Has anyone ever killed off a main character in their strip? I've been working on a story arc that may or may not end a character's life in it (http://www.drunkduck.com/ARCTIC_BLAST/index.php?p=471248 for those interested in my version of doing it). I guess because it's a newspaper style comic it feels a bit weird. I was curious - if you killed someone off in your strip, how did you go about it?

Wow, killing off one main character (among very few) in a comic strip???
Either a comic strip is ending (very soon), or it has jumped the shark. Otherwise I see no rationale for it.

Characters die in story comics all the time, ofc.

I agree. It isn't typical for a comic strip, which usually has a very small cast (and most commonly not a lot of drama). But people die from time to time in story comics (or ALL the time, depending on the comic).

I'm a wuss when it comes to deaths. I hate to lose a well-developed character. I still have to kill them off now and then so people know that death exists and is a serious and permanent condition (which isn't the case for all comics ... unfortunately). It is an important element to consider, particularly if you are writing a violent/dramatic story. Characters narrowly escaping death over and over is not quite as significant if the reader has the feeling that there is never any actual threat.

I started my story with many significant characters already dead. You get to know them through flashbacks and stories. Somehow, I feel a lot more comfortable and free showing death in a flashback. I tend to make it a lot more vivid and devastating than one "in current time." When drawing a "now" death scene, I tend to use dramatic cutaways and not show wounds or the actual event. In flashbacks, I have no issue showing the bullet pierce the skull.

Killing off a character in a strip would be taking a bit of a risk. Sometimes risks can pay off though. That being said I can't really think of a newspaper style strip that killed of one of the established main characters and made it work.
Strips that actually pull off the sort of drama associated with death are kind of a rarity. There were a few Calvin and Hobbes strips that did but those are the only ones that come to mind at the moment, and even then the deaths in question weren't the main characters.
Minor character death can be great in being conducive to black humor though, I'm not sure it could work with main character death, (assuming of course that they won't get better!)
In my comic the only character that we actually see killed is Dee and that was the page after he was introduced. The same thing happened with Cricket's mother but she died in a fire off-panel. When death is a permanent condition to make it seem believable I think it needs to effect the other characters in some way. In my comic that's mostly shown in the heroine being occasionally sad and taking on a somewhat darker personality that she was originally planned to have.

I remember writing a story and stopping halfway through when I realized that I'd have to kill at least one member of the team. Returned to it several years later when I redid it as a comic script, knowing that sometimes characters have to die. ...and ended up killing more than one of the main guys.

As for strips? I don't really remember reading of any main character dying (although someone could finally axe garfield, haha).

I have never killed anything in my comic. Nor do I think I will (though I might change my mind for a hippo or a goat). Much less a main character. At least in my mind, humorous comic characters are nigh immortal. It might look like they die, but they usually don't. I can't think of a single funny comic that killed anyone off for good. (At least one that wasn't a darker humor comic) Charby I think gets away with killing off all sorts of people, but even with that, Charby can't get rid of his blasted "girlfriend". She just keeps coming back. That is the beauty of comedy. It is a break for the real world. Death is very real and has to be handled carefully in a comic. It can be handled as a serious subject interspersed among funny strips only if handled very well. Making FUN of death on the other hand can be done though that affects the mood of the overall comic.

I have killed off main characters in comic book format before, in my superhero writing/drawing days. I killed both heroes and villains. I have also come up with excuses to bring them back, revisioned history, etc., etc.

Sometimes it really is relevant to the story to kill off a main character...and if you're going to do that, it's usually best to leave them dead.

I'm reminded of the movie death of Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was meaningful and relevant, even touching...which is why it made very little sense to bring him back the very next year in the very next movie. It was for popularity's sake and not that useful to future movies (except for good hippy humor in ST4: The Voyage Home).

The same goes for comics. One should be quite thoughtful in planning the death of a major character. It can be done successfully but that's rare. Even moreso in comic strips!

Ah, well...

I've killed off some minor characters, but none of the major ones, and technically a major one in my recent interlude segment. It really shouldn't be done unless it serves a purpose to the overall progression of the story. Otherwise, the death lacks meaning.

if you have a comic story where people fight all the time (like in my comic Kung Fu Komix-read it now! heh) then there HAS to be death, IMO. I cant have powerful guys punching each other with no ill effects whatsoever. it just isnt realistic in that sense.

i dont think you should ever be afraid to kill a character off...just if you do, dont go regretting it later on and bring them back. it looks tacky.

I have killed off the same character in mine several times, the first time he was eatin by a hut like creature, the second time killed by the two main characters, but it's just a recurring role for him in my comic... as for strips I have been trying to remember of a time it has happened and can't... perhaps you can be a pioneer in that field though.

I'd rather create the illusion and make readers assume that I'm going to kill off a character and then I don't.

That's more fun. XD

JediAnn Solo
I'd rather create the illusion and make readers assume that I'm going to kill off a character and then I don't.

That's more fun. XD

I do that a LOT. But if you do it too many times without ever "following through," it loses it's impact and effect. That's why it's good to have at least one or two people die in a comic that does any life-risking things. You need to make sure the *possibility* exists.

(I'm rationalizing right now because I have planned deaths for a couple characters I like, and I'm trying not to chicken out. :-P )

I'd only kill of minor characters. Something I've already done a couple of times. (It's not online yet)

Yes, if it's in the story, it'll happen. No matter how much I or the readers love that character.

If it's not the end of the comic, do what Dallas did - The character was just in a coma! =D A great solution, allthough many will beat you up for it

Aurora Borealis
As for strips? I don't really remember reading of any main character dying.

Not technically a "strip" but surely South Park's Kenny would count?

And the beauty of it was, of course, they never even tried to explain how he could be forever resurrected. It was just part of the ongoing status quo, like Charlie Brown never learning not to kick the damn football!

See - if DC and Marvel weren't so hung up on continuity, they'd be able to get away with not explaining, too!

DAJB

Aurora Borealis
As for strips? I don't really remember reading of any main character dying.

Not technically a "strip" but surely South Park's Kenny would count?

And the beauty of it was, of course, they never even tried to explain how he could be forever resurrected. It was just part of the ongoing status quo, like Charlie Brown never learning not to kick the damn football!

See - if DC and Marvel weren't so hung up on continuity, they'd be able to get away with not explaining, too!

Or Aeon Flux dying in every of the short episodes of first season?


How about this? To end the strip kill everyone, one character per strip, so if you have 10 characters you get a ten strip "armageddon" storyline :)

Aurora Borealis
How about this? To end the strip kill everyone, one character per strip, so if you have 10 characters you get a ten strip "armageddon" storyline :)

I'd read it!
;-)

Another useful death in a funny strip would be for the purpose of zombification :D

I can just imagine a zombie seal running around there at Artic Blast :D

DAJB

Aurora Borealis
As for strips? I don't really remember reading of any main character dying.

Not technically a "strip" but surely South Park's Kenny would count?

That's a great show to point out =D But I think they SORT of explained that his mom just kept giving birth to new Kenny's (how they become 8 years old each time, I have no idea)

And let's not forget the great continuity in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. There were several episodes where the characters would get killed in the end with no explanation to how they got back in the next episode (despite the fact that the characters sometimes bring up past episodes)

Same thing goes for Invader Zim, as he was killed (or so we are led to believe. since not many survive a direct hit to the SUN) in "Planet Jackers"

DAJB

Aurora Borealis
As for strips? I don't really remember reading of any main character dying.

Not technically a "strip" but surely South Park's Kenny would count?

And the beauty of it was, of course, they never even tried to explain how he could be forever resurrected.

I believe they tried to explain it, wasn't it when he had cancer or right before that when it showed his mom giving birth to another Kenny and his dad asked how many times this had happened and they named the episode number... but they never went to in depth about it.

I've killed a character before and I'll do it again.

JillyFoo
I've killed a character before and I'll do it again.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! o_o

You can kill off a character with no worries and easily bring it back without any artifice or plot holes just by showing stories from different points on their timeline. Not really in a flashback way as Usedbooks suggests; rather, you just make a chapter or whatever about some earlier time when the character was still alive.

Ala: A Dame to Kill for from Sin City, where you see Marv again :>

Just do what Pastis does, bring the character back in a day or two. Just recently he brought back the whale that died over two years ago. His excuse, "He un-died". Genuis huh?

A spin-off to one of my favorite comic strips did just that in order to end the series - Killed the title character...John Darling.

He was a news reporter who was murdered in the second to last strip - shot down by an unknown person at the time.

It was because Tom Batiuk, the creator of Funky Winkerbean and John Darling, was having a conflict with the syndicate over the direction of the strip. So, Batiuk killed the main character.

The strip it spun off from, Funky Winkerbean, later wrapped up the plot when characters there began to piece together who murdered John Darling - and the arc was pretty cool too once the murder was solved.

Still one of my favorite stories to date in comics.

I'm planning to whack almost the entire cast of my comic on a regular basis....
Just kidding (or am I?)
But seriously, the occasional big shake up is good, things get stale very easily and a little death can be just what a story needs.

My comic is of the story variety. Not a strip. In its totality, it will probably cover a very long period (in comic time), so I'm sure folks will die....

As far as strips go.

I used to run a humor strip for friends and later in my university newspaper. I only had two main characters, and I killed them both. Of course, i followed their exploits in the after life for a bit, before restoring them to untouched continuity (looking back on it) much like OMD. So... that doesn't really count in my eyes, because it was just a storyline. They never actually went away.

I can't really remember any permanent deaths.... Mostly stuff like, yeah, kenny, or old Loony Toons/Disney stuff where the character may die at the end of the short, but every thing is re-set after that (probably part of the inspiration for kenny).

hmmm....

Yeah. And its sad.

in almost every single comic/story i've written i ended up killing off just about every person. >____>

In Safety Man so far like... 4 or 5 minor characters have died i think. I'm thinking of killing off a main character also, since i'm only on issue 3 and i don't want to go 15 issues into it and then kill him. So i'm probably gonna kill him before they know him too well. :3