Art by Art Saaf & Mike Peppe from the story “Kiss and Run” in NEW ROMANCES #14, 1952.
Transcript:
CAPTION: Death be not proud…or forever when you’re a superhero. But it sure sells comics! And here at Last Kiss, we’re anxious to give you readers what you so obviously desire: gratuitous death on an epic scale! Having a limited budget, though, we’ll have to use an old radio show trick and depend on you to supply the multi-million special effects…and most of the all-star, over-paid cast as well! Ready? Here goes!
PANEL #1: Lightning
SOUND: Zap
SOUND: Look out! It’s…
SOUND: Arrrggh!
SOUND: Yikes!
SOUND: Nooooo!
SOUND: Iiieeee!
PANEL 2: In a graveyard, a crying woman is comforted by a man. In the background, two men work with shovels to fill in a grave.
WOMAN: The entire Legion of Superfluous Heroes wiped out…in a bloody, depraved battle! Who’ll protect us from mindless carnage now?
MAN: Not the Comics Code! That’s for sure!!
CAPTION: Next: The Society of Stupid Pet Tricks gets neutered!
1952 Art: Art Saaf & Mike Peppe Right Panel Color: Diego Jourdan Pereira
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PANEL #1: Lightning
SOUND: Zap
SOUND: Look out! It's...
SOUND: Arrrggh!
SOUND: Yikes!
SOUND: Nooooo!
SOUND: Iiieeee!
PANEL 2: In a graveyard, a crying woman is comforted by a man. In the background, two men work with shovels to fill in a grave.
WOMAN: The entire Legion of Superfluous Heroes wiped out...in a bloody, depraved battle! Who’ll protect us from mindless carnage now?
MAN: Not the Comics Code! That’s for sure!!
CAPTION: Next: The Society of Stupid Pet Tricks gets neutered!
1952 Art: Art Saaf & Mike Peppe Right Panel Color: Diego Jourdan Pereira
DJP_lk304
DJP.lk232_BG
Not true. You have to kill off somebody that the readers know and maybe care about. Kill off Superman or Spider-Man and you get headlines. Have Galactus eat a dozen worlds no one ever heard of before and you get an “uh huh.”
This is the comic-book version of what they used to call Afghanistanism. Back when Linotype machines were used to create plates for hot-lead presses. typesetters kept an assortment of factoids to fill out columns. Typically they were about some distant place few people knew or cared about
Rudolf, you’re absolutely right. It’s possible, of course, to make readers care about a character in the same story in which they’re introduced. But it takes a skillful storyteller to pull that off. Generally, the more readers are invested in a character, the more they care if the character is in peril. Or, God forbid, bumped off.
Hmm. I wonder if DC Comics would mind if I bumped off Superman in Last Kiss?