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Oct 7, 2020

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2051: Lady Death: Mischief Night #1, November 2001

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I read a little bit of Avengelyne a while back, and noted the fact that, like Chaos!, Avatar seems to publish it's characters ongoing adventures as a series of discrete series, rather than as a single, continuing piece. I think that it must be a marketing thing, though I suppose it also gives a chance for creators to keep on schedule with breaks between each series.

Today's issue throws a bit of a wrench in the works, though. Set between the events of the Alive and Last Rites series, Lady Death has an adventure involving Sarah, the young woman she rescues in Alive, and who returns to her everyday life in the Last Rites series. According to today's issue, Sarah manifests an entity called Shriek who attempts to spread and/or quell fear - it was a bit unclear. However, in the first issue of Last Rites, there's absolutely no mention of this event, only that Sarah needs to return to her family. Both were written by John Ostrander, and both were published not too distantly from one another, so it just seems to be sloppy writing to not mention the previous/subsequent adventure (chronologically versus publication, that is.)

That said, I quite liked today's story. As Sarah is a teenager, when she turns into Shriek she is, unlike every other Chaos! lady, actually completely clad in a costume and her breasts aren't the size of her head. It was a nice change. There was some interesting philosophical stuff about death being the source of all fear that I really think could have been addressed a bit more fully, but as this was meant as a holiday-themed one-shot I can understand why it wouldn't have gone that route. I'm curious to see if the earlier Lady Death stuff deals with that fear, or if it's only after the main character becomes mortal again that we start to see some consideration of what death, and Lady Death, mean to finite creatures like ourselves.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I really ought to go back and tag the rest, but here's some other holiday-themed comics I've reviewed. Surely there must be more out there than just Christmas stuff, though.

And another take on Death, famously, appears in Star*Reach #1.

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