The Justice League, Lex Luthor, Magneto, the Justice League again… it's been a rough year
for superheroes in 2022. Here's who's queueing up for resurrection in the next few years.
Like all the other members of Payback, Mindstorm is ruthlessly massacred by
Soldier Boy during his quest for revenge on anybody remotely linked to his decades as a
prisoner and guinea pig of Soviet-era military scientists. From what "The Boys" lets us see,
Mindstorm's powers are a rough blend of Charles Xavier and Jason Wyngarde's: He can hear thoughts,
project images into the heads of other people, and induce nightmare-filled comas.
"What'd Mindstorm do?" "Well, if it's his usual MO,
trapped him in an endless nightmare until he dies of terminal dehydration."
Evidently, his powerset does not include imperviousness to repeated
blows from a dull metal object. Mindstorm's cranium caves right
in after a handful of cracks from the edge of Soldier Boy's shield.
Before Soldier Boy turns his skull into a bowl of face-meat stir-fry, Mindstorm provides "The
Boys" Season 3 with two essential plot points. By banishing Billy to relive his worst memories
as a series of nightmares, Mindstorm indirectly convinces him to nudge Hughie away from a showdown
with Homelander and onto a safer trajectory. Also, Mindstorm tells Soldier Boy the true
nature of his relationship to Homelander — a fact that proves both unsettling and darkly obvious.
This year, part of the team behind 2019's "John Constantine: Hellblazer," reunited
for the three-issue endeavor "Suicide Squad: Blaze." And they certainly left their mark
on the DC universe. By the end of their "Suicide Squad" tale, everybody is dead.
Superman takes on the story's enigmatic archfiend in the second issue and gets eaten
for his trouble. The rest of the Justice League attacks soon after, but their efforts aren't much
more successful. As you might expect, the likes of Peacemaker, King Shark, Amanda Waller, and
Harley Quinn fail to survive this ordeal, although some of their deaths are much funnier than others.
Of course, don't expect these deaths to stick. The events of "Suicide Squad: Blaze"
are established as occurring in a non-canonical, alternate timeline from the mainline DC universe.
Transgender superhero Dreamer first appeared on The CW's "Supergirl" and finally arrived in
DC Comics in "Superman: Son of Kal-El" #13. While you might think the issue would focus
on the comic debut of the popular character, nearly half the issue is spent on Dreamer's
recollections of an upcoming point in the future in which the villainous Bendix easily
knocks off the entire Justice League, plus the Joker, as a demonstration of dominance.
These same characters seemingly also perished at the onset of DC's heavily promoted summer
event "Dark Crisis." It appears 2022 is the year in which DC Comics repeatedly murders
the Justice League. Then again, Jonathan's probably going to prevent whatever causes
all the atrocities Dreamer shows him in, so we guess it all comes out in the wash.
The Penguin swallows a cyanide pill in "Batman" #125, just in time for a witness to see what
looks like Batman strangling him. Savvy fans might presume the flightless crime-mongering creature
will get back to the business of giving Gotham a hard time before long as they read this issue.
After all, if Bane only stayed dead for less than two real-world years' worth of comics, how
long can DC possibly keep the Penguin on ice? It turns out to be quite a bit shorter since just two
issues later, in "Batman #127," it's revealed that Oswald Cobblepot did not, in fact, die; he merely
underwent plastic surgery to reduce his famously beak-like nose, dyed his hair blond, and relocated
to Metropolis under the secret identity of Paul Meredith, harmless proprietor of Blossoms florist.
Up until Season 3 of "The Boys," all we really know about Black Noir is that he doesn't say
much and often takes the lives of other human beings with gruesome efficiency. In Season 3,
we learn that he once fought as a member of Soldier Boy's team,
Payback. His falling out with the patriotic phony during the 1980s eventually comes
around to bite him in the butt and provide a basis for this particular season's storyline.
When Homelander finds out Noir has always known the awful secret of his parentage, he punches
clean through Noir's stomach and pulls a bunch of his guts out. As far as deaths on "The Boys" go,
it's arguably a little anti-climactic for a character who's been around since Season 1.
Back when he was the X-Men's primary villain,
plenty of folks accused Magneto of being heartless. Leave it to Thanos' great uncle
to turn a figurative accusation into a fatal reality for the Master of Magnetism.
Then again, death is really more like a suggestion than an inevitability for a guy like Magneto. As
documented in 2019's "House of X/Powers of X," the X-Men have figured out resurrection,
granting de facto immortality to all mutants. Always a trailblazer,
Magneto relinquishes his eternal existence in order to more effectively co-govern Arakko,
the planet formerly known as Mars. Not long after this decision,
the Eternal Uranos launches a ruthless onslaught against the Arakki population.
In a valiant defense of his people, Magneto faces Uranos and promptly finds himself
lacking a central circulatory organ. With assistance from Storm, Max keeps his blood
pumping with a stunning display of magnetic force and eventually dispatches Uranos. But
the effort of thwarting a planetary threat without access to a heart proves too much,
and Magneto succumbs to the gaping wound in the middle of his chest in "X-Men: Red" #7.
Magneto has dictated that he shouldn't be brought back. But whether or not he ends up returning
to the living is largely irrelevant. For now, the Master of Magnetism is decidedly deceased,
and he went out in one of the coolest ways that any hero has in years.
Chadwick Boseman passed away in 2020, but the on-screen death of King T'Challa doesn't occur
in canon until the soul-destroying first scene of "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever." Stricken with an
unexpected terminal illness, T'Challa can't access the healing properties of the heart-shaped herb
because Killmonger torched the royal supply in 2018's "Black Panther." Shuri is on the
cusp of developing a synthetic heart-shaped herb replacement, but doesn't manage to finish the job
in time to save her only sibling. It's instantly the saddest thing that's ever happened in the MCU,
in part because T'Challa isn't brought down by Killmonger or Thanos. Instead,
his killer is something entirely real: an illness, of the sort so many non-celluloid people die
from. It's an invisible but omnipresent enemy, part of a world with a predilection for tragic
flukes. The fact that it mimics the actor's real-life death makes it even more gutting.
"He was king and Black Panther to everyone."
"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" certainly compensates for the first
"Black Panther" film's underutilization of Angela Bassett's Queen Ramonda. Her
tumultuous anguish and steely sense of duty to her nation and remaining
loved ones provide a number of the movie's dramatic high points.
While Shuri escapes into super-science and shuts off her emotions to avoid mourning
her brother and processing her grief, the wiser Ramonda tries to nudge her daughter
onto a healthier trajectory. Shuri's probably in a better headspace by the end of the movie,
but Ramonda isn't around to see it. She drowns rescuing Riri Williams after Namor blows up the
royal throne room during the attack on Wakanda. T'Challa establishes an unofficial Black Panther
policy against revenge all the way back in 2016's "Captain America: Civil War."
"Justice will come soon enough."
But after Namor kills Ramonda, even the most pacifist of MCU fans might find themselves rooting
for Shuri to put a sharp piece of vibranium between Namor's neck and the rest of his body.
It's a little surprising that it took Pierce Brosnan — or as '90s kids know him, "James Bond" —
this long to find his way into a superhero movie, and it's equally surprising to see the Justice
Society of America lending their retro-cred to one of DC's only movies get to a theatrical release
in 2022. While the proto-Justice League came to be in comics first published in the early 1940s,
the wholesome team has experienced hills and valleys of relevance ever since.
And in a vacuum, it's downright shocking that Kent Nelson doesn't survive the
events of "Black Adam." With more than 80 years of on-again, off-again appearances
in monthly comic books, multiple appearances in animated series, as well as a live-action
turn in "Smallville," the golden-domed wizard is at least as famous as Doctor Strange was before
Benedict Cumberbatch arrived on the scene. But whether or not we'd buy tickets to see Brosnan
star in a "Doctor Fate" trilogy seems irrelevant as, sadly, his abilities to manipulate space and
time apparently provide little defense against a really hard punch to the torso. But then again,
as is often the case with matters pertaining to fate, things are not always as they seem,
with Dwayne Johnson promising on Twitter that fans would see more of the character. However,
with James Gunn and Peter Safran now in charge, we'll just have to see if it's still… fated to be.
Overall, the modern era's soft relaunch of Jack Kirby's Eternals is a mixed bag. Director Chloé
Zhao's "Eternals" isn't landing at the top of an MCU favorite film list any time soon. Meanwhile,
the deathless cohort quietly climbed to prominence in their 2021 comic series.
One thing leads to another in 2022's "A.X.E.: Judgement Day" and it falls upon Sersi to
demonstrate to a literal planet-annihilating god that the Eternals aren't necessary destined to
repeat the same malignant loops into infinity. She asks humanity to judge her for the scores of
people the Eternals have obliviously murdered over the years. Humanity judges her harshly,
and the aforementioned wrathful god waves her out of existence.
Just about everybody dies at some point in "Judgement Day," but Krakoan resurrection
protocols, in addition to other factors, bring almost everybody
back ... with the major exceptions of Magneto and Sersi. You might say that
the moral to Sersi's sacrifice is that with great power comes great ... accountability.
"Titans" feels like an Arrowverse show, if Arrowverse shows had the budget and energy
of late-'90s syndicated cable instead of 2010s network melodrama. Sure, it's a little cheesy,
but so what? "Titans" can take real chances, and if they don't pan out,
well, the show has never had a glowing reputation to lose in the first place.
"A dying man is like a cornered animal. That's when they're most dangerous."
In a move that clearly requires intestinal fortitude and/or utter madness, "Titans"
brings aboard widely recognizable actor Titus Welliver to play one of DC's most essential
big bads — and almost immediately kills him off with a magic snake.
In the Season 4 premiere, the Titans are summoned to Metropolis, where Conner Kent
is led to believe he'll finally meet the source of half the DNA he was cloned from:
Superman. When the gang arrives, Superman's out on a mission in the middle of space somewhere,
but Lex Luthor — Superboy's other clone dad — offers to catch up instead. Though initially
hesitant to partake in father-son bonding with the world's worst supervillain, Conner
eventually agrees to the meeting, where he learns that the Man of Steel's greatest foe will be dead
from Kryptonite poisoning within six months. Lex tells Conner he'd like to spend what time
he has left getting to know his only child and bequeaths Conner ownership of LexCorp ... right
before the aforementioned magic snake appears in Lex's esophagus and strangles him from within.
First appearing in 2001's "Action Comics" #775, Manchester Black has come a long way
since his snarky and homicidal early days. Originally the leader of the Elite, a group
of crimefighters who turn into Superman's enemies once they find out he won't let them do murders,
Manchester accepts an offer from Superman to join a new version of the Authority.
Sadly, Manchester is in some degree of cahoots with Lex Luthor throughout his
affiliation with Supes. Lex eventually explodes Manchester's brain to erase
Superman's secret identity from the global population's memory,
because ... well, because that's the sort of thing that happens in comics sometimes.