- This article is about the deaths of characters in comic books. For information about the personification of death in comic books, see Death (comics).
A comic book death is used in the comic book fan community to refer to the killing off and predictable return of a long-running character.
Comic book writers often kill off characters to gather publicity and dramatic tension. Occasionally, a writer will allow readers to think a character has died and conceive of a complex way to reveal that the character is actually alive within a single storyline. But more often, the publishing house intends to permanently kill off a long-running character, but fans pressure the company to bring the character back in a subsequent storyline through retconning.
The prominence of comic book deaths has lead to the common piece of comic shop wisdom: "No one in comics stays dead, except Bucky and Uncle Ben."
The two most famous comic book deaths are probably the death of Superman and the death of Jean Grey in the Dark Phoenix Saga.
Characters that have experienced a comic book death
DC Comics
Marvel Comics
- Aunt May, a supporting character of Spider-Man
- Cable at the end of X-cutioner's Song
- Colossus, to cure the Legacy Virus, returned in Astonishing X-Men
- Cyclops
- Elektra, in Daredevil v1 #181
- Nick Fury
- Green Goblin, in Amazing Spider-Man #121
- Guardian (Marvel Comics), in Alpha Flight #12
- Havok
- Jean Grey (multiple times: Dark Phoenix Saga and Planet X, for instance)
- Hulk
- Magneto, most recently at the end of Planet X
- Mister Fantastic in Fantastic Four #387
- Multiple Man, whose power of duplicating his entire body allows him to die pretty much endlessly
- Punisher
- Professor X, in 1968
- Psylocke
- Sebastian Shaw, the Black King of the Hellfire Club
- Rachel Summers, the second Phoenix to join the X-Men
- Adam Warlock
- Mary Jane Watson-Parker
- Wolverine (see Skrullverine)
Long-running characters that have died and not yet returned
DC Comics
Marvel Comics
See also
