Death Impact
Jonathan "Junior" Juniper was killed in action after a few issues of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. As the magazine Jack Kirby Collector wrote in 1999, "Today that's no big deal but in 1963, comics heroes simply didn't die; not permanently, anyway. Suddenly, with the death of 'Junior' Juniper, the series acquired some real cachet. It now played like a true-life war drama where people got killed and never came back. You wondered who would be next."
This question is clearly written in the comic book when the Howling Commandos react to the death of their youngest member. The character Dino Manelli said "Which of us will be next?" and his team-mate Izzy Cohen answered "What's the diff? We're all expendable." Paul Brian McCoy reviewed this issue for Comics Bulletin and considers it as the "best thing Marvel's publishing in 1963." The story "Lord Ha-Ha's Last Laugh!" mixes emotional complexity, action and adventure. This is the first time a main character has actually died in a Marvel Comic. As the comic writer and editor Tom Defalco told it in an interview, some of the early Marvel fans were startled by the death of "Junior" Juniper.
Read more about this topic: Junior Juniper
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or impact:
“You listen to artists fighting with each other, competing to the death like gladiators, in order to see who is going to get into a show, who is going to make it, who isn’t: who is going to get a full-page ad and who is going to get a half-page. Then I think, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go off somewhere and just do your work?””
—Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)
“Conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)