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'''Comic book death''' is a neologism used somewhat ironically 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 rarely taken seriously and is not believed to be permanent or meaningful.
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 that he/she did not particularly care for, but upon 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.

Contents

Notable examples

Outside comic books

See also

References

External links

Notable examples

The two most famous deaths in comics have arguably been 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 (although of the two, only Jean's was actually intended to be a true, permanent death, and was later retconned not to have been a death at all). Since the ''Dark Phoenix Saga'', comic book deaths have been particularly common in X-Men-related series. The death of Captain America made headlines in 2007, however it remains to be seen if the character will return.
The prominence of comic book deaths has led to a common piece of comic shop wisdom: "No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben"^[1] referring to Captain America's sidekick (dead since 1964 in real world publication, 1945 in fictional continuity, but brought back to life in ''Captain America'' vol. 5), Batman's second Robin (died in 1989; has since returned), and Spider-Man's uncle (dead since 1962), respectively. Ironically, both Todd and Bucky returned from the dead in 2005. An Uncle Ben from a timeline where he never died recently entered mainstream continuity in the recent issues of ''Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man'', but was quickly killed and impersonated by an alternate timeline Chameleon. Note that sometimes a character can be dead in the mainstream continuity, but alive in an alternate reality, such as the aged Bucky in the Ultimate Marvel universe, or Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy's return in the House of M storyline.
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, and by Dan Slott in his 2005 miniseries ''Great Lakes Avengers,'' in which one member died in every issue.
''The Simpsons'' also parodied comic book deaths in the episode "Radioactive Man" in which Bart mentions an issue of ''Radioactive Man'' in which the eponymous character and his sidekick Fallout Boy die on every page.
Common retcons include:

★ An explosion didn't kill the character, they were merely buried in rubble/flung to safety/transported to another dimension (Spider-Man villain Hammerhead once survived a nuclear explosion in this way). ^[2]

★ The person who died was a clone, impostor, or shapeshifter (Dark Phoenix being the most well-known example).^[3]

★ The character really ''did'' die, but was resurrected, either intentionally (e.g., Green Arrow)^[4] or unintentionally (e.g., Jason Todd)^[5] by some cosmic or magical being.

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 so that a character killed in that season could return.[1] However, the term ''comic book death'' was not used at the time.

See also

★ List of dead comic book characters

★ Women in Refrigerators

References

1. Captain America, RIP, para. 5, ''Wall Street Journal'', March 13, 2007
2. In Amazing Spider-Man #131, April 1974. Hammerhead reappears in #157.
3. The Dark Phoenix Saga, ''X-Men'' #101-108 (1976-77), 129-138 (1980); retconned in ''Fantastic Four'' #286 (1985). See Dark Phoenix Saga#Jean Grey and Phoenix as separate entities for the behind the scenes writing/editorial decisions which led to the change.
4. returned ''Green Arrow'' vol. 2 #1 (2000)
5. returned as the Red Hood, ''Batman'' #635 (2004)

External links

★ X-Men: Death Becomes Them A comedy flash movie that makes fun of the comic book deaths in the X-Men comics.

★ Shh! It’s a secret! An article that mentions the impermanence of death particularly in Marvel comic books