entertainment vs world building

From my experience, I have made such mistakes for world-building because viewers would rather let world-building be explored piece by piece by the character's perspective over "once upon a time from this or that". Best you let the character talk or discover little about it. Enough for the readers to understand and move on to the main story.

It could present an interesting opportunity for some seed planting if done correctly. Maybe the characters discover something that puts the death or character's rep. in doubt or will give information that later reveals something big.

Never discard the small moments as that's where a lot of the foundation can be built for the bigger set pieces.

There is no such thing as an action comic. All storytelling is human emotion through characters first, and genre second. Terminator is about family first, terminators second. Die Hard is about the unlikely hero in us all and also about love, and the action happens between those moments.
The audience does not care about your cool fight scenes if they do not mean anything. And to give them meaning you have to show what's at stake. To show what's at stake you need to show what's important to the characters. And to show what's important to your characters you need to show them at a vulnerable state, like in their friend's funeral for example.

You need to ask yourself, are you making the comic for yourself or for the audience? If for the latter, the action always comes second

You make some good points @Sane, I guess by action I mean more like a Steve canyon than a Hi&Lois.
I feel the funeral is important for how my characters deal with the loss of their friend and how it affects them.
Am I making the comic for myself or the audience...a bit of both.