Welp, Strong Guy is dead. Remember last summer, when I was worried that he would be sacrificed in that New Mutants mini-series? Only for him to survive? Welp, that didn’t last long. The moment he returns following that mini-series, he’s needlessly killed.

Strong Guy takes the brunt of a bomb in this week’s Uncanny X-Men issue.

The issue, of course, ignores any response from Wolfsbane or Havok to the death of Strong Guy

There didn’t need to be a bomb. And he didn’t need to sacrifice himself. Neither is intrinsically important to the story at hand. It just happens. Maybe to raise the stakes of the story? Maybe to underline how dark and gritty it is?

I don’t know and I’m starting to not care. Just kill everybody I love. Why not? What have you got to lose? Just kill’em all and bask in the awesome writing skill of killing characters!

That’s how you know it’s a good comic. If a lot of characters are killed, then it’s a good comic. That’s a rule of making comics. Right? Surely that’s right.

This isn’t the end of Strong Guy Watch. It’ll come back in a year or two when he’s resurrected. Because that’s the other god damned rule: characters don’t stay dead. Unless they’re Multiple Man, my all-time favorite comic book character. When he’s killed…no wait, hold off for a second. He’s actually been killed several times now. When he was killed the last time, he’s stayed dead, and Marvel has instead put a puppet in his place.

So no, my favorite comic book characters don’t get resurrected. They get replaced by a mocking simulacrum.

There is no joy in Mudville.

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