Death Week - The Death of Cypher

[icon_uk]

I'm indebted to proteus_lives whose scans of these from a posting way back were easier to find on my hard disc and edit than digging out my copy of New Mutants #60. There are just over 5 pages from a 40 page issue here.

Summation of events to date... Sunspot and Warlock had left the team after Bobby had run away from school after accidentally nearly crippling Sam, and Warlock had left with him to make sure he was okay (Why Warlock would leave Doug and co like that is never adequately explained, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I LIKE Louise Simonson's writing on other titles, her Power Pack was awesome, but her New Mutants issues just plain never worked for me). They end up joining the Fallen Angels gang for a while, but eventually leave to come back home.

Meanwhile, bereft of his selfsoulfriend (and also his protection in battle situations), Doug is on something of a downer, his inferiority complex kicks into high gear, and even his somewhat unexpected relationship with Rahne is suffering because she is spending all her time fussing around a new friend "Birdbrain", humanoid bird creature who they helped release from captivity. He's basically having a REALLY shitty few months..


The team end up visiting the island in the North Atlantic where Birdbrain hails from. There they find a cut price Dr Moreau/insane genetic engineer, known as the Ani-Mator (Don't know why there's a hyphen in there) who has been creating human/animal hybrids called Ani-Mates because... well, because he's an insane genetic engineer.

In their efforts to free the Ani-Mates from their insane ruler, the team find themselves also under attack by the Smile-Faces, the shock troops of Cameron Hodge's anti-mutant group "The Right" who had just been revealed as the main villains of the "Fall of the Mutants" arc. Turns out they had been financing the Ani-Mator to try and find a genetic "cure" for mutant births and are disturbed by his freakish experiments, which they decide to wipe out.

The New Mutants help Birdbrain rally the Ani-Mates to free themselves from both Ani-mator and the Right. Doug has been ordered to stay out of sight amongst some rocks as there are a lot of machinegun bullets flying around and he has no protection. (Technically neither has Mirage, but her powers are at least some sort of protection)

Then the cavalry arrives unexpectly....




Simonson never quite got the hand of Warlock-speak IMHO. His friends were selfriends, Doug alone was given the title selfsoulfriend after he used his own lifeglow to kickstart a dying Warlock in Asgard. He was usually consistent about it.

This unfortunate fellow is the Ani-Mator



And the saddest part is yet to come...



After all that he had seen and done, all the lives he'd saved, Doug lies dying alone and unnoticed in the melee... surely it can't end like this?

A couple of pages later, the fight is over and the team gathers to celebrate beating the Right and freeing the hybrids.



Tragically it IS too late, and after facing off against Magus, Spiral, Legion and alien space pirates, Doug Ramsey is killed by a deranged human with a handgun.

And by the time they find him, it IS too late and he IS dead. The team are heartbroken, well, apart from Magik, who is BEYOND pissed off, and instantly teleports the Ani-Mator and ALL the remaining Smile-faces to Limbo where they will either be torn apart by the technorganic demons there, or converted and turned into monsters themselves.

The Ani-Mates are coming to terms with their freedom, and based on Ani-Mators deranged notions believe that wearing clothes are what makes you human. Sam disagrees with this, and offers an alternative theory;



I can't quite express how depressed this issue made me. I'd been baffled by Cypher when I first read him being on the team, "What an absurd power" I thought, but the character almost instantly won me over by being everything I wanted from a hero, and being a delightfully normal guy other than his facility with languages.

He was the most vulnerable of the New Mutants (Well, Mirage, Wolfsbane and Sunspot are just as bullet-unproof as Cypher was) and so killing him didn't actually prove anything other than "People are vulnerable to bullets", which most of us had already worked out.

And thus began 24 years of consistent deadness, only recently reversed.

char: cypher.doug ramsey, char: warlock, char; cannonball/sam guthrie, char: sunspot/roberto dacosta, char: wolfsbane/rahne sinclair, char: mirage/dani moonstar, title: new mutants, creator: louise simonson, creator: brett blevins, event: death week

Comments

[theanswer]

I really liked the Douglock story that came after this.

[geooco.blogspot.com]

Whoo, man I remember reading this, and being so bummed. I loved the whole Warlock/ Cypher team.

[adamant_ink]

So sad. It sucked in that it was depressing, but it was a touching, well-handled death I think.

Nowadays when characters die, we just pan to the shocked faces of other characters who then immediately move on with only mild cases of obligatory wangst. Death in comics is like a flu shot... you take it once, recover, then you're immune for several years -_-

[icon_uk]

Well, that's sort of what happened too, by the end of the next issue, after a bit of angsting they've left the school and are grinning and smiling over their (ugly, UGLY) new costumes.

[adamant_ink]

.......

I see. And so comics shall be, forever and ever amen. :(

[pyynk]

For the most part. There was, however, an annual or Summer Special or some such that featured Rahne's visit to the graveyard where Doug was buried. It was a really, really sweet story as I recall.

[icon_uk]

New Mutants Annual #6, the story is called "Tribute the Second", by Peter David, which is a very nice story indeed, playing with ghost story conventions very creatively.

[kusonaga]

True, but we did get a fair number of references over the last twenty years to his death, with people actually being sad.

[icon_uk]

True enough.

[greenmask]

I think that this scene is so good.

[mercia]

This pretty much killed the series for me, it did.

I missed Doug. ;.;

[icon_uk]

Ditto, very very much ditto

[proteus_lives]

Doug's death was like him, it was human.

Rahne may not have even been harmed but Doug threw himself on the grenade anyway.

Doug was like a lot of WWII heroes I've read about. Skinny little guys you wouldn't look at twice on the street but in the right moment, at the right time...they become heroes.

Still one of the best deaths in comics.

No debt sir! I'm happy to assist anyone who appericates Mr. Ramsey and old-school New Mutants!

[icon_uk]

"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[proteus_lives]

That's a great quote.

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. ~Harper Lee

[tacobob]

Nowadays when you die in a comic they count the days you're dead under "Vacation". Meh.

[joasakura]

oh, man. - I remember this. It still breaks my heart. :(

[oakenguy]

Y'know, there are a lot of things that my 16-year-old self and I would disagree about. Haircuts. Some music. His dating decisions. His innate rapping talent.

But when it comes to describing this as a LOUSY, LOUSY, WRETCHED, STINKY, AWFUL storyline, he and I speak with one voice.

[icon_uk]

Pats oakenguy's past self on the head... Right there with ya buddy, right there."

Though I never thought to try rapping, which is probably for the best.