In my spoiler-laden post on what I enjoyed about the (rather loose) big screen adaptation of the Marvel Comics miniseries "Civil War" I pointed out the hateful narrative trope of killing an expendable character, usually a black person, to ramp up the story's sense of menace or urgency. I wrote about how I had despised the way writer Mark Millar basically pulled a rarely-used minority character, Bill Foster aka Black Goliath, out of mothballs just so he could kill him.
And now, to kick off the new "Civil War II" miniseries, writer Brian Michael Bendis decided to show everyone he meant business by killing off not one but two minority characters, the African American James Rhodes aka War Machine and the female She-Hulk.
I haven't read the story, but really, my anger at this gimmick really knows no bounds. I know that every war has casualties, but really, to kill off minority characters is a cliche that's practically as old as pop culture itself, and the fact that Bendis has picked one of the strongest female characters in comic books these days, both literally and figuratively is beyond despicable. It's bad enough that there's such a dearth of non-white male characters in comics as it is; Bendis manages to rub some serious salt in the wound of all of us hoping for more minority representation.
I know that in the Marvel Universe, death is rarely dealt with any finality when it comes to major characters, but the fact that specific characters were targeted just to give the story more "weight" just goes to show how creatively bankrupt Marvel in general, and Bendis in particular, now are. I can think of a number of other characters who could have gotten the axe and who, unlike these two, would not likely be resurrected by a future editorial regime.
In any case, it just feels hateful.
I hope some future writer does something really horrible to Jessica Jones, or one of Bendis' pathetic creations, like the horrible excuse for an X-Man "Goldballs."
