Here are the tragic comic characters that didn’t make the final cut!

This series has been a strange one to right about. The majority of the work I do is entirely subjective in nature but I actually had to find myself really stacking up which characters I thought were objectively more tragic. In fact, my soul reason for creating this list was because I wanted to talk about Amadeus Arkham at further length.

That and I wanted to stress in my introductory essay that comic books are not just low brow forms of art. As comic book writer Kevin Smith pointed out in his four hour interview with Grant Morrison, comic books are simply novels that are pretty to look at. I wanted to show some three dimensional characters that go beyond what we typically see in straight up comic book adaptations, that the average person does not truly get to see and appreciate the massive amount of depth that this medium has. This is why I bookend my series by talking about Greek theatre and Amadeus Arkham, who’s story is positively Shakespearian in its depravity.

There were, as always, comic characters that did not make the final cut and in keeping with tradition I will be talking about them here.

Originally I planned to have The Lizard in place of Mr. Freeze and the reason he lost out in the end was because I didn’t really think there was much I could say other than the typical things we usually hear from most stories dealing with topics such as lycanthrope. There is a beast trapped inside him and it’s not his fault, and it’s all because he wanted his arm back. It’s not that I don’t think he has a sad story, he does, but Mr. Freeze allowed me to talk beyond just the tragedy of the character, it allowed me to talk about comic book history using him as a jumping point. This is something I just couldn’t do with The Lizard.

The second one was Yorick Bowe from Y: The Last Man. Yorick and his pet monkey, Ampersand are the only male mammals left alive on planet Earth. The idea of being the last man on earth is scary enough, yet alone trying to reconcile with a loved one who is miles away.  The story of Yorick is certainly tragic however I left him out purely because despite his name coming up a lot when researching I just plain don’t know enough about the character and story of the comic. This is something I of course want to change, and maybe he should have made the final cut, but I couldn’t include him in good conscious knowing that I could entirely be talking out of my arse.

 

An obvious honourable mention goes to Batman, but the reason I didn’t include him was because it’s so tiring to see him on every list that’s remotely similar to this one. That and I’m not really sure I agree that Batman’s story is as tragic as it is dark. While of course it’s true that losing your parents at any age, let alone as a child, is certainly sad there just wasn’t enough to put him on the list. Part of the reason I included Spider-Man as an honorary eleventh member (even if his article was using him as an example of classical Greek tragic hero as opposed to a full article) was that Spider-Man holds responsibility for the death of his Uncle, whereas Batman holds no responsibility for the death of his parents.

While it could be argued that some interpretations of Batman’s origin story have them leaving the theatre because he is afraid, this still does not give him responsibility over his parent’s death. He was only a little boy who would have been powerless to stop the mugger anyway. Spider-Man, on the other hand, had the power to stop the mugger, but lacked the sense of responsibility to do it. Hence the famous phrase now attributed to Uncle Ben.

There was also characters like Martian Manhunter and the Silver Surfer, who like Yorick Bowe, I just didn’t know enough to write about but one that I had to stop short of writing about was Tim Harrison.

Tim Harrison is a character who might not be known to a lot of people however to Spider-Man fans he is a very beloved minor character. Tim Harrison is Spider-Man’s biggest fan, collects as much to do with the webslinger as he can, and he requests to meet Spider-Man. After their long talk he asks to see Spider-Man’s real identity, to which Spider-Man obliges. Of course many fans would be puzzled as to why Spider-Man would do this until the last few panels of the comic, where it is revealed that what Spider-Man did was grant a little boy dying of leukaemia his dying wish.

This comic, known as The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man is widely regarded as being one of the greatest Spider-Man stories ever told, and while it certainly lacks the depth of Kraven’s Last Hunt it was very sad and very touching. Ultimately the reason I didn’t include him was because I only thought of him very late into writing this series and I wasn’t sure there would be a lot that I could say outside of: “it’s sad that kids die”.

What his character really served to do was add another layer of heroism to Spider-Man, and while it certainly does its job well I just didn’t feel there was enough to Tim Harrison as a character to give him his own article.

Well, we’ve reached an end to this series. Thank you to all those who have stuck with it to the end. , I’m very grateful, and I will see you next time.

 

 

DISCLAIMER:  I am taking a brief break from comic books to write about some other topics, as I’ve said before: You don’t want me to hate them! 😛

My next few articles will be about some different topics but you’ll see me back on comic books soon!

 

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