Hello and welcome to Comic Drake, where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake.
All things must die and the fear of death has culminated in personifications of death
and they have existed throughout all of culture, from the Grim Reaper to shinigami.
So it only makes sense that comic books would have their own as well, but DC Comics doesn’t
have one Grim Reaper figure.
In fact, they have several.
So, let’s take a look at all of ‘em!
Okay, we’re going to start this off with the biggest and most obvious place to start,
Death.
Death is one of The Endless, some of the most powerful beings in the DC multiverse that
I’ve been dying to make a video about for ages.
She isn’t an aspect of death or anything like that.
She straight up IS Death.
She is the concept, the action.
Personally, she is one of my favorite interpretations of the Grim Reaper in all of pop culture.
Death is laid back and sassy with a delightful goth girl aesthetic.
It’s so much more interesting than just another skeleton guy in a robe.
Her somewhat playful nature adds to the mystery of the character, like the Cheshire Cat.
There’s always something behind that cool demeanor and she always seems like she just
knows something that you don’t.
Like all of the Endless, Death has her own special rules and set of quirks.
One of my favorites is that she takes on a mortal form for one day every one hundred
years to better understand the life she that she’s taking away and at the end of her
time, Death is ultimately the one who reaps her own soul.
So while Death herself literally IS death, I’d be remiss if I didn’t go into some
other characters that serve a Grim Reaper-like role in DC Comics.
So let’s move onto the entity that most resembles the traditional depiction, Nekron.
This guy is the Lord of the Unliving and he presides over the Land of Unliving, which
I guess makes sense.
Anyway it’s a place sort of in between Heaven and Hell that may or may not actually be Limbo.
Honestly, the Limbo concept was never quite dived into regarding the current map of the
DC multiverse.
Anyway, according to writer Geoff Johns, Nekron is the first evil that the Guardians of the
Universe ever faced and was the reason they decided to protect the universe in the first
place, which eventually lead to the creation of the Green Lantern Corps, and looking really
different than his modern interpretation.
More notably though, is that he is the creator and the leader of the Black Lantern Corps
and is the main antagonist of the awesome Blackest Night event.
Black Lanterns are powered by the darkness that surrounds the Emotional Spectrum and
where ringslingers like the Green and Red Lanterns use willpower and anger to fuel their
rings respectively, the Black Lanterns literally use death.
Now, Nekron doesn’t have a traditional power ring, but in the same interview with Geoff
Johns mentioned earlier, he confirmed that the lantern built into his scythe is in fact
a power battery.
I absolutely adore how Nekron was brought back into the spotlight with Blackest Night,
especially since he was a pretty obscure character prior.
Kind of like the Black Racer.
It’s safe to say that many comics fans are familiar with the New Gods or at the VERY
least, Darkseid.
Yet for these titanic entities that exist outside the traditional three dimensional
concept of the multiverse, who takes their souls?
Well, that would be The Black Racer.
Controlled by The Source, a metaphysical manifestation of the blank paper that comics are drawn on,
the Black Racer isn’t a single entity, but rather a job, title, and powerset that is
passed along.
The most famous of which being a human named Willie Walker, a veteran who was paralyzed
during the Vietnam War.
Black Racer gets around on a pair of cosmic skis which is absolutely delightful.
I mean his creator, Jack Kirby already made a dude that gets around on a cosmic surfboard
so skis are a pretty natural fit.
Black Racer was killed in the Death of the New Gods mini-series, but was brought back
a year later for the Final Crisis event where Barry Allen managed to have the Black Racer
chase him and sort of use this cosmic entity as a bullet against Darkseid.
This Black Racer design though was DRASTICALLY different from the classic Willie Walker design
prior so it’s unknown if it’s the same dude or not.
Post Flashpoint, we haven’t seen much of the Black Racer.
Like seriously, in his first appearance, he was on panel for like two pages before the
Anti-Monitor fused him with The Flash.
I wish there was more to talk about, but there really isn’t
Now there’s one elephant in the room that I’ve been avoiding until I mentioned all
three of these characters.
In Captain Atom #41 in 1990, the cap encounters all three of these entities and it is mentioned
that they are aspects of death with Death of the Endless representing death as mercy/compassion.
Death of the Endless, on the other hand, personally comments that the Black Racer represents death
as an inevitability and the Phantom Stranger (who just kind of shows up) says that Nekron
represents death as a cosmic certainty and death as the ultimate opponent.
Neil Gaiman, the creator of The Endless, has been reported as saying “I just felt it
confused things — she wasn’t an “aspect” of Death.
She was Death.
When one day Nekron or the Black Racer stops existing, she’ll be there to take them.
If the script or lettered comic had been run by me back then I would have noticed the continuity
issues and corrected them.
As it was, it wasn’t a big deal: it was a fine comic as far as it went, but it tries
to shoehorn Death into DC Continuity and got it wrong.
So I clarified matters in Sandman 20.”
Greg Weisman, though, one of the writers of the Captain Atom issue, went on to defend
it saying that he tried to be intentionally vague and had Captain Atom guess Death’s
function and her relationship with Nekron and the Black Racer.
Since nobody in the issue told the captain that he guessed right, there’s nothing that
directly contradicts Neil Gaimon’s work.
However, that’s kind of a load of bull since Captain Atom only speculated about Death of
the Endless.
Now that’s fine and all but it was Phantom Stranger and Death, two VERY powerful cosmic
beings, that were the ones that confirmed the roles of Black Racer and Nekron, so that’s
not really being intentionally vague, that’s kind of making a definitive statement.
All of this is kind of a null point though since this was before the Flashpoint reboot,
but it still rustles my Jimmys.
If you want, go ahead and leave your interpretation in the comments below, because I would love
to know them.
However, we’ve got one more harbinger of death to talk about, the grim reaper of the
DC Comics speedsters, the Black Flash.
Although there are speedsters out the wazoo and several have been taken by this entity,
there’s not actually a whole lot that we know about this thing or even why it resembles
The Flash in the first place.
What we do know is that the Black Flash is an entity of the Speed Force and as such,
it can only be seen by speedsters.
Black Flash tends to appear slightly before a speedster’s death and corrupts time when
it enters the physical dimension, causing almost everything that hasn’t been connected
to the Speed Force for years to slow to a stop.
It’s also interesting in that speedsters don’t seem to die in the traditional sense.
Instead of moving on to Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, speedsters become one with the Speed Force
itself, making it a bit like speedster Valhalla.
However, Black Flash is ALSO a point of contention when it comes to continuity.
Yeah, as if one wasn’t already enough for the damn video.
So in the Final Crisis event, Wally West implies that Black Flash and Black Racer are the same
entity, a topic that is lightly touched on again later that year in The Flash: Rebirth.
So is this true?
Well Black Flash was originally created by Mark Millar and Grant Morrison and considering
that the first instance of Black Flash and Black Racer being implied to be the same entity
was in Final Crisis, a book WRITTEN by Morrison, it seems that would pretty much be word of
god.
It’s also worth noting that in Black Racer’s first appearance, he mentions that the Black
Racer is an entity that is made up of many messengers.
It’s very possible that Black Flash is just one of those parts.
However, this is still up to debate and interpretation.
So again, I’d honestly love to hear your take in the comments below!
At the end of the day though, Death of the Endless is the one true Death in my opinion
and at the inevitable end of the multiverse and when the death of all things occurs, even
Nekron, Black Racer, and Black Flash WILL eventually die and it’s Death that will
take them.
In the end, Death is the last thing that will ever exist, alone for eternity.
Wow, that was a... really bleak way to end the video.
But if you liked the video then why not consider subscribing, or even watching another one?
In fact, with all of this talk about death, you might be interested on the video that
I did on DC’s version of Hell.
I did a LOT of research on the topic and I think it’s probably one of the most comprehensive
things about it on the internet!
So, give that a watch but anyway I hope you learned at least a little something new, and
maybe, I’ll see you next time.