Diminishing Returns

A year or so earlier, I had written that the constant killing off of supporting and C- List characters by DC and Marvel was subject to the law of diminishing returns, at least as far as audience reaction to it. That was around the time DC killed off Pa Kent.

In the year since I wrote that the body count rate has been increased drastically, and the returns on this lazy attempt at shock value have diminished so much it would take the Atom to find them.

Of course, now that Atom will have to be Ray Palmer. Why? Because DC just killed off Ryan Choi, that's why.

I read Ryan's series, The All-New Atom, from the time Gail Simone and John Byrne introduced the character to the series' untimely cancellation. He was the type of character DC Comics needs more of: heroic, funny, and fun to read.

But he wasn't the Atom that DC's powers-that-be grew up reading. He wasn't Ray Palmer.

Therefore he had to die.

And for what? So that DC's biggest Mary Sue can show how badass he is? To restart, for the umpteenth time, a Titans franchise which has rarely been viable since Tom Grummett left in the early 90's? To kick off what looks like a knockoff of the Norman Osborn-era Thunderbolts that will probably be gone in two years?


Apparently, DC characters now fall into two categories:

A) Characters the DC head honchos idolized when they were growing up,

or

B) Expendable.


God, I'm so sick of this crap.