Major superheroes/villains who died and have stayed dead - are there any?

Poor Ralph seems dead or never to have existed as far as I can tell.

Torch never died at all.

He totally died, several times! And then got regenerated. Credit to Hickman for a clever solution, though it wasn't entirely original. (Sir Richard Burton's escape-by-repeated-suicide method in the Riverworld books comes to mind.)

THE FRANCHISE CANNOT DIE. THE FRANCHISE IS IMMORTAL. LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH.

I forgot the bug resurrection. My bad. For some reason in my head he was just captured.

I'm about a year behind on X-stuff, but I think Nightcrawler's still dead? Although Cable's back already, so I wouldn't say that definitively.

They killed Nightcrawler, then pulled in the AoA version of him to add to X-Force

Huh. Lame. If they really just wanted to half-heartedly fill the fuzzy blue elf void, isn't Nocturne still floating around out there somewhere?

I think she was last seen off with the Exiles? dunno tho

didn't even know nightcrawler was dead

yeah, he died saving Hope Summers' life from a super Sentinel

I would've spoiler-proofed that revelation if not for the fact that it happened a couple of years ago, which means we're no more than a couple of years from it being reversed like every X-death which proceeded it.

wait, Banshee is still dead

there's a running grim joke about it in X-Factor that pops up every now and then

I'll give 'em that. And Thunderbird. And I was gonna say Maggott, but I forgot that he was finally resurrected after years of incessant fan outrage.

they brought Thunderbird back for Necrosha briefly but he's gone again (actually I can't remember if Banshee came back for that, too) (apparently he did)

I want a villain to resurrect a fan favorite character only to disintegrate them immediately to show what a badass he/she is.

That was kinda the deal with the aforementioned Necrosha. Only a couple of the slew of resurrected characters made it out alive.

who the hell is hope summers?

scott's kid with jean?

Hope is the first mutant born after the "no more mutants" crap. She's rescued by Cable and brought up in the future by him. She takes his last name as her own.

oh hey, can someone update me on kitty pryde? last i checked she was unable to phase back into existence (bc of the bullet incident). is that still true? has she been in any badass comics i should read since she got back to earth?

For Kitty I would read the Wolverine and the X-Men comics. She's a teacher at the new institute. And she's back to normal Kitty now. I think. But I don't know how.

man i'm so far out of the loop, don't know what anyone's talking about anymore
i stopped after gmoz

the marvel online pass is catching me up.

you can find out how her powers went back to normal on Wikipedia; I won't spoil since EZ is currently reading

Thanks Dan!

I don't mind if you spoil it though. It'll be quite a while before I find out because I'm trapped in an Infinite loop in Starlin's subconscious.

i stopped after gmoz

Dude, that was eight years ago. That's, like, eighty in X-plot development years. I'm behind about a year and I feel like I have no idea what's up currently.

The question is why would you want to read? But then I'd been reading X-MEN on and off since 1981 so maybe I have a different view...

You can get away with killing off some of the X-men, except the originals and the 70s originals (for the most part), as they got like 200 characters. Crazy thing is that there are X-men fans that are die hard for Boom Boom or Forge or Strong Guy or Polaris.

that's the first time I've thought of Strong Guy in like a decade and a half

Strong Guy was recently killed, then resurrected without a soul, btw

Man i need to stay away from the MU

it was written by Peter David so it's actually been pretty entertaining

Trust Dan. He knows things.

haha oh man, are you up to date with what's going in in X-Factor right now because that phrase is currently an automatic YIKES

(btw if anyone is considering looking at X titles these days, most of the gold is in the periphery, particularly X-Factor)

Really enjoyed his second run on X-Factor, then lost track of it around 2009 when they were changing artist every month. Worth catching up?

well... yes and no

If you like the characters, it's absolutely worth it; I don't think anyone does team dynamics quite like PAD and he does an excellent job of juggling a large cast of very distinct, memorable personalities.

Having said that, some of the actual plots can get eye-rolly, but the actual character work within them is always excellent, plus he does a great job of interweaving stories and following through on consequences/ramifications.

I also recommend these X-titles:

New Mutants (again, mostly for the characters)
Wolverine and the X-Men (I love Bachalo's incomprehensibility, and a lot of the writing is genuinely funny)
X-Men Legacy (TEAM ROGUE, plus Frenzy is turning into an interesting character)
Uncanny X-Force (now that the book has direction and a smaller, more focused cast, the stories they've been telling have been outstanding, particularly the build over the first 19 issues)

There are other characters who are obviously writer faves and whenever they pop up as featured players in a story, they are great 90% of the time (Magik and Colossus are the reasons to read Uncanny X-Men, for example, and Pixie is basically great wherever she appears even if none of the artists can agree on how old she is).

I know she's somewhere between 8 and 24, but I've never been able to narrow it down any more than that.

is layla miller still around?

She is, and she still knows stuff, but she's becoming less cryptic about it and it's kind of a big unhappy mess for all of the characters involved (but not the readers, fortunately)

I'm not caught up yet with X-Factor. Probably a year behind.

The Madrox mini that predates this version of X-Factor is one of the best Marvel books in the past decade.

i'm also a year or so behind on X-Factor. i kinda got off-board when they did that weird time-travel sickly old Dr Doom storyline which was pretty bleh imho.

Dan is all this stuff up on MARVEL PRIME or whatever the hell their online archives are?
I swear I would have bought that four times over if it worked with ipad

a lot of it is. You can browse MDCU. You should be able to browse what's available here: http://marvel.com/digital_comics

If you have any specific questions I'm happy to check through my subscription.

There is some doofer that lets you watch your desktop on the iPad. Maybe that would work. Hassle, though.

They're usually about 12-14 months behind. So Uncanny X-Force is available through issue #8. X-Factor has 80 issues, up through #227 that came out last November.

Once the next Mac OS comes out I'll be able to mirror my desktop on my tv. I can't wait to read GIANT SIZED X-MEN.

xp to chuck: yeah, onlive might work.

I'm also at least a year behind at this point, which turns out to be a monumental problem with this many titles...and my poor neglected x-blog too! Someday! Someday!

I was enjoying PAD's nu-X-Factor for quite a long time, feel like it really started to drift plotwise at some point though. New Mutants I was LOVING, and not just because that cast was all my childhood friends..