Death: The Ride

Originally published January 8, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1312

Why do you climb into a rollercoaster?

I’m not talking about tricked up rides at Disneyworld or Universal or other theme parks, where the excuse can be that there’s other stuff to see along the way (the Jurassic Park ride, for instance, features several horrifying drops, but is “worth it” because of all the cool audioanimatronic stuff that’s part of the ride.)

I’m talking about the big ol’, high speed, turbo-charge, ain’t-nothing-there-but velocity roller coaster, hurtling along the rails, screeching as metal clutches onto metal. What is it about the swiftness of the ride that is so attractive? Is it the ear-shattering clacking of the wheels? The howling of people around you as they shriek in adrenalized terror? What’s the big attraction?

Face it: It’s the risk. You know it is. The risk generates the thrill.

There’s always a chance that something could go wrong. You never know for sure, particularly in some of the smaller parks, how aggressive the safety checks have been. Malfunctions could occur at any time. When I was a kid, two friends of mine were flung from a rollercoaster and were in traction for six weeks. Wheels could slip, rails could buckle–the whole thing could come apart. The odds are against it, of course. The odds are tremendous that you’ll come out of it on the other end hale and hearty. But there’s a chance, an ever-so-small chance, that you might… not… make it.

Adventure. Risk. Daring. You’re doing a little dance with death. You are willingly stepping into the reaper’s turf and saying, “Okay… I’m putting my neck on the line. Let’s see if you can get me.” And you angle up and speed down, flip upside down and scream and wave your arms over your head like a loon, and at the end the roller coaster slows to a halt… and you’re still alive. You cheated death. Granted, you were playing with a stacked deck. It’s not like you’re such a thrill addict that you’re going to blindfold yourself, hop behind the wheel of your car, and try to navigate the Jersey Turnpike just to see if you can trust the Force to guide you through. You’re not Evel Knievel, taking a whack at the Snake River Canyon. The cheat was eminently in your favor on the roller coaster. What you got was the thrill of simulated death-defying. You pulled it off. You risked death… and lived to tell the tale. Except the risk was minimal and it’s more of a visceral thrill, appealing to the daredevil in you. The chances are you wouldn’t really risk death if you thought death had better than a 50/50 chance of nailing you. It’s just… playing. Playing at being a cheater of death.

Death fascinates us. Every ghost story you’ve ever heard is a treatise on death. Every angel sighting or tale of heaven and hëll has, at its core, speculation as to what waits beyond. We dabble in death because, like birth, it’s one of the only two common experiences that it is absolutely guaranteed we are all going to have shared or will share.

And risking our own lives, or telling ghost stories… those are just a few of the angles. Another one is… what would it be like to take a life?

C’mon… it must have crossed your mind from time to time. There was someone you really couldn’t stand, who just drove you completely nuts, and you merrily took solace by envisioning various death scenarios, usually violent. Backing your car over him, stuffing him down a trash compactor, just getting a gun and blowing his brains out. It is one of the more evil, dark aspects of humanity… but it’s there. “I’m going to kill him!” you must have shouted out at one point or another in your life, and right at that moment, you may very well have meant it.

But you wouldn’t have done it. Because you’re a law abiding citizen. So you turn away from the evil and darker aspects, and you live your life in accordance with them. You remember “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and besides you wouldn’t really have the stomach for it, and most of all… hëll, you’d probably get caught and spend your life doing hard time and being the girlfriend of some 250 pound convict named Toodles. Just as you wouldn’t really want to genuinely risk your life because, y’know, you might get killed.

But it’s still there… deep down. What would it be like… to kill someone? Could you do it? Would you be capable? In time of war? Or if he had just raped your girlfriend and he was helpless and you had his gun and were aiming it? Or if he just really really bugged the hëll out of you? Could you kill him?

Be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it. If only there was a nice, safe way to do it.

Ten years ago, DC Comics provided it.

It was, in my opinion, the single most repellant publicity gimmick ever developed. Ill-conceived in its content, vomitus in its execution.

Sure, Jason Todd was fictional. But what is fiction if not the investment of some spark of reality by the audience into the character. I get the letters, I see the online debates, I know how passionately fans feel about the heroes and villains who parade through 22 color pages on varying quality of paper. I don’t believe that Jason Todd wasn’t to some degree as “real” to the fans as any others of the heroes they read about. That’s what it’s all about, after all: Suspension of disbelief. The willingness to set aside your internal knowledge that these character constructs are just that, and instead buy into the notion that what happens to them actually, to some degree, matters in the long run.

But Jason Todd was a lousy character, you might say. Certainly he didn’t start out promisingly. The bad seed of Robin Hood, as it were. But I submit that it was his exceedingly unpromising beginning that indeed made him a candidate to be a truly great character. Because the quality of a character is measured by his personal journey. The further down the moral scale he starts, the more triumphant and uplifting is his success when he overcomes those deficiencies and becomes a hero in his own right.

That opportunity was not given him, however, nor was it given to the writers to try and see if he could be salvaged. Instead, his fate was thrown to the fans. The Joker apparently has Robin’s number, kids, but actually… you’ve got his number. Two of them, in fact. Call this number if you want him to live… and this other number if you want him to die.

How repulsive.

Hey, gang. Pulling the wings off a fly not enough for you? Ever spill salt on a snail, watch it fry, and still felt that you just weren’t getting enough sadistic pleasure? Well, guess what. You know that dark corner of yourself where you’ve wondered what it would be like to kill somebody? But you could never really indulge it because of, you know, laws and stuff? Well, we can’t offer you a flesh-and-blood human being to off, but we’ve got the next best thing. We’ve got a gen-u-ine comic book character, trussed up like a Christmas goose and waiting for your decision. Sorry that you didn’t get to sit in the Coliseum and turn thumbs up or thumbs down on an ancient gladiator? Ticked off that you didn’t have the opportunity to sit ringside at the guillotine? Pardner, this is as good as it’s going to get, at least for the time being.

How disgusting.

Don’t tell me that, since he never really lived, it didn’t matter if he died. Ultimately, it’s not the “death” of Jason Todd that concerns me. It’s that people zealously picked up the phone and, in the comfort and safety of their homes, ordered the execution of someone they perceived as real enough to care about whether he stayed around or not.

Batman is supposed to represent something. He is supposed to represent the death of innocence… and the determination that no one should have to have impressed upon them, at such a young age, the fact that evil sometimes does triumph, no matter what you may read in the storybooks. The Joker, on the other hand, is the incarnation of random violence. The notion that no one is safe, that evil strikes for the most capricious and foolish of reasons, and laughs at the carnage it leaves in its wake. In case any of you out there have forgotten… we’re supposed to be rooting for Batman.

Instead, the Joker won. And Robin died. And the Joker had the last laugh.

I hope all of you who voted to execute Robin enjoyed your thrill.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)