Death, dying and the dead in comic-books
Death, dying and the dead in comic-books

Summary/Abstract: The current paper investigates the theme of death (as an event, as a state or as a character), of dying and of the dead, as it is depicted in comic-books. Being an exclusive visual medium, comic-books are a privileged channel for recovering, revitalizing, reinterpreting and disseminating traditional representations of Death personified, in the context of Western Judeo-Christian civilisation. Forged mainly by the Biblical imagery, the representation of death in comic-books also borrows attributes and tropes from pre-Christian folklore, from the traditions of other cultural spaces, as well as from the popular literature of the last centuries. The death theme is exploited in a variety of scripts and from various perspectives: heroes dying or killing, the temptation of cheating or defeating death, the existence of a being trapped between the two realms, of life and death (the so-called “Undead”), suicide, etc. A less obvious, but extremely relevant aspect is represented by the death of certain people involved in comic-book production, such as writers or artists, which is sometimes directly reflected in the fictional medium or the metatext: either a graphic series gets interrupted or modified, or the creator becomes a character within the comic-book. Since action comic-books, and mainly superhero comic-books, which are the engine of the entire industry, are strictly dependant on the plot’s “seriousness”, and since they are in competition with other media in which death plays a capital narrative part (films, cartoons, video games), we may say that the death theme is the main reason comics are still being produced today.

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