Just something kicking around in my head, figured I'd make a rare journey over to comic vine to see what people think.
So what's the deal to reconcile Neil Gaiman's Death with Jack Kirby's Black Racer. I've seen this kind of brought up on another forum from some random website but it didn't get any replies and they threw Nekron in the mix but he's taken care of by the end of Blackest Night so I'm not concerned.
What I am curious about is how we have two versions of Death personified who seem to coexist and yet are kind of eluded to, tangentially connected via writer, or at least brought up from time to time yet neither seems to be subservient to the other nor do they seem to be the same being.
I'll start by citing some stuff. So in Final Crisis we see the Black Racer toward the end, he takes Darkseid away. Final Crisis being written by Morrison who I think writes the New Gods the most like Kirby did. Morrison also did that great run on Justice League back in the 90's and one of the arcs Strength in Numbers had Sandman in it which obviously means that Morrison was at the very least aware of Death. I guess you can say it's not that big of a deal but I'd have to disagree because Morrison is the single continuity guy so I do think there has to be some kind of reasoning here.
Then there was Death's appearance in the Black Ring story of Action comics where she has that talk with Lex Luthor. When he's questioning her she says something to the effect of "Surprised there's no scythe or skies?". The scythe is an obvious reference to the typical Grim Reaper but the skies mean that she's referencing the Black Racer. So the writer was at the very least aware of the other big version of Death in the DCU.
One out that I could think of was that throughout Sandman we see Morpheus change form depending on who looks at him. There's this incident when he runs into Martian Manhunter http://www.graphixia.cssgn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SandmanMM2.jpg So you could say that Death changes form and the New Gods just see her as the Black Racer. But in the example above, and every other time we see Sandman change form he still remains the same character so I don't think that really works here, that and we never really see Death chasing people down. Nor does she usually come to someone before they die, it's mostly after the fact. That and The Black Racer kind of becomes other people in a passing the mantel way, that's part of it from the first issue he appears in. We never see Death do anything like that.
Apparently in an issue of Captain Atom Death and The Black Racer are shown together and it's explained that they're both equally a part of death http://onceuponageek.com/images/death_captainatom.jpg But Gaiman shot this down. Again that wouldn't really matter most of the time but Gaiman did a lot of back flips in Sandman to keep characters in canon so he has to care about this somewhat.
So anyway that's all I've got, looking for other theories and speculation since there's not much else on the web. It might just have to come down to either Morrison or Gaiman making it work in a comic, I know Gaiman is writing out Sandman again so maybe he'll handle it. On a personal level while I love Morrison and Kirby and Gaiman I like Death more than the Black Racer just because she's a fresher take on the concept of personifying death and she has a lot more literary value than does The Black Racer, nothing against Kirby but Death has made me cry and The Black Racer has just been neat.
Log in to comment