Fan reaction was telling.

Shock and horror ripped through the then-fledgling comics industry. Because not only was Jean Gray a founding member of the X-Men and the major love interest of Cyclops, but the storyline had revolved around her for the past twelve months or so. And yet, in a surprise ending that shocked the comics world -- and it was genuine shock -- Jean had sacrificed herself to save the lives of her companions, dying right before the glowing eyes of her boyfriend.

It was a very sad moment. People cried. The offices of Marvel were swamped with letters of protest, some of them downright angry -- how could you kill off Jean?, they demanded. And Chris Claremont, the writer of this hideous death scene, shrugged his shoulders and said that it was editorial influences that forced his hand ... he wanted Jean to live, but he had to write it like Marvel wanted it.

Sound familiar yet?

People signed petitions and sent them in to Marvel. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the history of comics. Sure, people had died, but they were always the mentors, the secondary characters, the villains -- never the main character. You didn't kill off your stars ... but that's just what Marvel had done.

Eventually, people grew to realize that she was dead. And Jean Gray remained dead for a very long time.

But she was not forgotten.

Her bereaved boyfriend, Scott Summers, eventually got over it and began dating another woman, prompting a furious fan reaction from those who remembered Jean Gray. He dated her for quite a while ...

... until Marvel's sales began to drop.

The X-Men was still their number-one comic, but the sales were tailing off. What they needed was some big event, some huge happening that would draw the old fans back and create new ones -- something to create excitement. What they needed, in fact, was something as big as, say, when Jean Gray died.

You can hear the editors now, can't you? "If it was that big when she died .... well! Imagine how big it'll be if we bring her back!"

Which they did. I won't get into the cockamamie method they used to resurrect Jean Gray, but all you need to know was that, much like Spock's farcical return in Star Trek III, it was poorly-plotted, didn't make much sense, and the fans ate it up like candy at a bulimic's banquet. The fans didn't care how Marvel brought Jean back, or that her return had made her initial sacrifice meaningless, or that Jean's return meant that the current romance between Scott and his new girlfriend was completely redundant...

... no, all they cared was that she was back, and all was happiness for awhile.

Cut to fifteen years later.

Now the concept of death in Marvel comics is a joke, and nobody takes it seriously. People fall in and rise out of their graves with astonishing consistency -- there is a revolving door on the afterlife in the Marvel universe. There isn't a major character around who hasn't died at some point to spur sales... and there isn't a character who hasn't been brought back to make a nice sales boost again.

Marvel learned their lesson from Jean Gray -- whose code name was, appropriately, Phoenix. The lesson was this:

The fans will pay to see someone killed off, and they'll pay to see them brought back again.

Now. We are in a new Star Wars era, with a new editorial team at the helm -- and the first thing they've done is to kill off Chewie. R.A. Salvatore, the writer, claims that he was forced to off Chewbacca ... heck, he didn't want to do it. And the fans are in an uproar, signing petitions, writing angry letters, and basically getting their hackles up.

Don't worry, my friends. Give it a few years for the original Star Wars sales to settle down -- and then Chewbacca will return in some patently absurd method. But you'll be happy because the furry lug is back.

Until they kill Han Solo. Or Luke. Or Boba Fett.

Because they'll have learned the same lesson that Marvel learned from Phoenix....

...or will they?

Rinse, lather, repeat.

As always, history repeats itself.

(The Ferrett, Echo Station's resident cynic, writes on a variety of topics which will sometimes include Star Wars. He also writes weekly columns on Multiplayer Magic, which can be found here , and updates his own site biweekly. However, the editors of Echo have wisely chosen not to make his site address public, since it generally involves NC-17 topics mixed liberally with blasphemy ... but you can get it if you email him.)