How many innocent people mass murdered in the Marvel Universe in last 20 years?

[brettc1]

Whoever was writing the Hulk at the time (Pak?) and would rather not deal with the baggage of his hero having killed innocent children and their puppy, yes. The issue there was not nameless, worthless background fodder dying, but that it was actively the result of a hero doing it (see also: all the controversy over Superman annihilating Metropolis in Man of Steel). But other than that, it's not a big deal. Your average person just doesn't care about nameless extras because centuries of narrative language have trained us not to.

Fun experiment: if you surveyed 100 people who had seen the original Star Wars and asked them what drew a bigger emotional response, Obi-Wan getting killed by Darth Vader, or an entire planet full of innocent people being blown up by the Death Star, the vast majority would say Obi-Wan. Not because a single old man dying is sadder than billions of people, but because one was a character the audience actually knew and had investment in, while the others were nameless, faceless cannon fodder that the director didn't even care enough about to show a reaction shot of as they died screaming.

That's just the way stories work.

Agreed, but part of that is also the pacing of the story. Not to mention the fact Kenobi was not “dead dead” literally twenty seconds later.

Regarding Alderaan - you don’t see people running and screaming. But what you say about faceless victims doesn’t quite ring true with Marvel because often we do see the victims, or enough of them to comprehend the emotional impact of what’s happening.

Personally I have no problem connecting with the impact of mass murders however large the numbers.

[JudicatorPrime]

In the last 20 years according to Marvel's timeline, or according to real time? Pretty sure an entire multiverse was wiped out and not everyone returned. Then there's Thanos wiping out half of all living being in his IG ode to Death. Some reversed, but can we be sure? Plus, didn't Immortus or someone make it their job to wipe out alternate timelines? Given that Time is now seen as fluid and perfectly ok no matter how many changes occur to the timestream, those deaths should count, too. Incalculable number of deaths there.

[dreyga2000]

In the last 20 years according to Marvel's timeline, or according to real time? Pretty sure an entire multiverse was wiped out and not everyone returned. Then there's Thanos wiping out half of all living being in his IG ode to Death. Some reversed, but can we be sure? Plus, didn't Immortus or someone make it their job to wipe out alternate timelines? Given that Time is now seen as fluid and perfectly ok no matter how many changes occur to the timestream, those deaths should count, too. Incalculable number of deaths there.

Is blinking out of the existence the same as dying? If the whole timeline is no one it's like were never born in the first place.

[JudicatorPrime]

Is blinking out of the existence the same as dying? If the whole timeline is no one it's like were never born in the first place.

Dead is dead. At some point the timeline did exist. Snuffing out the timeline after the fact still results in those once living souls going somewhere -- presumably the astral plane, which was originally created as a boundless plane of existence that crosses all realities. You also have to remember that there are living beings that exist in some timelines who don't exist in other alternate timelines -- people who exist due to the butterfly effect or Schrödinger's cat (quantum superposition), and not necessarily because of the inflection point were the timeline was derailed. Wiping out the entire "divergent" timeline kills those unique beings, too.

[brettc1]

In the last 20 years according to Marvel's timeline, or according to real time? Pretty sure an entire multiverse was wiped out and not everyone returned. Then there's Thanos wiping out half of all living being in his IG ode to Death. Some reversed, but can we be sure? Plus, didn't Immortus or someone make it their job to wipe out alternate timelines? Given that Time is now seen as fluid and perfectly ok no matter how many changes occur to the timestream, those deaths should count, too. Incalculable number of deaths there.

The last 20 years of stories.

In all cases where people [being Earth civilians] were killed and then restored [eg Thanos and Secret Wars] we don't count them.

Also why hero deaths don't count. They almost never last...

[Sutekh]

Secret Empire: Hydra Cap blew up Las Vegas.

And it got utterly destroyed in Fear, Itself by a combination of a hammer-enhanced Juggernaut, and a fight between Gravity and Hardball, which set off a massive earthquake and killed anyone left in the city, which was flattened. But gosh, the heroes managed to heroically save themselves! (While the Juggernaut laughed that they'd done more damage than he had and left.) It's already kind of grim when a bunch of people die *despite* the heroes, but when a bunch of people die *because* of the heroes? Ugh.

And it was never mentioned again. 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas' indeed.

I do miss me some Silver Age nonsense where big events could happen and 'luckily, no one was hurt!' Sure it wasn't 'realistic' but neither were flying people in tights, and I was along for the ride anyway.

[Alan2099]

I do miss me some Silver Age nonsense where big events could happen and 'luckily, no one was hurt!' Sure it wasn't 'realistic' but neither were flying people in tights, and I was along for the ride anyway.

I miss that too. I also miss when stories went "We have to stop that villain before he kills a lot of innocent people!" instead of "That villain just killed a bunch of innocent people! We have to stop them!"

[Sutekh]

I miss that too. I also miss when stories went "We have to stop that villain before he kills a lot of innocent people!" instead of "That villain just killed a bunch of innocent people! We have to stop them!"

Yeah, I know it was all silly and feelgood and 'unrealistic,' but it made the heroes feel a bit more competent and capable when the cover showed some terrible thing happening and you'd read the book and the people 'dying' on the cover turn out to be robots or whatever, because the heroes tricked the villains and swapped out the hostages or something clever.

The heroes today feel more reactive, and they seem less able to stop bad things happening. 'Oh, a bunch of people have already been horribly killed! I guess I better go punch whoever did it!'

[PCN24454]

Yeah, I know it was all silly and feelgood and 'unrealistic,' but it made the heroes feel a bit more competent and capable when the cover showed some terrible thing happening and you'd read the book and the people 'dying' on the cover turn out to be robots or whatever, because the heroes tricked the villains and swapped out the hostages or something clever.

The heroes today feel more reactive, and they seem less able to stop bad things happening. 'Oh, a bunch of people have already been horribly killed! I guess I better go punch whoever did it!'

Sadly, superheroes are restricted by the narrative.

[ChrisIII]

Don't forget namor also flooded new york in the 40s!

Didn't kang blow up a full state in that one story? Also don't forget the mutant massacre. A lot of deaths there also. Inferno had demons taking over new York. Did anyone die in it?

There's a possessed elevator in the Empire State building that appears to kill a lot of people (including in a particularly gory fashion witnessed by Magneto and the Hellfire club), but given the whole supernatural aspect of the storyline I'm not sure if that was undone/illusion or something, although some of the elevator people do survive and show up as M Squad in the mall issue which introduced Jubilee (and of course inspired the animated series pilot).

[ChrisIII]

Whoever was writing the Hulk at the time (Pak?) and would rather not deal with the baggage of his hero having killed innocent children and their puppy, yes. The issue there was not nameless, worthless background fodder dying, but that it was actively the result of a hero doing it (see also: all the controversy over Superman annihilating Metropolis in Man of Steel). But other than that, it's not a big deal. Your average person just doesn't care about nameless extras because centuries of narrative language have trained us not to.

Fun experiment: if you surveyed 100 people who had seen the original Star Wars and asked them what drew a bigger emotional response, Obi-Wan getting killed by Darth Vader, or an entire planet full of innocent people being blown up by the Death Star, the vast majority would say Obi-Wan. Not because a single old man dying is sadder than billions of people, but because one was a character the audience actually knew and had investment in, while the others were nameless, faceless cannon fodder that the director didn't even care enough about to show a reaction shot of as they died screaming.

That's just the way stories work.

I think in that case it's sort of explained away in part-even before the retcon-that the Hulk's most destructive rages in #300-323 were because Banner(and presumabely the other Hulk personas) were buried incredibly deep (Before the "Crossroads" arc) or Banner was physically seperated from the Hulk, resulting in a totally mindless monster.

[Snoop Dogg]

The original text of the Namor flood said that people evacuated so #NamorDidNothingWrong.

[davew128]

Large scale murder has been going on for a long time on Marvel Earth, going back to the 80's. What the Dire Wraiths did to their victims was horrible. Inferno was pretty horrific and had a high death toll around NYC. I'm sure the symbiotes have killed their fair share of people as well, not to mention any time the Brood arrived on Earth. Then the red mist Red Skull unleashed on Mount Rushmore.

[PCN24454]

I think the problem is that even when there’s a lasting effect on the mentality of the general populace, the actual numbers never actually decrease.

Most of the people killed “didn’t exist” until they died. When they do, they’re easily replaced by other generic NPC characters.

It’s the same reason why characters like Goku and Superman who were the last of their races always seem to find more of them.

[Chris0013]

Don't forget Red Skull's daughter and her whole Blitzkrieg USA thing. Pretty sure there was a body count on that one.