*Main post* 30 Days of Scans! Day 4! Character you would bring back from the Dead

[benicio127]

Soooo it looks like we fumbled a little on Day 3, however, there is a *main* post here for Day 3 for those of you who don't have/want to post scans or just want to make a few comments about your favourite/least favourite *insert specific meme day here.*
So just to make it clearer for everyone, we'll add a "main" post to the Topic Headline so you know where to go, and/or you can look for my user name, shelleymaree or one of the mods. We'll try and post in the morning and/or after midnight Eastern Standard Time. But if you get in there before us, even more awesome! Glad to see some eager beavers.

Today is Character You would bring back from the dead day. Mine's under the cut. So S_D'ers, who's yours?





I'm a little pissy about this one in particular, but...
LIAN HARPER. It really bothers me that DC killed a child just to give a character more angst. Particularly a female child for a male protagonist to be able to grieve. That’s basically what’s been done here. It’s a cliche story that’s been done to — pardon the bad use of cliche saying — death.

I get changing up the status quo, I really do. From a storytelling perspective, it’s important. You don’t want these characters to get “stagnant.” But this entire Rise of Arsenal thing just started out from a bad place and only got worse.

That coupled with the piss-poor job of the break-up of Ollie and Dinah (after everything they’ve been through their marriage is just done because Ollie kills the person who kills his granddaughter? Give me a break. And I hate how it made Dinah look like a bitch.) And while I really do like Dinah and Ollie, I think this post by DCWomenKickingAss explains the problem with the series best.

The message I’m getting from DC is that kids in comics suck and marriages in comics suck. (And I know Ollie and Dinah have issues. Oh boy, do they have issues. But they’ve also always managed to work through those issues and seemed to come out stronger until now. And I don’t know one married person who won’t say they’ve been through major ups and downs with their spouse. But I kinda feel like the Dinah/Ollie ship has sailed for me and that makes me sad).

This really bothers me on a personal level because I put a lot of value on marriage. And I think that Dinah would, too. But anyways, digressing from the original topic…

What Lian Harper’s death ultimately says to me is children make things boring, so let’s get rid of them. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, either. Selina Kyle’s child, Helena? Gone. Dinah’s adopted daughter, Sin? Gone.

So rather than automatically kill them off or get rid of them because they’re children and they weigh people down, how about thinking outside of the freaking box for once, DC?



From Outsiders 44

Runner Ups

Kid Devil because I love his relationship with Rose.
Big Barda/Scott Free
Nightcrawler

suggested tags: series: 30 days of scans, char: speedy/arsenal/roy harper, char: speedy/mia dearden, char: lian harper, title: outsiders

Comments

[perletwo]

Oh, Lian. *whimper*

My trouble is, I'm pretty much a DC girl, and DC's been on a Bring Out Yer Dead kick the last couple years. Most everybody I might've picked is already back, if only temporarily, in one form or another.

So I decided to go with this fine fella, who never really had a fair shot:





Countdown brought him to life in Week 15 (hate that backwards counting thing on CD) and killed him off two Weeks later. So much wasted potential, especially when you consider he was traveling the multiverse with Jason Todd, of all people!

[jaybee3]

The Jokester was literally the only good thing to come out of Countdown. Just another example of how that series turned what could have been a good idea into something horribly terribly bad.

And killing him means we never got a Jokester vs Joker confrontation! Or regular DCU Harley meaning a good version of her Mistah J!

Wasted, wasted.

[pyrotwilight]

Mr. Good J was awesome. ;_;

[kamino_neko]

I choose to believe Jokester doesn't need to be brought back from the dead, as his death was one of the aspects of Countdown that didn't actually happen. And until it's referenced in canon, there's no reason not to believe that!

[northstarfan]

Nailed it in one. I miss Kurt and Ted, but at least they died striving to be heroic. Lian wasn't a character that I knew well, but her death was just so...contrived and distasteful.

[benicio127]

Hear, hear! I just finished reading Identity Crisis and I... want to exchange it for something that's actually good. Like some Kelley Puckett Cass tpb. And you know what? Wasn't a fan of Rags Morales art, either. Yep! I said it.

[jaybee3]

I'm tempted to say Ted Kord, Tempest, Lilith Clay or Lian but if I absolutely had to bring anyone back it would be RALPH & SUE DIBNY.

The start of what I consider DC's "Dark Age" (that will not age well IMO) begins with Identity Crisis and Sue's death.

[perletwo]

See, I thought about them, but in a way they did come back already, and the way they did it has so much untapped potential I almost don't want them back in the usual way.

[janegray]

Yeah, I was pretty pissed off when the Jokester was killed off. He had so much awesome potential! D:

[runespoor]

I consider myself lucky because the characters I would've asked to return a few years back or if the storylines had been written differently are currently alive: Steph, Mia, Jason, Dick, Connor, Sasha, Anissa. And probably others I'm not thinking about. (At least they didn't kill Cass, you know?)

So at the moment, my vote is for Lian to come back as well. Killing children is not a good way to make drama. Killing Roy's daughter just to strip from everything that made him a fun, contrasted, lovable character - because obviously, something that isn't outrageously grim'n gritty is not unique - was a really bad idea.

Lian has existed for over 20 years, and suddenly the one way to make her valuable is to kill her? Something wrong with this logic, DC!

She was one of the very, very few children characters that worked for me, and that was a really stupid death made of the bad.

Runner Ups
Kid Devil - he was one of the few recent Titans whose personality worked, he had a growing fanbase, he had an interesting pre-Titans story, he was fun, and his relationship with Rose was fantastic.

Ted Kord - c'mon. It's Ted. Half the time I don't remember he's dead, because he's such an iconic character of good DC times. Sometimes they remind us he's dead and I think to myself 'well, no, he's on well-deserved R&R inventing stuff on a sunny island'. Tora is back, maybe we could have Ted back as well?

[requiem2adream]

*meeps* Oh Lian. That page from Outsiders is just beautiful.

100% agree on just about everything in this post. Lian, Barda and Kid Devil are the characters I'd choose to bring back as well.

[minyandu.livejournal.com]

No scanner and no account for me. So I can only post here. :(
I hope they can bring back Garth(a.k.a. Tempest). Reason? Garth literally started my trauma of character death. I only read two pages of DC(also my first two pages of American comic) and I saw his heart got ripped out. I knew that's BN and I did expected dark thing, but heart ripping was way beyond my imagination. What worse was that I just started liking this character because those two pages worked.
Ah...I think I can never get over this...D:

[minyandu.livejournal.com]

And I think I need to add this one, too--Ageha from BASARA(manga)
here's his history from WIKI: A former slave and survivor of the Blue Nobles(sexual abused as a child), a nomadic people all but wiped out by the government. Ageha saved Sarasa from the Red King when she was younger, but he lost his left eye in the bargain. He has friends all across Japan and is capable of calling in tremendous favors from them.

Life sucks for Ageha, but he never get beaten down by fate. He is a warrior, a good warrior. He always stays true to himself. His heart is always free. He fights the good fight and die in a heroic way. I think I can borrow Hope's line here: To fight for things that matters--things that are real, to find comrades who he loves, to fight alongside him, and to die on his feet. Ageha got three for three, so no one need to cry for him. But somehow I hope him live on, to live in the free and bright new world he'd been fighting his whole life for, to continue his trip with the wind.

[werehawk.livejournal.com]

Like most of you, my character I wanted back is back (Jade). And Nightcrawler is too fresh a wound. So, who would I bring back? A certain blue lobster who would be a great addition to the Pet Avengers. Don died when Devil Dinosaur accidently stepped on him. Even if Don didn't come back, I would love to see Bill (the green lobster) join the team and urge you all to email Chris Eliopoulis if you agree.

http://www.comicvine.com/don/29-7912/

Their origin is here:
http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2008/08/marie-severin-birthday-tribute-fallen.html

[newnumber6]

I don't know. My favorite currently dead character I want to stay dead, Gert Yorkes (that said, in my own theoretical fantasy plans I'd eventually bring back a character who resembles her in a lot of ways, but isn't the _same_ character, magically brought back from the dead, but rather an alternate universe version who has different relationships with everybody in her own universe and doesn't just slide into oldGert's life).

So who else is there? Hmm...probably one of the mutants, but none is really standing out for me right now, most of the dead ones I liked there recently have been brought back (Magik would have been my choice before a couple years ago).

Since none completely stand out in my mind, I'm going to cheat and say 'The Hellions'. More than one character, but they're all relatively minor. They were brought back from the dead in Necrosha but I believe they died again afterward (I don't think it was outright stated, though), and they were all zombie mentally-controlled version. I kind of want the real ones back. If I had to choose just one, probably Catseye (actually, it would be Tarot, but technically she should still be alive, even though she was raised from the dead in Necrosha, so I'm not counting her appearance there, assuming they just revived her body again without realizing that she was supernaturally revived and living alive and elsewhere already)

[fleur_de_liz]

I'm going to go with the entire dead JLI Roster.

Ted. Ralph and Sue. Scott and Barda. Dmitri. Max Lord's not-evil self.

Hell, I'd even say bring back the JLE members. Vivian and Constance deserve a little love.

I don't have anything against the new guys. Far from it. I love Jaime and I think Gavril's hysterical. But they're not the same, and I don't think it's fair that it's always the big guns that get to come back, and never the little guys like Sue or Dmitri.

Also? I would so bring back the giant bug Ted from Countdown Arena. He is my favorite Ted who is a giant bug.

[milleniumrex]

Seconded on Lian, so much. Not just because I miss her (plus she needs to grow up to be Speedy, be BFFS with Milagro and Iris, and bug the hell out of Damian), but because I really believe it's the only way to fix Roy's character.

[retro_nouveau]

1. Bart Allen 1. Barry Allen 1. Stephanie Brown 1. Ted Kord

2. Tora Olafsdotter 2. Ralph Dibny 3. Sue Dibny 4. Conner Kent 4. The Jokester 5. Barda Free 6. Scott Free 7. Kurt Wagner 8. Knockout 9. James Jesse 10. Katma Tui

Lian should be at the top of my list, but I don't have an attachment. She should definitely be alive starting yesterday.

Blue + Gold > Gold x 10. Being a ghost is Deadman's job, not the Dibnys'.

Kinda mad at Gail for leaving us hanging on Kane Milohai. Diana has an oath unfulfilled, she's still got to find a way to restore Kane while keeping Achilles alive I know, let's use Ares' heart - before Pele starts blasting lava everywhere.

[kingrockwell]

There are a lot! Ralph and Sue, Scott and Barda, Ted, Kurt, Ryan, all of the X-Statix (Deadgirl especially), etc. etc.

But I'm going with Lian. Lian's death was the beginning of the end at DC for me. When I started dreading, pruning, avoiding titles and started feeling more cynical about the whole mess. All the justifications and mansplanations and victim-blaming thrown around by the assholes who saw fit to defend it were ridiculous.

What's more, the fallout over the whole thing has given us some of the worst comics in recent memory. Bring the kid back!

[benicio127]

All the justifications and mansplanations and victim-blaming thrown around by the assholes who saw fit to defend it were ridiculous.

Yeah, when Didio said... “But let me ask you a question — do you have any kids? In this particular case, most of the people who were most upset about this story had small children. They felt pain and anguish. To get that level of empathy from the storytelling that both James and JT did is amazing" I was offended.
I don't have children, and I didn't like it. And I don't like that he's almost insinuating that only people with children can be upset by this. And it wasn't empathy at all! It was disgust at bad storytelling.

[christianconnor]

Yes, Lian really needs restoring. I expect someone to bring her back for me.

But since this is about me bringing back a character, I'm going for a rather exotic resurrection: Harbinger.

Was a shadowy figure before Crisis on Infinite Earths and only given powers during the event. In it, she had a rather stentorian attitude which made her stand out somehow. She was a hero, but dangerous. Perilous.

I dunno, but something about her always appealed to me, and I've often wondered why no one really did anything with her since. Lots of untapped potential.

And then Loeb killed her off in the Supergirl arc of Superman/Batman, and for no purpose at all that I could see. Randomly pops up on Themyscira (drawn as a weird Barbie with all the emotional resilience of a wilting daffodil) and is pointlessly killed off-panel.

(It looked like they were trying to make Donna Troy the new Harbinger at one point, offering her all sorts of cosmic powers connected to the Multiverse, including Harbinger's little globe. Did they use any of that? Even in Countdown, where such powers would have been ideal? Did they heck! Grrrr.)

No character deserves to go out like that. I'd rather she was in limbo than that.

[philippos42]

Oooh, yeah. Not an easy character to use; but that's why killing her off to give her powerset to Donna was pointless. Donna won't use it either. Well, if her death was in Loeb Supergirl, it's easy to declare non-continuity.

[curlyjo1]

Everyone seems to have covered the Dc side of things, so I'll go for Marvel.

1) Icarus - Jay Guthrie -- So much potential and then killed off in a dumb way.

2) Skin - Angelo Espinosa -- Killed off with a mass of other cannon fodder by a writer who couldn't even get his name right.

3) Synch - Everett Thomas -- So many stories that could be told. Then they bring in Prodigy as basically a copycat.

And of course:

4) Nightcrawler -- 'Nuff said.

[morgana006]

Icarus, yes please.

May I also vote for Wallflower? She had a really interesting set of powers and also had a lot of potential.

[levyrasputin]

Seconded so much on Lian. Her death annhilated all of her future potential - a shame, now that we have the twins and Damian roughly the same age (yeah, the five years old thing can't be correct, pals...) - and destroyed everything Roy's character had.
We got the godawfull Rise of Arsenal and shitty evil Titans in change. Mh, nice deal! :D

No.

As for Marvel.. IDK, they had already brought Piotr back and I'm .. kinda fall out of love with the X-Men anyway.
I guess I want Jean back, resurrected by Hope and the Phoenix, and I want her to become the leader of a second organized group of mutants, let's call them the Children of the Atom, that would create and alternative faction (like good Accolites) and sometimes clash with Scott and his X-Men. Ah-ah.

[morgana006]

I don't even read Green Arrow and Co and think that Lian should be brought back.


Personally, I'd go for Kid Devil. He was the guy in the Teen TItans who liked being there and wanted everybody to get along. And he had the whole Neron storyline that was (imo) unsatisfactorily resolved.

In my head, Kid Devil and Trickster are making trouble for Neron underground, and will soon have an epic jailbreak.

[philippos42]

If my scanner & my computer were compatible, I might take the time to get some scans of this character up. But as it is, it's hard to find much about her.

Windfall. Wendy Jones. One of the old Barr/Aparo Outsiders, she was abused pretty horribly post-Aparo, & eventually killed off in an revival of Suicide Squad. I have for years wanted to do some stuff with her in a lighter superhero vein. Oh, well. This would involve me writing narrative & that doesn't happen enough (or at all).



But I totally vote for Lian Harper too.

[icon_uk]

I'm living in hope that the Windfall who died in Suicide Squad was another of New Wave's clones of her, the evil ones, and that Wendy is quietly retired from metahuman life, and working in a nursery school somewhere....

[icon_uk]

Well, I just got my dead-guy back, so I feel slightly spoiled.

Lian is a good choice, though I'd rather it was revealed that she'd never died than that she need to be resurrected.

I'll add in votes for Icarus (Just because I like winged guys) and Garth/Tempest

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, frankly, I can't even keep track of all the characters who are currently dead, so I'll keep this to a minimum. My top two, I would say, would be the Question (Vic Sage) and Blue Beetle (Ted Kord). Yeah, yeah, I know that both spots are currently filled by interesting people at the moment, but that's kind of why I want the originals to come back - I've always liked those stories where the namesake original meets his or her successor. Vic actually passed the mantle on to Renee himself, so it'd be interesting to see his reaction to how she's worked out as the Question so far - and as for Ted and jaime, Ted was semi-retired anyway, so I don't think he'd mind the name being passed on to the next generation. Best-case scenario is that he'd take on Jaime as a sort of junior apprentice, acting as a mentor figure and giving him crimefighting tips and access to Kord Industries facilities when he needed them. All that aside, though, I'd just like to see Vic and Ted back because I've always liked the chemistry they had together during their rare team-ups - there's a reason why it translated to well into Rorschach and Nite-Owl in 'Watchmen'.
Anyone else? Hmm... Well, this is not so much brought back from the DEAD, exactly, but I'd like to see Anarky resurrected as an active character. He's currently confined to a bed, or was the last time I checked, and I think that's a shame, because he's such an interesting character - he's like a junior version of V from 'V from Vendetta', on which he was based, only somewhat less violent and crazy, and more idealistic. Also, I'd like to see Joker's Daughter brought back - I always liked her.

[philippos42]

Oh, that's right! Vic & Ted are both Ditko characters!

Heh. Imagine them in a story with the Creeper & Rac Shade....

[ficticons]

The first person I thought of for this was Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man; but it's definitely complicated.

I've enjoyed reading Scott in nearly every appearance of his that I own. He was an ordinary man who, despite taking a brief (I think) wrong turn, went on to become a successful longtime hero. He was a father who cared deeply for his young daughter and AFAIK a good husband. He was a skilled electronics engineer who put his talents to good use in his small self-run firm, and as I read it he would rather be earning an honest day's wage than superheroing, although it didn't mean he wouldn't step up as Ant-Man when that was needed. He had a strong sense of right and wrong and doing well by his family. I came to know about him only way after he'd died, but I've still managed to grow very fond of him.

I didn't like the circumstances of his death, but I'm not sure I want it undone despite - as his daughter Cassie has metioned in Avengers: The Children's Crusade - the fact that he’s the only Avenger who died in Disassembled who hasn’t returned (apart from Wanda, who remains unaccounted for). One reason may be, to quote from an article at comicrelated.com that I read recently - that "[Scott's death] was just senseless and tragic...and portrayed that way in realistic fashion. Although I love those huge death scenes when the hero makes a grand stand, all guns blazing...sometimes DEATH IS SENSLESS, TRAGIC, AND WITHOUT MEANING...but you have to write it correctly.". (The article goes on to note that "This was written correctly." I...don't know, really. I'm not sure I can comment clearly on that.)

Finally, I don’t want his return to be the only way that Cassie can stop focusing so closely on his absence and her loss of him. She’s a worthy successor to his legacy in her role as a Young Avenger, IMHO - even if another man is Ant-Man currently – but she needs to figure that out for herself and in her own way. (I do admit that I haven't read much with the Young Avengers in it so far - something I intend to correct as soon as I can - so if I've mis-analyzed her motivations above, please excuse me.)