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Summary
Despite being introduced in Wolverine #19, her potential was cut short when she was killed off-screen in Captain America #442 by a hero-killer
Krakoa brought dead mutants back to life, so there’s still hope for La Bandera having returned off-panel
“Death Takes Its Toll” is a feature spotlighting comic book deaths that I thought were particular wastes of a worthwhile character. This is sort of like my feature, “As Cold as Ice,” about notable examples of characters being “fridged,” except that this is open to all sorts of characters and not just those that have been fridged. Today, we look at how a mutant revolutionary superhero introduced in the pages of Wolverine was unceremoniously wasted in an off-panel death.
Around ten years ago, Marvel made a decision to try to “replace” mutants in the Marvel Universe with humans who had Inhuman ancestry, and thus when they were exposed to the Terrigen Mists, their dormant Inhuman abilities kicked in. So these Inhumans were basically like mutants, living among “normal” people and then suddenly discovering that they had superpowers. So people would hate and fear this burst of “Inhumanity.” It didn’t really work, and after Disney purchased Fox, and regained the movie rights to the X-Men, mutants were allowed to return to being a major focus of Marvel Comics.
One of the interesting aspects of the Inhuman push was how characters suddenly learned that they were Inhumans, in much the same way that characters would discover that they were mutants back in the day. While in more recent years, with the Krakoan Age of the X-Men, all sorts of mutants were accepted and lived on the island of Krakoa, in the old days, while most mutants were members of the X-Men (or X-Men villains), there would be a handful of mutants who were not connected to the X-Men at all. These mutants were interesting curiosities, and it is a shame when an intriguing new revolutionary mutant, La Bandera, was unceremoniously killed off in a comic that she had never even appeared in before!
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Who was La Bandera, and what did she have to do with Wolverine?
Debuting in Wolverine #19, La Bandera was an interesting superhero. She was apparently a Cuban refugee who lived in Florida that decided to start attacking drug dealers after her father, an addict, died of a drug overdose. Eventually, she discovered that the deadly drugs that her father had overdosed on were produced in the South American country of Tierra Verde, which was ruled by a dictator. She headed to Tierra Verde, but the Kingpin, sick of Bandera’s involvement in his drug trade, hired the supervillain Tiger Shark to follow her, and kill her in Wolverine #19 (by Archie Goodwin, John Byrne and Klaus Janson, who was working from Byrne breakdowns)…
Bandera quickly showed off her mutant ability, which was to help inspire people around her, and in turn, when people WERE inspireed, she would then draw energy from their mood, and power her staff, allowing it to fire energy blasts…
They won the initial battle with Tiger Shark, but Wolverine (who was also in Tierra Verde tracking down the drugs) correctly noted that they it was a breather, not the end of the battle, and that since her power only works when there are other people around her to feed her staff, she really should just get out of here, and not continue her exploits…
Obviously, Bandera doesn’t listen to Wolverine, and she continues her activities in Tierra Verde (Tiger Shark, by the way, was the villain of Wolverine #19-20 because those issues were tie-ins for the Marvel company-wide crossover, Acts of Vengeance, which was based around the idea of superheroes fighting against supervillains that they normally wouldn’t fight, with the theory being that the heroes might not be prepared for the abilities of these unknown villains).
Wolverine gets involved with a storyline where it turns out that these new, deadlier drugs, are packaged with a sort of alien being known as Spore, looking for a host. Wolverine is able to fight it off, but regular humans were not, which is why so many drug addicts were dying from this new cocaine. When they die, Spore finds a new host. While Wolverine fighting his way to the dictator of the nation, in comes Bandera in Wolverine #22 (by Goodwin, Byrne and Janson), leading the revolution…
It’s a really great page by Byrne and Janson.
Well, the dictator (who was preparing to let his son become the host for Spore) becomes the host for Spore, leading to a finale in Wolverine #23 (by Goodwin and Byrne, with Byrne doing the full art for this last issue) where Wolverine is seemingly smothered to death by Spore, and Bandera is all alone…
Luckily, Wolverine cut himself OUT of Spore, and that inspired Bandera, and she, in turn, inspired everyone else to fight Spore (and their spirit charged up her pole to shoot out energy)…
Bandera goes on to complete the revolution, but, well, what do you do when you’re a teenage girl and you just took over a country? She is totally lost, but Wolverine gives her a pep talk before he leaves…
That is a great setup for a superhero.
Kurt Busiek, Tod Smith and Ian Akin used Bandera in a great What If…? issue (#47) where most of the mutants on Earth were killed, but Wolverine freed a handful of suvivors who were in prison to start the X-Men all over again, and Bandera was one of the mutants on the team…
If you’re good enough to catch Kurt Busiek’s eye, you’re probably good enough to do more with!
And yet, instead…
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How was La Bandera killed off?
Early in his run on Captain America, Mark Gruenwald helped cull Marvel’s roster of supervillains, as Gruenwald felt that there was a glut that didn’t make sense in-universe. So he invented the Scourge of the Underworld, a villain who killed other villains, with Gruenwald eliminating the “unwanted” supervillains of the Marvel Universe. He later regretted the idea, noting:
Well…occasionally for dramatic necessity or long-term character development I still have to – ahem – write out certain characters, but I’m no longer the advocate of wholesale housecleaning. I believe that every character, no matter how humble his origins, may be of use to some writer or another, so I have no right to retire that character from the character pool we all share!
What’s funny about that is that he still used one of his final issues of his Captain America run, Captain America #442 (by Gruenwald, Dave Hoover, Sandu Florea and Danny Bulanadi) to kill off pretty much every South American-based Marvel superhero, OFF-PANEL! On the first page of the issue, a German superhero is looking into recent murders of superheroes, and La Bandera is just mentioned as one of the ones who was killed…
That’s pretty ridiculous.
Krakoa brought mutants back to life, so hopefully La Bandera returned, as well, and we’ll see her somewhere in the future!
Okay, folks, I’m sure you have lots of suggestions for this feature, so feel free to send them to me at brianc@cbr.com!
“}]] In a feature spotlighting seemingly ‘wasted’ comic book deaths, CSBG looks at how Marvel threw away an interesting mutant revolutionary superhero Read More