Death, Comics & Marketing

Everyone knows, you die in a dream, you die in real life.

You Read These With Your Eyes! (July 12th, 2023)

A quick feature about selling stories, featuring the week’s newest reads.

A couple months ago, a good friend of mine passed away.

It was a sudden thing. They’d been having a tough time for a few years as the pandemic sent their life sideways. They got into a bad way. And then, somewhat recently, things had started looking up. Pieces of their life were coming together. I was happy to see it. A pal who had struggled so, who had fought back with everything they had, was getting their footing.

Then a spill and an undiagnosed medical problem took them away.

All these days later, I find myself thinking about things they would enjoy. Like, they waited for years for Robert Evans to talk about Vince McMahon on Behind the Bastards (despite not caring much for wrestling themselves), and when it finally started happening, they missed it. Not by much. Boom! Studios has their mini-series of The Expanse running that fills a gap that exists in the books, and the television show. They would have loved that. I was supposed to bring in more of Margaret Killjoy’s prose work for them to read. I didn’t get around to it.

Things that linger. Little things.

Today, I’m working through a bit of grief, and I’m going to talk about comics marketing to do it. Seems healthy enough, yeah?

Let’s go.

ONE-SHOT | Fallen Friend: The Death of Ms. Marvel (Marvel Comics)

by G. Willow Wilson, Mark Waid, Saladin Ahmed, Takeshi Miyazawa, Humberto Ramos, Andrea Di Vito, Victor Olazaba, Ian Herring, Edgar Delgado & VC’s Ariana Maher w/ editorial support from Tom Groneman & Nick Lowe

There’s nothing that contextualizes a death in the pages of a comic quite like getting hit with a loss in your real life.

Ms. Marvel was a character that has meant a lot to me, and a lot more to others. Rightfully so. Her importance to me comes in the context of comics retail, where Kamala Khan was part of my long, formative journey behind the counter.

First announced many months before her series finally dropped, the character created a bit of a stir, long before I had a chance to meet her. Those first days were incredibly frustrating, as folks would walk into the comic shop, asking if we had the comic in hand. The book had been announced well in advance, meaning that it would be roughly five months before we’d have the thing in hand. The timing felt like a poor choice - and maybe it was - but the character won out.

Kamala Khan might be one of the last, fresh characters from Marvel to make a solid impact. Those first Ms. Marvel comics featured that wild, intangible rizz that cannot be predicted or duplicated. A mix of content and creative that hit at the exact right time to create something lasting. The series would be a favourite of mine through the original run and beyond. More importantly, the character would spread across many forms of Marvel media, including video games, television and (upcoming) movies. The word “embiggen” would even make it into the friggen’ dictionary, in part because of Kamala’s use in the comic. She was a genuine star.

Was.

After character co-creator and writer G. Willow Wilson left the character, Kamala truly struggled. This isn’t said to belittle anyone else who wrote her afterwards, more than it is to state the importance of that initial alchemy. With the character introduced, the relentless need of the market for blood kept the title and character running no matter what. This is perfectly fine for characters like Spider-Man whose audience was built on the monthly grind, but it didn’t (and won’t ever) work for Kamala - a character that gained traction in a very different age.

Folks who grew up on Spider-Man only had the monthly comic(s). The issue came on the stands, and left just as quick - something fleeting that had to be obtained to make concrete. Kamala Khan came to prominence in a world where access was far less of a problem. Digital (legal or otherwise) had arrived, and the graphic novel was cemented. You didn’t have to nab a comic when printed to enjoy the adventures - those adventures would exist in perpetuity in one form or another.

This difference in formative access created different forms of inertia. Characters like Spider-Man can run long stretches where the story doesn’t quite land, whereas a character like Kamala needs a set purpose. In a world where we have access to all of our favourite things with relative ease, fresh characters that don’t have a decades long runway of inertia have a tougher time sticking when the story doesn’t quite click perfectly.

And so, Ms. Marvel disappeared from the stands. Small bursts would happen from time to time, but her time as a regular fixture went away, waiting for a sense of purpose.

Unfortunately, that purpose happened to be “death”.

At the end of May, Amazing Spider-Man #26 ended with Kamala’s shocking demise. Not only that, but the death was spoiled in advance by entities on the internet. Then, in order to make good on the promise of an exclusive to Entertainment Weekly, Marvel had a piece officially spoiling the release run days before folks could properly read the thing.

This caused quite a commotion online, with sound and fury emanating from many corners. Most of this rage - I felt - was frustratingly juvenile and dumb.

Now certainly, everyone is entitled to their own opinion on Kamala’s death and how Marvel handled it. I will never discount a person’s right to their opinion. I just truly felt as though a lot of the noise was nothing more than sound. You had retailers upset that Marvel had promised a death and teased out the possibility that Mary Jane was not long for this world. Some were upset that they sunk money into that potential loss, as if death is anything more than a marketing opportunity to the big companies these days. Other idiot ding dongs were licking their chops at the idea that this was Marvel finally admitting that diversity had no place in superhero comics, and claimed the move as a victory, as though Kamala wasn’t one of the main stars of a huge movie coming out later in the year. Some were just upset that the spoiler happened at all and that Marvel swooped in to advertise the loss in advance.

The only folks I truly sensed logic from were the folks upset about a minority character - who had fleeting appearances in the book thus far - was being used as the catalyst to further the story of a white bread superhero through grief. Kamala was a pawn in the story, and while the writing gave her agency in those final pages, the work was not done to earn that moment before hand.

The whole thing reminded me about

Kelly Sue DeConnick

talking about the back matter in Bitch Planet, which saw a lot of queer and/or non-white folks talk about how they engage with the world. She spoke about how writers shouldn’t just write what they know - the result of such a thing would end up much like Narcissus staring into his mirror until he wastes away. She also spoke about how you incur a debt when you write to someone else’s experience - and you need to pay that debt as you go, with empathy and research and effort and more. You have to be open to criticism, and actively seeking feedback - and if you have a platform, you should offer it to those who deserve it, but have never been allowed to have their own.

Kamala’s death didn’t do that. There was a debt to collect. There is a debt to collect. But we’ll get to that part in a bit.

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I’ll admit that having experienced the sudden loss of a pal just before this issue hit caused me to disengage with a lot of the discourse emotionally. I looked at the issue, and saw the thing mechanically.

Kamala Khan, a fictional character, had been given a marketing moment. A focal point. This wasn’t a thing of art. If it was, more care would have been taken with the debt that was being incurred before the killing blow occurred. No, this was Marvel’s way of putting her back into the spotlight by taking her away.

It’s an old playbook. The alchemy isn’t working anymore, and attention has drifted. A big spotlight is on the horizon, and the company needs an easy way to get the character back into the mouths of readers. The answer? A “heel turn”. Be the bad guy, and take the character away. Remind folks of their love through anger, and get people talking. It’s a trick that works every time - more so these days when we’re all so ready to fight.

Amazing Spider-Man #26 accomplished the goal that it set. For the first time in a while, Kamala Khan was at the centre of discussions regarding comics. That’s going to run through the next few months, where we’re going to inevitably see a return with great fanfare - the start of which is happening in the pages of Fallen Friend.

THE PITCH | You’d think after all of that, I’d be pretty down on what is the next logical step in a craven marketing stunt. But I’m not.

Fallen Friend is a genuinely beautiful comic. Written and drawn by creators who put their indelible fingerprints on Kamala Khan, the story is filled with pure emotion and lived experience. The scene is set with co-creator G. Willow Wilson and sometimes series artist Takeshi Miyazawa revisiting Kamala’s immediate circle - reminding us all what made her such a unique and charming person within the wide Marvel universe. From there, the scope slowly pulls out and out and out, showing the effect she had in increasingly wider scale. It is at times very intimate, and in others, very sweeping. Not just depth, but width. And every moment is felt. It is lived.

In terms of paying back a debt, this is a remarkable payment, one that honours the experiences that longtime readers shared with Kamala, and one that teaches other just who this person was, and why she was important.

It is a beautiful piece of work that I highly recommend.

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Oh - another interesting note: the print issue of Fallen Friend ends with a QR code, which links to a fresh comic page setting up what’s to come. What’s interesting is the fact that every digital edition of this comic contains this page, but Marvel quite wisely chose to keep it out of the print edition, basically cutting the means of spoilers off at a source.

This is an incredibly interesting development for a few reasons. First: it creates a precedent to withhold information from the print object in order to maintain a surprise. Second: it acknowledges the fact that print is a terrible format to hide a reveal in this modern era. And third: it shows that Marvel is paying attention, and can and will adjust their situation when idiots wreck their plans.

It was an intriguing bit of business for sure. I can’t wait to see what they do next - both in terms of where Kamala goes from here, and how the company deals with these big moments in the future.

Thanks, as always, for being patient with me. There’s so much more to talk about this week, I just hope I can get to it all.

Talk with you soon.

-B.