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

Then his wife got raped and murdered by Dr Light in a big summer crossover - you know, for kids!

I lol'd

They teased it a while back, but the Marvel (Mar Vell) Captain Marvel has stayed dead.

That bit was actually vaguely clever, if I recall - he was a sleeper agent Skrull who only thought he was Marvel.

Yeah, it was nice idea and it was handled pretty well too - he actually decided to stay as Marvel and not return to the Skrulls, Total Recall style. Too bad they decided he needed to die in a heroic sacrifice, it would've been interesting if he'd continued as the proper Captain Marvel.

mildly impressed nobody's been crass enough to bring a dude back from cancer. they've probably spent a million man-hours 'workshopping' it though

Then his wife got raped and murdered by Dr Light in a big summer crossover - you know, for kids! - and he got sent to hell, or something.

jesus, and it used to just be refrigerators they put the women into.

You gotta know that Brad Meltzer (or possibly JT Krul) has a follow-up to Identity Crisis planned where The Atom uses his shrinking ray to make a refrigerator really tiny and then feeds it to a woman and then remote-controlly return it to its original size in a mindblowing inversion of the women-in-refrigerators meme.
http://c1.cleantechnica.com/files/2008/07/p1_fridge2_si.jpg

Very Silver Age.

The original Captain Marvel is still dead right?

But the legend lives on.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/captain%20marvel.jpg

I've always dug the 70s Captain Marvel costume. It would make a much better costume for Marvel Boy or whatever that forgettable code name they gave him in Dark Avengers.

The OG Cap Marvel is dead, but since then at least two of his children have taken up the name and the suit - the first one even had the same "switching between bodies with Rick Jones" gimmick the original Captain had. I think both of the kids have died too, though, and at the moment there is no Captain Marvel, unless Marvel Boy kept the name after Dark Reign was over?

the "switching between bodies with Rick Jones" gimmick was roy thomas making a pretty explicit nod to the Fawcett Captain Marvel

Oh, I guess that explains it! I hadn't given it much thought, I just thought it was a pretty weird power/limitation for a superhero like Cap Marvel to have (and even weirder for Kurt Busiek to give it to his son too), but it makes total sense as a reference to the other Captain Marvel.

I never realized that switch thing before being a reference to the Big Red Cheese, but that being said, it is a total Roy Thomas thing to do.

Oh wow, you guys blew my mind with that connection! Makes SO MUCH SENSE NOW.

Mar-vell is dead dead. Banshee is dead dead. Nightcrawler and Cable are recent deaths with a pretty limited chance of sticking past the two-year mark that Tuomas has given us with this thread.

Janet Van Dyne has been dead since Secret Invasion...clock's ticking!

Oh, and Bill Foster Goliath has been dead since Civil War, not sure how major he is since I never read the old Avengers books.

I was about to say Bucky, but wiki sez they brought him back a few years ago. Ugh.

The Bucky story was REALLY GOOD though!! Like, it was seriously like, a year and a half or two years long bringing him back, which made it feel much more like a genuine event and a story. And there were some neat ideas attached to it, a different read on the World War II material. Nobody's been quite sure what to DO with Bucky since then, but I actually think it's a totally defensible story.

Janet Van Dyne has been dead since Secret Invasion...clock's ticking!

Wasn't there a recent issue of Avengers that revealed she's still alive, sort of, on some kind of quantum level? And that Hank Pym is working on bringing her back? So yeah, her revival will probably happen pretty soon.

It was an ongoing plot thread in Pym's Mighty Avengers (which I sort of liked even though most people were willing to acknowledge that it kind of sucked) and just this week it got pseudo-resolved in Avengers Academy.

I have to say, Thunderbolts and Avengers Academy have shown me that I have missed a gigantic chunk of the Marvel Universe by ignoring The Avengers.

I'd say the MU switched from being X-centric to Avengers-centric about...five years ago? Roughly in the House of M to Civil War timeframe.

wow, the batson = rick jones thing is fucking perfect; why have I never thought of that before

I'd say Janet Van Dyne will be back, there was no body. If I was betting, I'd put it on Ultron to bring her back more than Hank Pym. Ultron hates everything pretty much but The Wasp. I'd think Ultron wouldn't be too happy with the Skrulls for killing her in the first place.

Big Marvel Villains currently dead-

Bullseye - like that one is going to stick considering that The Hand have the body.

Sabertooth - although I think him and Wolverine might be fighting in hell right now.

I think the Abomination maybe just got back from being dead or at least I saw him on the cover of a recent comic.

James Robinson has been on a big killing spree in the DC universe and has taken out quite a few B & C level characters, some of which are kind of a shame. Arnold Wesker - The Ventriloquist is probably one of the cooler ones he aced in that funky Face the Face storyline in Batman a couple of years back. Robinson also killed the 90s villain KGBeast in that same storyline. Later on he killed off with a reset button built in Grant Morrison's JLA villain Prometheus.

Abomination is still dead, but the dead are fighting the living in that Chaos War kerfuffle.

I'd say Janet Van Dyne will be back, there was no body. If I was betting, I'd put it on Ultron to bring her back more than Hank Pym. Ultron hates everything pretty much but The Wasp. I'd think Ultron wouldn't be too happy with the Skrulls for killing her in the first place.

Ultron was in that issue where they found out about Janet van Dyne's "quantum body", but he didn't seem to care about Janet's fate, in fact he was perfectly happy to replace the nervous system of the body with his own. And he seemed content enough when Jocasta offered to become his bride so he wouldn't kill everyone. That was a pretty odd resolution to the whole plot, though I haven't yet gotten to the issue of Avengers Academy where Doc Casino said the story is continued.

Thunderbird is still dead, right?

yup

I wouldn't call Thunderbird a major superhero - didn't he only appear like in two issues of X-Men?

Dude was one of the defining characters of the Silver Age X-Men and how dangerous their world was! His specter hung over the books for DECADES, even down to his little brother hooking up with the Hellfire Club.

Sure, he was DESIGNED to die, but nobody knew that until he died.

kind of like how Blink became one of the most popular characters introduced in with the Generation X kids, to the point where they brought back an alternate universe version of her and gave her a comic book (Exiles)

Speaking of Gen X, Synch and Skin are still D-E-D dead, right?

Yes, both of them! I'd say Thunderbird just barely counts - walking plot point, marked for death, but it would be a BIG DEAL if he came back because of the impact it would have on his brother and other cast members...maybe?

so are we talking about FF here or no

No way Johnny stays dead, assuming he died at all.

I know, I just heard about that today (me, reading Fantastic Four? A nation turns its head and gags...) and wanted to bump a thread

Kind of unbelievable that this is the first time he's died!

How long was Captain America "dead," about a year? I give it that long. 2 or 3 Future Foundation story arcs and then The Search for Johnny. Also the new costumes are crap.

Aren't they 12 issues away from #600?

I say 1 year.

I'm enjoying Hickman's run so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on the Johnny thing, but the white uniforms do look a bit silly.

and is spidey now a member? whut? does he only wear the white uniform on ff duties??

Waiting for the inevitable Spider-Man/Wolverine bi-weekly team-up book, because those characters really aren't used enough.

spideys been a ff member a few times prior.
human torch death won't last any longer than a year. issue 600 sounds right.

I think Banshee is still dead. Tho at this point he's kinda the exception that proves the rule and they even had a whole arc in X-Factor where Theresa refuses to accept he'll stay dead bc after all he's a super hero

Banshee was revived briefly for Claremont's wholly superfluous X-Men tie-in for the Chaos War, along with Thunderbird, Moira MacTaggert, the dead Stepford Cuckoos and a couple of Jamie's dupes (inc. the one who died of Legacy). It was basically two issues of "Hey aren't we dead? I guess that makes us perfect cannon fodder!"

fucking Claremont

Wait, Claremont is still writing canon comics? I thought they put him on that WHAT IF I ALWAYS WROTE X-MEN comic and left him there.

Well said, Mordy. Pretty sure he sneaks off to do other things but still acts like that's the basic premise.

Hickman has come up with some interesting ideas on FF, but I don't think he's good at translating them into anything with thrillpower -- at least until the Negative Zone incursion into the Baxter Building.

I like Hickman's ideas but his writing/stories are like watching paint dry. Secret Warriors has a bit more action, but the rest is pretty zzzzzzzz.

I agree with the two above posts, Hickman's has some cool ideas, and I like the way he writes Reed, but his run has lasted something like 20 issues now, he's introduced new plot elements in almost all of them, and none of those things have been resolved yet. I guess it's possible he has some grand design in his mind that is to be slowly revealed in the next 20+ issues, but at the moment it's kinda boring to read about stuff happening on top of other stuff happening without any clear story arc to it.

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..

X-Factor is the only Marvel I read--consistently entertaining and clever stuff, though occasionally the ideas don't quite come off.

I know this is a shot in the dark but some of you are on the train, what do you think about the current Avengers vs. X-Men storyline going on?

I went in expecting it to be total rub and it still might be, but there have been some things that could be interesting depending on how it plays out especially the whole parts with the Kree and Iron Fist, which seem to be tacking into some of the waters that Hickman has been laying out in FF and in SHIELD. It is still kind of a disjointed read, but I am curious where it is going or at least how those threads play out. The team that Cap sent out into space is one of the odder and really more interesting Avengers teams in a long time. In a Marvel way, kind of reminds me of the Animal-man/Starfire/Adam Strange/Lobo story arc from 52.

Man, I would actually like to see Marvel just bite the bullet and do one of these things as a totally integrated series like 52.

I'll read them in a year when they hit MDCU. Who is on the crazy Avengers space team?

Thor
Hank McCoy (The Beast)
Captain Britain
Ms. Marvel
The Protector (aka Marvel Boy)
Rhodey (War Machine)
Brunhilda the Valkrie

okay, that's pretty crazy.

Oh. Took me a second to realize that wasn't a list of deceased characters. I thought Marvel had been a lot busier in the past year than I realized.

Well technically, Thor did just recently get over dying and Tony Stark has just faked Rhodey's death in the Iron Man current storyline.

So, apparently Nightcrawler is still dead? Pretty surprised no one has resurrected him yet.

And Xavier is dead too, now; I wonder if that's gonna stick? On the one hand, he's a pretty major character, and he has died and been resurrected before, hasn't he? But on the other hand, they seem to have moved the Xavier/Magneto conflict to be between Cyclops (and his crew) and Wolverine/Kitty (and the X-school) now, so maybe they feel Xavier isn't needed anymore?

Well, Bing's front page spoiled the big Batman ending (X dies). Thanks!

Well, according to Uncanny Avengers, Xavier's brain is currently grafted on to a version of the Red Skull, so he's certainly not coming back in that body

tuomas, if kitty is the only character i have any interest in reading about, what comix is she appearing in atm?

more people than tuomas know that! she's in wolverine & the x-men as a lead teacher and will be in the new adjective-less X-Men

As discussed in the other thread, seems like Captain Marvel is the only answer to this question that will not change... Mostly because everyone agrees it would be in bad taste to bring back a character who died of cancer.

Dibny came back in the interregnum of posting on this thread btw, albeit rebooted.

Which Dibny? Or both of them?

Both.

wut

Gail Simone brought them back as part of Secret Six in the Rebirthiverse (and it's been a long time since I typed that).

Ralph was undercover as a mob heavy, Sue turned up in about #8 after Ralph had broken cover and was moping about being away from her.