I can't believe it's not smashing something.

I skipped episode 4 if anyone is counting…. because it sucks.

A few years back, I started a joke with a friend while chatting over Instant Messenger… We were, as we tended to do, throw comedic “what if” scenarios back and forth involving pop culture, movies, or most often, comic books, something we’d both been avid readers of in our younger days. We both are somewhat working with comics now – myself as a freelance writer and artist, my friend Dave Giarrusso (brother of Mini Marvel madman, hilarious cartoonist, and all around great guy, Chris Giarrusso) as a colorist – and our love for the medium has remained. If for nothing else its wealth of comic possibility.

So, to take the joke we started to another level besides talk for once, I did a goofy, quick comic strip for fun, just to make him and me laugh. Little did I know that the dozens of comic strips that followed would strike a chords with many people out there in Internet Lands, and other people would find them funny too. While Hulk Vs Bizarro (Even the name is a joke, as they never do actually fight, except for the occasional round of existential fisticuffs) never gathered a huge audience (more to the failing to create the strips on a regular basis perhaps?), those that did read it seemed to enjoy it nearly as much as I, and eventually my cohort Jason Danzeisen, enjoyed creating them.

So I was digging through some files today and found the collection of strips, and thought now might be a good time to share them once more, and hopefully reach a wider selection of people who might enjoy them. And, I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but, man, they are still funny, and I think it’s worth re-running them from the beginning… So, if you’ve seen them before, hopefully they’ll make you laugh again. And if you missed them the first time, here’s something new and awesome! Hulk Vs. Bizarro!

The Pilot Episode

PS: Does this raise hopes once again for the much lauded, never completed, delayed and dismayed Season Three of HvB to finally see the light of day? Maybe. I dunno. You tell me.

Death in comics isn’t to be taken seriously. Except by the poor characters that stand near ground zero when the latest character’s “death” (ie: marketing 101 ploy) goes off. They seem to actually be affected, emotional, distraught even, but only because they are not in on the  joke.

Death of a character seems to be the only tool in the Modern Comic Writer’s Toolbox for attempting to elicit or inflict an emotional reaction. Now, it’s not their fault I gather, or so their Independent work versus their Professional work would seem to say. No, it’s the editor, with their strong edicts and corporate mandates that limit creative writing  to the sarcastically wide spectrum of death, rape, a slight costume modification, and punch ups. Or do we plan the comic readership who continues to purchase Special Dead as a Doorknob for Realz This Time issues and all the tie-in 4th string character books like Special Dead as a Doorknob for Realz This Time: Ground Zero and Special Dead as a Doorknob for Realz This Time: Power Pack and the like….? I think not. Readers love their brand like a smoker. And changes in the tar level or the color of the packaging aren’t going to precede the need for their next fix.

It’s really gone beyond a satire at this point for characters to die in comics, only to come back a year later, a week later, the next issue, no Death it seems is now like the Flu for all comic bookdom. Sooner or later, everyone will get it, but it’ll only last for a bit, and Reed Richards is probably somewhere right now working on a shot to prevent it.

So just off the top of my head, here are some characters who have “died” in comics, only to be resurrected or clumsily described to have been never dead at all but cut loose into the time stream or an alternate universe or the far side of the moon:

Captain America, Batman, Bucky (once the Holy Untouchable Dead that Would Always Remain Thus… twice dead now; he too shall rise again I’m certain), Jean Grey/Phoenix (Dead and back at least twice now. Possibly a third? I’m honestly not current on my State of Jean Grey Checklist), Colossus, Hal Jordan/Green Lantern (Or was he merely transplanted into the living embodiment of Order?), the Original Flash, Superman, Spider-Man (or was it a clone?), Ultimate Spider-Man (oh, he’ll be back. There’s no way the Republicans are going to let some African American kid run around playing superhero. And when he does, it will be the final proof that the Ultimate Universe is irreparably broken and used now solely for a breeding ground for Mark Millar’s Snuff Film Fetish)… I’m sure there’s more..

So, what’s the point? Everything is bigger in comics. You can’t sell issues nowadays with sentimental talk and deep character development told over the course of several issues. You have to move fast and you have to move big. What’s bigger than death? Only birth, or rebirth in these case. Several comic universes full of walking mythological forces, being ever retold, reborn, reused. They are constant, these characters, these demigods, though they may falter, they may wane, they will never, ever, be truly gone.

apparently, the only thing certain of life in comics is taxes.