to blame us” line…

I’m thinking that right now, just about everything Dan Didio touches turns to … not gold.

Black jak:

I guess it might have gotten more of a media bump if it was done definitively in Batman’s own book at the end of R.I.P. But I also wonder if the fact that Knightfall wasn’t THAT long ago is a contributing factor. I know the media has a short attention span, but at some point big news about iconic DC characters going away has to start eliciting more of a “so what, they’ll be back in a month or two anyway” than a “WOW” from the mainstream press.

I liked the line “In an unprecedented turn of events, nothing of interest happened anywhere in the world today.”

@Neal K: That’s kind of what I meant.. the whole “Batman will die at the end of RIP” THEN “Actually he dies in Final Crisis #6″ BUT “You’ll have to read Last Rites to connect the two” was a real mess.

Knightfall actually WAS a while back.. 14 years or so… it wasn’t long after the Death of Superman… It may not seem like it to those of us who’ve been reading comics as long as we have, people who joined in the last ten years will be going “What’s Knightfall?”

Put another mark in the “funny” column. The last line word baloon would make a decent t-shirt.

Yeah, you’re right about Knightfall. But I do think it may have made more of a dent in the public consciousness than comic book fans give it credit for, due to the prose novel alone. If nothing else, it might be just a lingering feeling of “eh, didn’t they do something like that back in the ’90s?” without even specifically recalling Knightfall.

Whatever the reason, I think most of us can agree that DC screwed up what could have been a slam-dunk opportunity beyond belief.

Wait, Batman’s dead?

Hah! Love the 1992 grunge look in the first panel, that last line is a winner too.

“didn’t the media cover Batman’s death when it happend 3 MONTHS AGO in his own title as part of the RIP storyline? ”

I think I saw a couple of typically horrible British stories about it, but nothing much more than that.

Realistically, I think this would have gotten more mainstream play, but even DC’s acknowledging that this isn’t a “real” death and therefore I doubt they’re pushing corporate family members like CNN or EW to cover it like they did Death of Superman. This one’s just a comic story, nothing more or less.

Frankly, it’s only the people who inexplicably bought into the hype that are feeling a letdown over the RIP / FC Batman plot.

What they should have done, was have Obama swoop in and kill Batman. Sales would have gone through the roof.

Frankly, the line ”In an unprecedented turn of events, nothing of interest happened anywhere in the world today.” was offensive to me, at least. While people were talking about Superman’s death, in ex-Yugoslavia a war was raging on. I find that’s worth the interest.

The last word balloon made me laugh.

Clever.

Great cartoon… but yeah, DC tried to go to the Well 2x on the death of Batman. That’s all there is to it. Batman dies once in a year, it’s news. Batman dies twice? Dog bites man. Not news.

Last Summer’s batman Articles:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/24/batman_rumour/
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-02-17-incredible-hulk_N.htm (a blip of a mention)
http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/1082455.html

Part of the problem was that DC was hinting Neil Gaiman would be writing Batman after R.I.P. at San Diego… so no one considered his death to be REAL.

This November Denver Post article really captures the problem with Bats death:
http://www.denverpost.com/popular/ci_11084504

Just to give another heads up about the comic going to twice a week starting next week. New comics will be published Tuesdays and Fridays.

I remembered dancing a jig when Superman died.
And crying a tear or two when DC brought him back.

So much for killing iconic characters.
Bummer.

It is strange that so little attention has been given to this

Given how incompetent Didio is with any event he tries to push any event to the mainstream, how horribly it was all coordinated and what a mess it was to follow even for longtime readers who read the whole thing, what would have actually been strange is if it DID receive mainstream attention. For Didio, this is par for the course.

Stephen, for me at least I’m not let down because I bought into the whole hype, but because I buy the Batman title but had absolutely no interest in FC, and then essentially the “big” end to the RIP storyline from Batman ends in a different comic. I think the whole storyline was handled pretty poorly by both the editors and Morrison.

Frankly, the line ”In an unprecedented turn of events, nothing of interest happened anywhere in the world today.” was offensive to me, at least.

Then it’s either time to grow a pair, or go back to hiding under the kitchen table.

While people were talking about Superman’s death, in ex-Yugoslavia a war was raging on. I find that’s worth the interest.

On any slow news day something big and dramatic happened somewhere in the world, but for one reason or another the press ignored it or decided something else was bigger.
Get offended about that, but not about someone making fun of that.

Neal, you raise some very valid points. But on the flip side, it’s not nearly as exciting to watch someone who is performing with a safety net. If death is a temporary thing, how exciting will the perils be? As we’ve seen, we can always reboot characters (sometimes successfully, sometimes not), but even when I lose Ronnie Raymond or Ted Kord, I’d rather miss them fondly than have some sensational stunt make me no longer care.

That was clever.

I enjoyed this one a lot, especially considering that I think Brian did one of his legends about how the editors at DC admitted that the Superman story hit on a slow news day, which is why it played so well.

I love the dialogue in the final panel a lot.