Batman & Robin Artist Talks the Importance of Comic Book Deaths

Batman & Robin

artist Patrick Gleason talked to USA Today yesterday as part of the ramp-up to tomorrow's release of Batman & Robin #18, the issue in which Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth (silently) deal with the death of Damian Wayne, the most recent Robin and Batman's son. Along the way, he cited a number of influential stories that gave a sense of why, even though comic book deaths are rarely "final," they still matter. While writer Peter Tomasi cited the deaths of Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn in the classic Amazing Spider-Man #122, Gleason's examples were even more interesting; he chose stories that were not only more recent, but more temporary as well.

The newspaper reported that Gleason loved "The Death of Superman," and was influenced by "an issue of G.I. Joe early in his childhood that killed off many of the characters he loved." That is, in all liklihood, the issue at right. That battle saw the deaths of a number of characters in battle, including Breaker, Doc and Quick Kick. "It was an impossible concept to me at the time, that these characters can die," Gleason said. "But for the first time a comic book took on a sense of real drama I hadn't seen anywhere else before. I started to be more engaged with the lives of the characters, and I started reading comic books more and more. "It's never just about the death of a character," Gleason said, "it's about the lives they lead and the way they affect people along the way." That was, of course, not only a big part of the Death of Superman follow-up Funeral For a Friend, but one of the central reasons for the whole death and rebirth story to be told in the first place; it was never meant to be permanent, but rather to give readers a sense of what they would be missing in a world without the character.