Death in comic books has become irrelevant.
It’s a truth that really came to a head in the 90s, after a certain move of DC’s,
a trend began in which characters who were killed off were resurrected.
It’s a dangerous precedent when you think about it; it creates the risk that deaths
or fatal encounters do not have permanent conclusions, and therefore a pandora’s box
of creative license and possibilities has been opened.
Stories can become sloppy, interpretations of characters out of character, and of course,
the narrative world loses credibility.
Artistic merit aside, there have been plenty of deaths that have occurred in comic books
that we wish had endured, so today, we’re counting down the top 10 superhero kills we
wish had been permanent.
Get ready top unpack a whole lot, my friends.
10 Batman – The Dark Knight Returns Let’s start off our list with a character
who has been killed off a slew of times since he first debuted all the way back in 1939.
We’re talking the dark knight himself, Batman; a character who we by no means think should
be dead, but has quite the history with death in general.
While we could break down all of those, for the purpose of this list, let’s talk about
one specific death – the fake out that occurs in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns
from 1986; a comic book that revolutionized the character and re-established his darker,
grittier persona that had somewhat existed back in the golden age, prior to the comic
code authority’s reign of terror on the industry.
The Dark Knight Returns tells the tale of a 55 year old Batman, a Bruce Wayne who has
returned thanks to opposition by the US Government, as well as his grief over the death of Jason
Todd.
He returns to the cowl though, seeing what Gotham and the world has become, prompted
by the memories of his dead parents, of course.
By the end of the comic (spoilers), Batman is seemingly killed, but becomes a martyr,
a glimmer of hope that the world may return to the way that it was thanks to those inspired
by his actions in Gotham and against Superman.
It’s then revealed that he’s alive, that he staged his own death, and, unfortunately,
he ends up making a return in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, which was arguably inferior
to its predecessor.
So why is this death on this list?
Because it would have been a poignant and impactful ending to the story of Bruce Wayne,
the aged Batman, who, despite dying of a heart attack, would have continued to make a difference
in the world.
But of course, Batman has the ultimate plot armour and never dies, so no way in hell was
DC gonna let Frank Miller do that.
Plus, you know, you could speculate the need for sequels, money, etc.
Making a profit is generally the reason why many superheroes are killed off and resurrected,
but we’ll get to that later.
9 Captain America Steve Rogers technically first died at the
end of World War 2, or, at least, was presumed to have been dead until he was defrosted and
joined up with the first iteration of the Avengers.
The character since has faked his death, seemingly died, you name it; but ultimately, he’s
a character who Marvel comics would never dream of killing off for good.
He’s practically one of their flagship heroes.
So, it’s no surprise that after his death in the first Civil War comic story arc he
was brought back.
Killed off by Crossbones and a brainwashed Sharon Carter, working for the Red Skull,
Cap was murdered, and the news of his death was a pretty big deal in the media, even outside
of fandom circles.
Of course, he’d be back, and even had a brief stint where we all thought he might’ve
been a Nazi working for HYDRA (spoilers, it wasn’t him, just an alternate version of
him.
How scandalous).
You can also see why the MCU didn’t kill off the character, rather aging him out of
the cinematic universe.
At least, for now.
8 War Machine Here we have an example of a very useless
death.
James Rhodes was killed off in Civil War 2, murdered by Thanos solely as a catalyst for
the famous comic event.
A lot of comic fans consider the second Civil War story arc to be one of Marvel’s worst
(or at least pretty meh in comparison to other cross over events).
In it, an Inhuman by the name of Ulysses pops up and has a power in which he can predict
the future.
Iron Man and Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, have differing opinions on how to use this
power, and it becomes a battle of determinism versus free will, with Tony arguing for free
will and Carol arguing that his ability could be used to prevent crimes.
Captain Marvel, who was dating Rhodey at the time, used his death as an argument in her
ideology concerning Ulysses and his powers; he didn’t need to die.
A year later, he came back, and everything was swell, with everything patched up in the
process.
He and Carol stopped dating, too, kind of making Civil War 2 all for nothing.
Groan.
It also set off a lot of fans, who felt that Marvel didn’t care about having effective
representation in the story line, killing off one of the most prominent superheroes
of colour, and being used as a mere plot device in a feud for two white characters.
7 Bucky Barnes There used to be an old saying amongst comic
book fans, commonly referred to as the Bucky clause: no one stays dead except Bucky, Jason
Todd and Uncle Ben.
But guess what friends!
All THREE OF THEM have come back (uncle ben was a whole alternate reality thing though,
so at least some things are sacred).
So why was that aphorism considered gospel for so long?
Because all of those characters and their deaths served a very important purpose in
another character’s plot (like most female characters pre-mid 90s.
Sorry, had to.)
Bucky Barnes’ death was key in establishing Captain America, Steve Rogers’, identity
from the 60s onwards when he was reintroduced as a member of the Avengers, found frozen
in a hunk of ice.
And while we really do like Bucky as the Winter Soldier and everything he’s become since,
one could argue that he worked better as a symbol for Cap’s failings, and the fact
that Steve is not as infallible as he seems (or had been portrayed as such in the Golden
Age of comics).
6 Professor X Professor Charles Xavier, the leader and creator
of the X-Men, lands on this list for similar reasons as our last number.
House of X aside, Charles’ death at the hands (or rather, eyes) of Cyclops was a momentous
one.
Cyclops, his protégé, his theoretical son, murdered his father figure, and it was a poetic
end for the character.
But then, in the 2017 Astonishing X-Men, Xavier was brought back from inside the Shadow King’s
mind, with Xavier going into Phantomex’s body in order to be revived.
Ah, the convoluted nature of comics.
Needless to say, we’re happy to see how House of X and the relaunch of X-Men comics
have reset the mutants stories.
5 Wolverine We love Wolverine.
That’s something we want to get across before we dive into his number on this list.
In 2014, marvel released a storyline called Death of Wolverine, in which the titular character
met his demise via a virus from the microverse (or quantum realm for all you MCU fans out
there) caused his healing factor to burn out and stop working.
He’s killed off by the end of the story.
Logan’s death changed the makeup of the marvel universe; without having wolverine
on every team imaginable, from the X-Men to the Avengers, the Marvel universe was shaken
up, making room for some new and interesting storylines to emerge, despite some critics
feeling that Death of Wolverine was a lousy send off for an iconic Marvel character.
Critic Stew Shearer even said, “setting aside the fact that this is most certainly
all temporary, the book does little to draw the reader in or keep them interested.”
So what’s the point of killing off a character if that action doesn’t have an impact narratively,
while it’s occurring?
4 Jean Grey Jean Grey has died A LOT, to the extent that
the character has even become the butt of jokes about it.
In 1976, Jean Grey would die and be reborn as Phoenix, leading to one of the most massive
X-Men narratives in the history of their stories.
The character would become corrupted, and turn into the Dark Phoenix, in which she committed
genocide, killing off a whole extraterrestrial race after consuming a star for energy.
She commits suicide to prevent the Phoenix from fully taking over, but then, it was revealed
that Jean had actually been at the bottom of Jamaica Bay, and that the Phoenix was actually
a separate entity called the Phoenix Force, and it had possessed her, which was basically
Marvel finding a way to absolve the character of her ‘sins’, like killing off an entire
alien race cause she needed a snack.
Essentially, Jean became the victim of a whole lot of retconning, and the impact of the Phoenix
Saga was diluted because of it.
Had she remained dead, the implications of the Phoenix Force may have changed the face
of the Marvel universe forever.
Or had completely obliterated it.
Likely the latter option.
3 Barry Allen Barry Allen’s death at the end of Crisis
on Infinite Earths is perhaps DC’s first major superhero death, occurring in 1985.
It was a crucial one as well, with the scarlet speedster literally saving the entire DC multiverse
in the process, sacrificing himself so that everyone else could live.
This tragedy occurred in Crisis on Infinite Earths issue 8, with Barry running so fast
that he created a vortex that would prevent villain Anti-Monitor from destroying the Earth
with his anti-matter cannon.
He literally disintegrated on panel, to many readers’ dismay.
Then came his replacement, and generally more beloved successor, Wally West.
Wally was more popular, he was stronger, and technically, faster, too.
But according to Marv Wolfman, who wrote Crisis, he had left a loophole in the story so that
Barry could return without a retcon.
There was also this whole thing where Barry’s death was really him being sent back in time
as the lightning bolt that gave Barry his powers to begin with.
Regardless, he was brought back for good 23 years later (he had made a handful of cameos
in between), appearing in Final Crisis, with Geoff Johns stating that “when the greatest
evil comes back to the DC universe, the greatest hero needed to return.”
Right.
2 Jason Todd The death of Jason Todd is one of the most
significant deaths in the history of comics, all thanks to the impact that it had on Batman.
Jason Todd was the second Robin; after Dick Grayson had gone on to be a superhero in his
own right, eventually becoming Nightwing, and running the Teen Titans, Batman’s stories
were suffering (keep in mind that Robin was first introduced as a means to make Batman
more relatable to younger audiences, which boosted his sales in the early days exponentially).
The dynamic duo was iconic.
But Grayson’s replacement was widely disliked.
At first, he was a carbon copy of Dick, but after Crisis on Infinite Earths, the character
became more of a street kid, a rebellious Robin, who even flat out killed a guy (sort
of accidentally).
So what did DC do?
Well, in 1988, Dennis O’Neil suggested that it would be a cool idea to allow readers of
comics to have some sort of creative input over the stories.
Yeah, bad idea.
This led to a telephone poll, where readers could call in and vote on whether or not to
kill of Jason Todd.
According to O’Neill, “the logical candidate was Jason because we had reason to believe
that he wasn’t that popular anyway.
It was a big enough stunt we couldn’t do it with a minor character.”
The verdict came to a vote margin of 5343 to 5271, with Todd being brutally killed off
by the Joker, which forever traumatized Bruce Wayne.
Turns out a huge chunk of votes came from a dude who had programmed his computer to
call the number and vote every 90 seconds for eight hours.
While many writers condemned the company for doing this, including Frank Miller, DC managed
to turn it into a significant part of Batman’s characterization.
But DC brought him back as the Red Hood, a character that, while he has some merit, kind
of messes with that whole traumatized Batman dynamic, doesn’t it?
1 Superman Sure, Superman, like Batman, has been killed
off a few times during his career as the most well-known superhero in all of pop culture.
But here’s the thing; his death in the Death of the Superman story event is the reason
why death in comic books is so wishy-washy.
It’s the reason why death has become irrelevant.
After Superman was killed off and brought back to life, the trend of killing heroes
off but having some sort of deus ex machina where they were brought back to the land of
the living hit an all time high.
Since, almost every single major comic book character has been killed off and brought
back.
Not to say that this wasn’t something that already occurred in comics prior to this story
event, but it became a commonality after DC’s financial success with murdering the man of
steel.
So, let’s back track for a sec and explain what happened.
In 1992, the Death of Superman was a major crossover story event in which Superman faced
off against Doomsday, who was invented by DC for that story and looked like a Hulk rip
off, and the two literally punched each other to death.
Everyone thought Superman was dead; dude had no vital signs.
And readers went WILD.
The concept of killing off the man of steel in such a highly publicized way was unheard
of, taboo, unprecedented, and was one hell of a way to increase comic sales for the Superman
title, which had declined in the years leading up to this story.
Initially, it started as the result of a cross promotion with the Lois and Clark the new
adventures of Superman series, in which Clark and Lois were to be married, but the wedding
was postponed thanks to Doomsday messing Metropolis up and threatening the earth.
Don’t even get us started on Doomsday’s origins, they’re ludicrous.
Anywho, Superman is seemingly dead, which led into the Reign of the Supermen story arc,
in which four imposter supermen show up and try to take Clark’s place.
THEN it’s revealed that Superman actually isn’t dead afterall; he was in a Kryptonian
coma, which looks just like a human death.
As you can imagine, readers worldwide felt betrayed by DC, seeing this story event as
a publicity stunt, which had earned the publisher a whole ton of profits, and led to Superman
issue 75, the comic in which he dies, to have sold over six million copies.
I could go on and on, and in some of our other videos, I have.
This story is bat sh*t insane once you get into its details.
SOMETIMES DEAD IS BETTER, YOU GUYS.
There we have it friends!
What other superheroes who have died do you wish never came back to life?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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