@Manbehindthewires: Whether you meant it or not doesn't change whether you're deriving pleasure from something hurting other people or not. It's one thing to say "I'm enjoying the high stakes, but I wish there were a way to do it without hurting people's emotions." It's quite another to say "I'm enjoying the high stakes, and the fact that this is hurting people's emotions is a good sign." Even if I give you, personally, the benefit of the doubt and assume you mean the former, there are plenty of people saying the latter, and that sickens me. As it turns out, I don't enjoy these books because these characters risk their lives. I don't consider death or "ultimate" stakes fundamental to good action, and I consider them far less fundamental (perhaps even antithetical, as they're prone to misuse) to good storytelling and character development.
Risk, by the way, is only really a useful thing when used in tandem with choice. If I do something risky, I am doing something despite knowing it could end badly because I've decided that the ultimate consequence is worth the potential bad. So yeah, in a sense Marvel is being risky in that it's risking pissing off and/or losing readers, and has decided that's worth it because it might drive sales due to the controversial nature of the book. None of the characters, however, are risking their lives, because none of them had any choice over the situation and can do absolutely nothing to make themselves safe. None of them has a higher goal they are putting themselves in jeopardy for in order to accomplish.
If the evolution of comics is characters who don't want to kill being forced to kill, and kids who want to be safe being forced into death traps, and the only way to make people care about your characters is to physically and psychologically torture them, then we are "evolving" towards extinction.
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