Death is the second most non-event in comics these days.

Resurrection is the first.

Nothing is more boring than the return of a fallen hero (or villain) after they died some years ago. Whether their death was meaningful (Colossus) or mind-numbingly absent-minded (Hawkeye). Their return is never as interesting as the death, but it does bring the character’s book to the eternally sought after goal of “status quo.” Of course, following suit after the supposed event of resurrection is the media storm by the publisher. It used to be that an article in Wizard would suffice, but since the industry has bigger eyes now, the news is broken in legit newspapers like USA Today and the New York Times.

The latest example of this media-frenzied approach is Marvel’s announcement that the original Captain America, Steve Rogers, will be returning to life after a two year absence following his assassination in the aftermath of Civil War. His mantle and ongoing book were taken over by his one-time partner, “Bucky” Barnes, and a core cast of supporting characters including Sharon Carter, the Black Widow and the Falcon. Sales of the book fell some from the insane highs of Rogers’s death, but it remained a healthy and viable seller as compared to the random superheroics of the book’s past. From a storytelling point of view, Captain America’s book hasn’t hit notes this high in a long time – if ever. The intrigue and covert action of the ongoing plot concerning Sharon Carter and the Red Skull (among other interesting relationships and dynamics) has kept readers hooked.

Now if the “Bucky Cap” version of the book is doing so well, why is Steve Rogers coming back? In an effort to not spoil anything major from the storyline (because if you haven’t read Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America you should buy the trades now), the rebirth is not all together shocking given the events of the past two years. The plot has been about both Rogers’s legacy in both literal and metaphorical terms from the day of his death. The machinations of the Red Skull and his consortium have set the stage perfectly for Rogers to elude death in the long run which is why his return in this month’s Captain America: Reborn limited series is not a slap in the face to readers like the resurrection of Piotr Rasputin in Astonishing X-Men. Colossus sacrificed himself to cure the mutant-killing Legacy Virus, a disease his own sister fell prey to. His death meant something because he had to atone for killing her, for bringing her into the world of the X-Men. His return, while an interesting read, cut the throat of the original story and sapped it of its resonance. Let us not even get into the effect his sister’s ultimate return to the living had on that story either.

Okay, so we’ve established that the story of Rogers’s return from the dead should be a success on a creative level, but will it be a success on a financial level? Let’s look at the facts as they stand now. The April issue (#49) sold just shy of 64,000. May’s #50 managed to sell just under 67,000 copies while numbers aren’t available yet for June’s #600 (the book transitioned back to its original numbering as if it had never been relaunched). It should be noted that the 600th issue recently sold out at Diamond and is going back to press for a second printing. It was far from an instant sell-out and we’ve seen bigger event sellers even in 2009 alone. Both of these numbers are head and shoulders above what the book sold before Brubaker took it over some years ago and they even have the book floating in and just out of the top ten most months. Putting Brubaker on the book was a solid relaunch to say the least.

What makes #600 interesting is that Marvel thought it was going to be a massive hit outside of the comics press, something akin to Spider-Man unmasking for the opening salvo of their Civil War. They had an exclusive deal to break the news of Rogers’s return in the NY Daily News. They even had the issue ship separately on a Monday in an unprecedented move to make the book available in retail stores the day the article ran in the paper. All good things, right? Media attention, making the book available on time – they even told retailers ahead of time that there would be mass media exposure for the issue and to stock up ahead of time.

The problem is that not many people in the outside world cared much. It was news when Captain America died on the steps of a New York City courthouse. It is not news that a two year long stoyline detailing his resurrection is culminating in a six issue limited series due out in July. The reason it was news when he died the first time was because we were still hip deep in a war that didn’t have an end point (arguably not true any more … kind of) and people were beginning to question who we were as a nation. Rogers embodied America spiritually and aesthetics. His death (at a courthouse no less) resonated with organizations like the NY Times because it was a statement that things were changing and we didn’t know what was on the horizon.

His resurrection lacks the same tether to the nation’s heartstrings. There is no defining moment to focus on like seeing a handcuffed Cap bleeding to death on the courthouse stairs. There is also a serious dearth of hope these days given the state of both the country and the world. While I’m all for Cap’s return to be the beacon of change and usher in said hope, I’m not sure I’d wager my mortgage on that one just yet.

Simply put, death is something the general masses can understand. Resurrections, body doubles, evil twins and alternate realities take too much time to explain before their eyes gloss over and we get dismissed as enjoying juvenile forms of art. Debuting these events in major newspapers only works if you can explain the story in the headline. If it takes more than that, the audience has been lost and publishers are left preaching to the choir, just through a different medium.

Let’s look at one of the more sci-fi entities to hit the mass media in recent years – the television show Lost. While the last few seasons have run rampant with sci-fi standards such as time traveling, teleportation, and even affecting the time stream. Why can Lost do it and Captain America can’t?

The more obvious of the two reasons is that television is a more accepted medium than comic books. It’s a more “legitimate” art form so it goes under less scrutiny than our beloved funnybooks. The other reason is that the show started out as decidedly un-science fiction. The first season dealt with people surviving on an island with a few hints of more to come. Even the second season, while hinting more and more at the mysteries to come, dared not tread into the dark waters of time travel. The show gained an audience and legitimacy in the mainstream before it introduced the traditional tropes of sci-fi. It almost seems unfair for the show to lure in viewers before surprising them with the more trippy themes, but it may be the only way to get it to a mass audience.

In Cap’s case, most people haven’t been reading the book for the past two years. They haven’t seen the real world scenarios of the new Captain America. The first they will see of Cap since his death will be this time-traveling story full of super powered machines and megalomaniacal supervillains. For people not used to these sorts of story points, it will be a jarring point of interest in the Reborn limited series.

So the question we all must ponder now is, “Why did Marvel push this as a mass media event?” Was it simply a matter of them not being in the headlines lately or knowing they didn’t have anything coming down the pike for a while? Admittedly, keeping their PR profile high is understandable enough, but couldn’t they announce one of the movie deals struck recently? Or how about how two of their flagship characters are hitting the landmark 600th issues? (Not to mention a third book hitting the same number being Captain America itself, which kicked off this whole fiasco.)

All that said, I can’t wait to see what Brubaker has in store for Rogers, Bucky, Sharon, the Widow, the Falcon and just about everyone else to appear in the book for the past few years.