I hate it when I have to kill someone. Especially if I like them. But sometimes they just have to die.
I am talking, of course, about one of my characters. I won't name which comics series, but I was working steadily this week on some of the plot points for a comic, and a character came to the forefront that I quickly realized had to die. And the only real reason I realized that she had to die is because of what it'll do to the main character.
In order for the hero of this tale to be fully worn out by the end of the series, this hero needs to go through some significant emotional events. Major things have to happen for this person to be where I need them to be. And one of the most emotional events is to build someone up in this hero's life only to have them die and our hero to lose them. That's what happened the other night.
Also, unlike mainstream superhero work, I don't have an obligation to perpetuate this character for future generations (like Marvel must do with Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Captain America, and DC with Superman, Batman, and so on). That means when these independent comics characters die, they stay dead. It's why the characters in The Walking Dead remain dead. Independent comics have the luxury of death being a real, substantial threat in a way that mainstream superhero comics at the Big Two do not. I don't list this as a fault of the Big Two, merely as a difference between superhero comics from the Big Two and independent comics.
I'll have to delve more into this in the future, how death is different in mainstream and independent comics. For now, I've got to figure out how this girl dies. All I know is she'll never see it coming.