A lot of people are mad with Hopeless (and with reason) for the meaningless deaths of beloved characters in "Avengers Arena", and are mad with Marvel because them allowed it. But, if we look at the past, we can see that killing characters that nobody else knows what to do with just for shock value is actually very common, it didn't start yesterday.
In CIVIL WAR, New Warriors Night Trasher and Namorita died just for move the main plot forward, and Speedball was dramatically changed to Penance.
In NEW AVENGERS arc "The Collective", the Alpha Flight team was almost entirely killed by Michael Pointer.
The original Toxin Patrick Mulligan even starred his own mini-series, and was killed off-screen in VENOM
I can't count how many NEW X-MEN students died in the "Crusade" story arc, but just to name a few: Icarus, Tag, Wallflower. Besides the survivor students are still used as cannon fodder in any important X-Men events, like Onyxx meaningless death in Necrosha.
Switching to DC COMICS, in INFINITE CRISIS a lot of Teen Titans were killed by Superboy Prime and a lot more were killed by Black Adam in WORLD WAR III.
Now, I don't think Hopeless is right, I actually think using characters as cannon fodder is very very bad, BUT the only difference I see between AVENGERS ARENA and all those other comics is that the main plot of Arena IS the death of the characters and some of them even have the "honor" of a heroic death like
while all those others only use the characters as cannon fodder to move their own plot forward.
So the problem isn't with Arena and Hopeless, the problem is with the way Marvel and DC treat characters that nobody knows what to do with anymore.
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