Sunday, November 9, 2008

Expiration Dates

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Jason Todd's death, in 1999 Fred Hembeck, in his Dateline @!!?* column for CBG, had a similar contest...readers could call in to vote whether or not Fred was killed. I don't know whether this was the actual result, or just Fred having fun...but he was killed.

Anyhoo, he gets a call from Maggie Thompson, telling him why his newly dead status will be a boon for his column:

Fact: all ghosts have wispy genie tails...and if they don't they shouldUhh...about those interviews, Fred:

Barry Allen
? No longer dead.
Bucky Barnes? No longer dead.
Hal Jordan? No longer dead.
Thomas and Martha Wayne? Unclear, until Grant Morrison gets around to clearing up the red herrings he's managed to cast around in Batman R.I.P.
Most any citizen of Krypton? Well, at least 100,000 no longer dead.
And of course, Jason Todd--most emphatically no longer dead.

Interesting, isn't it, how flexible that which was once untouchable canon has become in the past decade. I'm just sayin'...

Panels from The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus, of course.

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