Comic book death

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Cover to Uncanny X-Men #136 (August 1980, art by John Byrne), the penultimate issue of the Dark Phoenix saga. Jean Grey would sacrifice herself in the following issue, but Marvel later had the story retconned to allow Jean to appear in the new X-Factor series.

Comic book death is a neologism used in the comic book fan community to refer to the killing off and subsequent return of a long-running character. This irony addresses the fact that while death is a serious subject, a comic book death is generally not taken seriously and is rarely permanent or meaningful. Commenting on the impact and role of comic book character deaths in the modern comics, writer Geoff Johns said ^[1]:

Some comic book writers have killed off characters to gather publicity or to create dramatic tension. In other instances, a writer kills off a character for which he/she did not particularly care, but upon their leaving the title, another writer who liked this character brings them back. More often, however, the publishing house intends to permanently kill off a long-running character, but fan pressure or creative decisions push the company to resurrect the character. Still, other characters remain permanently dead, but are replaced by characters who assume their personas (such as Wally West taking over for Barry Allen as the Flash), so the death does not cause a genuine break in character continuity.

Deaths and subsequent resurrections have become such an institution on comic book narratives that certain characters have been written with this as a character trait, such as DC's Solomon Grundy, Resurrection Man and Marvel's Mr. Immortal.

Notable examples

Arguably there are four well known comic book deaths. The first two are the 1980 "death" of Jean Grey in Marvel's Dark Phoenix Saga and that of Superman in DC's highly-publicized 1993 Death of Superman storyline. There is one major distinction between the two, however - whereas it was never intended that Superman's death be permanent, and that he would return to life at the conclusion of the story, Jean's passing (one of many comic book deaths that would be associated with the X-Men) was written as the true and permament death of the character, only to be retconned a few years later to facilitate her return. In more recent history, the death of Captain America made real-world headlines in early 2007 when he met his apparent end, but Marvel has since revealed that Steve Rogers will be resurrected in late 2009. Batman apparently died at the end of DC's Final Crisis and the Batman R.I.P. arcs, though he was really sent into the past rather than killed.

The prominence of comic book deaths has ultimately led to the readership rarely taking the death of a character seriously - when someone dies, the reader feels very little sense of loss, and simply left wondering how long it will be before they return to life. This, in turn, has led to a common piece of comic shop wisdom: "No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben"^[2] referring to Captain America's sidekick (retconned dead since 1964), Batman's second Robin (dead since 1988), and Peter Parker's uncle (dead since 1962), respectively. This long-held tenet was finally broken in 2005, when Jason Todd returned to life and Bucky Barnes was reported to have survived the accident that seemingly killed him, remaining in the shadows for decades. Some may argue that Gwen Stacy came back to life (as a clone in both the original comics and Ultimate Spider-Man), but the fact that the original never comes back to life qualifies her for the list.

Comic book characters themselves have often made comments about the frequency of resurrections, notably Charles Xavier who commented "in mutant heaven there are no pearly gates, but instead revolving doors."^[3]

Common retcons include:

• The death scene may be a deliberate plot of a character that simulates his own death or that of someone else for a certain purpose. In these cases, the death scene may have been staged, or it may have been an illusion of some kind (e.g. Roberto J. Rastapopoulos from The Adventures of Tintin in The Red Sea Sharks). Sometimes there may not even be a death scene, and the death of a character is simply a lie.
• The death scene is not actually the death of the character, but instead a severe near-death injury or situation, from which the character is saved (off-panel, detailed in the subsequent retcon) by his powers or skills (e.g., Green Goblin), by good luck, or by the help of someone else. This is sometimes the result of a deliberate plot as well, except instead of a staged or illusory death scene, the character believed dead is legitimately brought to the brink of death only to survive or be saved at the last minute.
  • A common variant is an explosion that does not kill the character, they are merely buried in rubble/flung to safety/transported to another dimension (Spider-Man villain Hammerhead once survived a nuclear explosion in this way).^[4]
  • A character who was initially thought to be dead may be revealed to only have been in a coma. This premise is often misused for injuries and illnesses that do not involve head trauma, the primary trigger for coma. Variations on this theme include the character being placed in suspended animation or cryogenic suspension, both of which are also used with varying degrees of scientific implausability.
• The person who dies is a clone, impostor, or shapeshifter (Dark Phoenix being the most well-known example).^[5]
• The character really does die, but is resurrected, either intentionally (e.g., Green Arrow)^[6] or unintentionally (e.g., Jason Todd)^[7] by some cosmic or magical being.
  • A variant of this is when a character dies but then returns in an undead form, often through some kind of scientific or supernatural processes (i.e. characters being resurrected as zombies by either technological or magical means). This is often the result of an attempt to bring the character back to life that somehow goes wrong, but in some cases the character may be intentionally transformed into an undead being, usually by a villian.
  • A character may physically die, but they may use magic, technology, or psychic abilities to transfer their consciousness into a new host. (A well-known example of this occurs in the third X-Men movie, when Charles Xavier telepathically transfers his consciousness into the brain of a comatose man a moment before his original body is destroyed.)
• The character does die, and stays dead, but an identical character (sometimes a literal clone or duplicate) takes his place and uses the same name. Examples are the death of Marvel's Thunderbird and Mar-Vell.
• Time travel, reality manipulation or other narrative tricks may be used to undo big changes in the fictional universe (such as the death of characters) by setting them out of continuity and restoring things to a previous point. Similarly, rebooted timelines may simply erase a character's death.
• A story may also be conceived as not being canon from the start, so that the writers have creative freedom to kill major characters or perform radical changes as they see fit for the narrative, with such changes taking place only in that work and not in the main fictional universe.
• The writer may simply not be aware of the death of the character, so the use of that character would become a continuity error until a proper explanation to fix it is given.
• Characters who stay dead without being resurrected or replaced in any way may still be shown existing in some kind of afterlife. (For example, Peter Parker's Uncle Ben was seen in the Elysian Fields in a recent issue of Hercules.)

Parodies

Comic book deaths have been parodied by Peter Milligan in X-Statix, in which all the characters had died by the end of the series. In X-Statix Presents Dead Girl, it is further parodied. A group of dead villains want to return to life claiming "it happens all the time". Dr. Strange tells that if enough people want him alive, a character will be "promoted" to life.

In the 2000 X-Men film, after a defeated Storm re-enters the fight, Toad complains, "Don't you people ever die?"

In Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, Cyclops states that "Jean Grey is dead" only to have Agent Brand respond with a sarcastic "Yeah, that'll last".

In Next Wave: Agents of Hate, two of the characters are talking about the X-Men member Magik. One of them comments that she is dead and the other replies "So what? The X-Men come back to life more than Jesus".

Comic book death has been also parodied by the Great Lakes Avengers member, Mr. Immortal, a mutant whose power is to resurrect from the dead. Consequently, he is killed and revived in almost all appearances. The concept was further parodied by Dan Slott's 2005 GLA miniseries, in which one member dies in every issue.

The Simpsons also parodied comic book deaths in the episode "Radioactive Man" in which Milhouse mentions an issue of Radioactive Man in which the eponymous character and his sidekick Fallout Boy die on every page.

Outside comic books

The return of a character previously thought dead is certainly not limited to comic books. In many slasher films and monster movies, the killer or monster seemingly dies at the end of the film only to return for a sequel. Daytime and prime-time soap operas are notorious for comic book deaths; famously, an entire season of Dallas was retconned into one character's dream^[8] so that a character who had been dead throughout that season could return.

Confirming actual character deaths vs alleged deaths

In the "Book of the Dead" section of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, writer Mark Gruenwald laid out hypothetical reader guidelines for determining whether a character is truly dead or only appears thus. Gruenwald wrote "Characters such as Doctor Doom have made it their stock in trade to escape one seeming death after another." These guidelines have not been strictly adhered to by writers in all cases but were written as a reader guide due to the large number of characters who are either reported killed, seen to be killed under ambiguous situations, or simply assumed killed by readers. As a result of these guidelines, an unstated rule is that the death of the character must occur on panel during the course of a comic book story and not simply be referred to in a character's dialogue.

• A body or bodily remains must be seen on panel after death. They must also be confirmed at the bodies of the character in question.
• The body must be destroyed, burial not being enough, as the Marvel Universe includes many undead characters such as zombies and vampires.
• A person must be confirmed dead by someone who is certified or at least reasonably qualified to make that determination. This suggests that a character cannot assumedly make such a determination in the heat of battle.
• There must be at least one witness in addition to the person making the said determination that a character is dead.

In recent decades, these guidelines have become mostly irrelevant as even characters who were previously firmly established as irrevocably dead have returned.

See also

• List of dead comic book characters
• Women in Refrigerators

References