Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in
Full disclosure demands I reveal that I have zero emotional connection to either The Super Friends or its ancillary characters, including but not limited to Wendy, Marvin or Wonderdog. I was way too old for their cartoon when it premiered (which of course didn’t stop me from watching it--as bad as Super Friends was, it was still a cartoon and in my pre-VCR/cable world, any cartoon was better than no cartoons). I hated the show’s incredibly low quality (even by the usual standards of limited animation) and bland pro-social messages -- and I really hated Wendy, Marvin and Wonderdog.
This is important to establish so I’m not accused of getting pissy over Sean McKeever deciding to brutally murder beloved childhood icons of mine in the pages of Teen Titans last week. In an interview with Newsarama, McKeever states their demise wasn’t “one of those ‘shock death’ things” but you could have fooled me. Having the characters viciously eviscerated (and one assumes at least partially consumed; in the story, characters repeatedly point out Wonderdog isn’t hungry), their pitiful screams going unheard by the nearby superheroes who could have saved them, is a pretty shocking end for a couple of b-list comic relief characters who never hurt anyone.
Frankly I thought dragging them into the DC Universe as support staff for the Titans was a somewhat terrible idea in the first place, so I could understand why McKeever wanted them to go. Besides which they were introduced by another writer and he undoubtedly wants to put his own stamp on the series. And if killing them got the blogosphere a-roiling, so much the better.
But it’s always a bad idea to kill off longstanding supporting cast members, and while Wendy and Marvin fail to qualify, no one should underestimate just how well known the characters are. A story goes that back in 2002, Time-Warner was seriously considering making a movie about their successors, The Wonder Twins, because of their incredibly high Q Score.* Just about everyone in America knows who Zan and Janya are, and if they ever get around to doing a Justice League movie, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if characters at least named Wendy and Marvin briefly show up.
Of course the idea of superheroes having support staff is fairly new. When I was a kid nobody, except über-nerds such as myself, ever wondered who cleaned up after our heroes; such mundane stuff supposedly diluted the sense of wonder. And if you did actually think about it, I suppose you were supposed to think heroes would much rather roll up their sleeves and do the dirty jobs themselves than farm them out. Heck, I remember the days when the Fantastic Four used to read their own fan mail; now they’ve got “people” for that sort of thing.
Clearly these “people” must exist, we just rarely see them. For years The Avengers had just one guy doing everything--Jarvis. The same way the Justice Society has poor old Ma Hunkel doing all the scut work (at the very least she should head a staff; their headquarters has a gift shop for heaven’s sake). How different things are in animation; in the Justice League Unlimited series their satellite had a veritable phalanx of jump suit guys doing everything from operating the transporter to working in the cafeteria. And the thing is McKeever didn’t have to kill them; they could have just moved over to the Johnny DC Super Friends title where they (kind of) belong; or if Wendy and Marvin absolutely had to inhabit the DC Universe, how about a transfer to Justice League? They’ve got a Hall of Justice so they’d feel at home--and somebody has got to clean the toilets…
But ultimately I think killing them is a bad idea because if in a comic book anyone at any time can face an unspeakably grisly death for no good reason (neither “life” is fundamentally unfair nor being a superhero is dangerous work fail to qualify) gives readers one less reason to care about the characters. Or maybe I’m wrong. Since we’ve already seen the major heroes killed and debased how about a series where the supporting players (Lois, Jimmy, Perry, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, etc.) are all brutally murdered one by one? Finally I’ve come up with a reason for DC to green light my Superman vs. Freddy vs. Jason miniseries.
* As if you didn’t already know, the Q Score is used by marketing, advertising and public relations outfits as a means of measuring the familiarity and appeal of a character or brand; the more well-known and thought of the higher the score.
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
