Watching an old episode of Danger Man (Secret Agent Man in the US) on a popular video sharing website last night, the villain says at one point, "There are some fates worse than death, Mr Drake"
As an aside, Danger Man is brilliant - you really must watch it if you haven't done so - Drake is a much more complex character than Bond and as the later series unfold, the stories shift into an existentialist journey of what we mean by the Moral Man, authenticity and alienation.
But getting back to the point - what fates worse than death can you imagine - either from comic books or real life?
As a small child, when Aunt Maud came to visit (that was her real name), I was always asked to kiss the old dear (who must have been at least 120 years old) on her cheek - a cheek full of warts growing hairs. That was my fate worse than death (though very unfair on poor old Aunt Maud who was by all accounts a kind and decent old lady).
Later, during my working career, it was being forced to attend INSET days on sunny afternoons on gut-wrenchingly boring topics - with no means of escape.
In comic books, I always found the concept of The Phantom Zone unimaginably cruel - a life sentence where life never ends.
In books, Edgar Allan Poe's exploration of catalepsy in various forms still sends shivers down the spine - and in movies, the idea from Alien where the victim is used as an impregnated host for the alien was pretty scary.
