The central premise of this editorial series is that business lessons are life lessons, and life lessons are often found in CBM-related media. With that in mind, I attempt to describe the business lessons that can be found in these art forms. Let’s get started…
On my train ride home from work, a man sitting next to me began reading a backdated comic book. It was Captain America #25, which chronicles the death of Steve Rogers in the epilogue to the Civil War crossover event. If you haven’t read it yet, consider making a stop at your local comic shop because it was the highest selling comic of the month for good reason and the story was even picked up by several media outlets. ABC’s Bryan Robinson shares its allegory to the general public by saying,
“You're not crazy if you think Captain America's struggle parallels the debates over the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the Bush domestic surveillance program and other controversial programs in the post-Sept. 11 world.”
Civil War is easily my favourite storyline in comics and I join many CBM readers in wanting to see it translated onto the big screen someday. But when looking back on Captain America’s death, I was reminded that many great stories have been written about him since his rebirth only a year later.
Over the last 20 years, a number of high-profile characters were killed off, causing fans to question the future of several flagship titles. DC comics' list of (temporarily) fallen heroes includes Superman, Batman The Flash and Green Arrow. Likewise, Marvel is no stranger to this attention-grabbing device, having killed and revived numerous X-Men, The Human Torch and Spider-Man over the years. It happens so often that fans now read with the expectation that characters will only stay dead for a short period. To make matters worse, revival storylines are usually not as carefully planned as deaths. Nevertheless, a hero’s death creates the kind of media buzz publishers salivate over, which stirs water cooler conversation and a flurry of tweets from across the globe. That kind of response can only be good for an industry fighting to stay relevant in a world of action-packed media, right?
Here’s the problem: we may have surpassed the Goldilocks zone where the perfect amount of characters are killed to make their deaths both shocking and meaningful. In microeconomics, this is can be explained by the law of diminishing marginal returns. It tells us that when we keep adding more and more of one input, the end result keeps getting better up to a certain point, after which it will peak and then decline. The concept may have originated to understand crop yields and manufacturing processes during the industrial revolution, but the logic behind it can be observed in many areas, including comics.
If you’re thinking that these revivals only occur in print, think of all comic stories currently being translated into other media. This year alone, we were gripped by changes to the X-Men movie timeline as a result of Days of Future Past and the revival of a major character in season two of the CW’s Arrow.
After reading through all these stories, you might see this is as a tired gimmick; realizing that companies specializing in building intellectual properties aren’t crazy enough to permanently wipe out their most valuable assets. On the other hand, maybe you just want to watch the drama unfold without worrying about the consequences. Regardless of your stance on the issue, remember that too much of a good thing is simply bad economics.
- Another life lesson courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood MBA
@Mrmo416