It’s always fun to watch the spooky parallels between daytime soap operas and mainstream comic books.
Currently, ABC is indulging in a little bit of trash-talking while NBC’s soaps are on hiatus for the Olympics. NBC’s Days of Our Lives is in the midst of a serial-killer story where the dozen or so victims turned out not to be dead after all. Leaping on this bit of narrative legerdemain, ABC is touting its own upcoming murder story on General Hospital, insisting that when a Disney subsidiary kills characters, they stay dead, thank you very much.
In one of those weird bits of synchronicity, I saw this item on Fanboy Rampage. And I’m reminded of interviews about Avengers: Disassembled from early on, where writer Brian Bendis insisted he’d been careful to write deaths in ways that other writers could fairly easily overturn. (Honestly, that should be taken as a given at this point in both soaps and comics, so I shouldn’t snark when Bendis is up front about it.)
Both industries have so many of the same conventions and the same problems. Revolving doors to the afterlife, blindingly complicated character histories, shrinking audience, readily available and less demanding alternatives… I’m a fan of both (less of soaps lately, but I’ve been an addict in my time), and I wonder what it says about me that I’m drawn to forms of entertainment that always seem to be on the precipice of obsolescence.
Other than the obvious conclusion that I’m an equal-opportunity geek.