10 Worst Ways DC Superheroes Have Died

Superhero comics have a reputation for being kid-friendly, and they certainly can be, but they’re also a bloody medium. Every hero gets into fights. For many, the incredible action is one of the main draws to comics. However, as is only natural with so many different writers and artists creating so many projects, not every work falls into the happy-go-lucky, campy part of the genre. Sometimes, the comic book violence gets brutal, and often, that’s when people die. While DC and Marvel’s heroes have a reputation for never staying dead long, they can’t come back without dying first, and those deaths can be absolute nightmare fuel.

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So today, we’re going to be looking at some of the worst ways that superheroes have died across comic books. There are an infinite number of horrible ways that our beloved heroes have gone out, from ironic destruction to physical torture I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. To keep the variety up a little, we’ll be including a mix of brutal, horrific, and emotionally devastating deaths, just to make sure we’ve covered all our bases. Without further ado, let’s get into nightmare-fuel-worthy deaths.

10) Old Man Logan Bursts From Hulk’s Guts

Tenth place on our list goes to when Old Man Logan sliced his way out of Hulk’s stomach, which he could only do because the Jade Giant had ripped him apart and swallowed the pieces. Wolverine reformed inside the behemoth, knitting himself back together, giving the Hulk the absolute worst case of indigestion before he was unceremoniously ripped apart. This death is as brutal as it is visceral, and the thought of feeling Wolverine reconstituting himself inside my stomach makes me disgusted beyond belief. Granted, the Hulk wasn’t exactly a hero in this story, but his usual self is, so we’re counting this awful death that Old Man Logan gave us.

9) Maxwell Lord Shoots Blue Beetle

Blue Beetle’s death here is easily the most tame and cleanest one on our list. It’s just a simple headshot, but the real trauma comes from the circumstances. Ted discovered that someone had stolen nearly all of his funds, leaving him bankrupt, and all of his friends refused to help in the investigation. Eventually, he discovered that his longtime friend and former benefactor of the Justice League, Maxwell Lord, was behind the theft and a plan to wipe out the world’s metahumans.

Ted was betrayed by one of his closest friends after being rebuffed by nearly all of his other ones. He was the sole person to discover the threat Lord presented, and he was executed for it. It might not be as bloody as some of the other entries, but it hurt on a deep, emotional level. And there’s the fact that it was so quick, without warning or fanfare. It was disrespectful in a way superhero deaths rarely are, especially to a character as classic as Blue Beetle. The entirety of Countdown to Infinite Crisis practically said that nobody cared about Ted, and this death was the last insult.

8) Wolverine Encased in Adamantium

While Wolverine is known for always getting back up, he’s been knocked down plenty of times. One of the hardest to watch occurred in the Death of Wolverine miniseries, which saw a virus from the Mircoverse disable Logan’s healing factor, leaving him vulnerable. Worse yet, he found out that Abraham Cornelius, head of the Weapons X program, had placed a bounty on Wolverine’s head and was trying to copy his healing factor. Wolverine tracked down the man who ruined his life, only to end the adventure by slashing open a container of molten Adamantium.

The liquid metal completely coated Wolverine. After taking down Cornelius, Wolverine fell to his knees and reflected on his long life, the burning metal cooling. He was killed as the Adamantium solidified all over him, suffocating him as much as burning him. It was a horrific, tragic death, especially with how he was killed by the very metal he was famous for.

7) Jason Todd Beaten, Then Exploded

Everyone knows that Jason Todd, the second Robin, was killed after being taken captive by the Joker. The Clown Prince of Crime savagely beat him with a crobar, then left Jason and his mother to be killed by a bomb he planted. Jason’s final act was to throw himself over the bomb, hoping to shield his mom from the blast, but unfortunately, the event claimed both of their lives. Jason was the first Robin to die, and he didn’t go quietly or painlessly. Of course, as painful as the beating and explosion must have been, I’m not sure if they compare to the real truth behind Jason’s death.

DC had a vote to determine if Jason would survive or not, and although it was a tight race, in the end, the majority voted to let the Boy Wonder die. Not only was his death horribly traumatic, but the fans had actively wished for it, which adds a whole other layer of pain and meta disrespect to the situation. Although Jason would eventually return to the land of the living, his villainous actions show that “Death in the Family” definitely left its mark on him.

6) She-Hulk Rips Vision Apart

I’m not sure who it is, but someone in Marvel Editorial must love to see people ripped in two, their guts and viscera jettisoned into the reader’s face. Heck, the Sentry alone has done it three separate times: to Ares, Carnage, and the Void. However, the biscetion that earns its place on our list today is when She-Hulk tore Vision in half in Avengers #500. While this example has a lot more gears than blood, this death is made all the more horrific by the circumstances surrounding it. The Scarlet Witch had gone over the deep end, and her reality-warping powers started striking out against all of the Avengers.

Her ex-husband, Vision, might have had the worst fate, as he started unendingly vomiting Ultron copies from his mouth. The constant threats and overwhelming situation caused She-Hulk to lose control of her rage, and so she ripped Vision in two. It was brutal on every level, and made all the more terrible that Vision’s last moments before it were spent in utter agony and confusion.

5) The Great Darkness Burns Zatara

Zatara was the father of everyone’s favorite backwards-speaking magician, Zatanna, and a powerful mage in his own right. Although long since retired from the magic game, he and several other masters of the mystic arts came together to try and stop the awakening of the Great Darkness in Swamp Thing (1982) #50. The group conducted a seance to see into the Outervoid, but the Great Darkness took notice of them and tried to burn away the interfering magicians. The attack would have killed Zatanna, but Zatara redirected it at himself.

Zatara immediately caught flame and was burned away to nothing. Not only is incineration one heck of a terrible way to go, but it came from the power of the Great Darkness itself, one of the most impossibly powerful beings to ever exist, being older than creation itself. Immolation created by the very embodiment of primordial darkness and entropy can only hurt worse than regular fire, if I had to guess.

4) Iron Man Trapped By His Own Armor

The Marvel Universe vs. the Punisher series depicted an alternate universe where most of Marvel’s heroes and villains were infected by a disease that transformed them into psychotic cannibals. While there are plenty of monstrous and grisly deaths in this comic, our entry today has nothing to do with being eaten. Originally, nobody knew how the infection spread, but Iron Man knew he’d be safe in his armor and tried to take down some of the more dangerous turned heroes and villains. Unfortunately, a brutal fight with Red Hulk damaged his systems, and Tony was exposed to the virus.

The fight caused Tony’s suit to lock up, trapping him inside it. He was stuck inside his suit for five days, which he spent screaming for help that never came. Eventually, he succumbed and died, but just imagine how torturous those five days would have been. He built the armor to protect him, but instead it became his coffin. He couldn’t so much as move, forced to slowly die from thirst while stuck in his own creation, all while being driven insane by cannibalistic hunger. A truly horrible way to go.

3) Stephanie Brown’s Torture and Preventable Death

After a criminally short career as Robin, Stephanie Brown was murdered in the “War Games” storyline, which is widely considered to be one of Batman’s worst comics. In an effort to prove herself capable of being Batman’s partner, Stephanie implemented a plan she found in the Batcomputer that could end all gang crime in Gotham at once. Unfortunately, she didn’t know that it required Bruce in his Matches Malone persona to work, so Gotham fell into chaos. Stephanie was captured and tortured by Black Mask, eventually stumbling her way to Leslie Thompkins’s clinic.

While it was retconned later on, Stephanie originally died in the clinic, but not because she was beyond saving. In the most out-of-character choice of all time, Leslie let Stephanie die to show Bruce that his vigilante lifestyle was dangerous. Not only was Stephanie tortured and in emotional turmoil, but Leslie refused to help her to prove a point, which was the last ingredient for the most disrespectful cake in all of comics.

2) Spider-Man’s Mutant Virus

No list of worst deaths could be complete without at least one Spider-Man entry. Marvel’s most popular hero has been put through the ringer worse than practically anyone else. He’s been eaten by the Venom symbiote, crucified by Kulan Gath, and exploded from the inside out by Sandman. Today, however, we’re focusing on one of the most disgusting and horrific deaths, shown in Ruins #2. The Ruins comic is infamous for being a bleak, disgusting portrait of the Marvel Universe, where the Silver Surfer rips his own lungs out and the Hulk becomes a giant mass of cancer. One of the worst to die, however, was Spider-Man.

When he was bitten by the radioactive spider, instead of getting superpowers, he contracted a mutant disease. First, he got a skin rash, and he got fevers. Then his skin chipped and broke open. Then his hair all fell out, and he started to bleed everywhere. By the end of it, he was a broken, animalistic man in constant, cancer-ridden agony, endlessly dripping blood. Spider-Man suffers a lot in his many different incarnations, but this one was one of his slowest and most miserable deaths out there.

1) Barry Allen Disintegrates

In Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Anti-Monitor built an antimatter cannon to destroy the entire multiverse. With no other way to stop it, the Flash ran around the machine at his top speed, turning the energy back in on itself. The cannon was destroyed, and the Anti-Monitor’s plans were delayed, but the Flash disintegrated into nothing. Now, a lot of us have been desensitized to this death, given how iconic it is, but when you really break it down, it must have been one of the most atrocious ways to die imaginable.

The antimatter flowing into Barry was agonizing, he said as much. Imagine the worst pain you’ve ever experienced, take that to the farthest extreme you can, then spread it out over your entire body. Now imagine that pain while you’re running at absolute top speed, the pain increasing with each step. What makes this truly horrific is Barry’s perception of time. He sees and feels things at the same speed he moves, and since Barry surpassed lightspeed to blast back the antimatter, to him, even the few seconds or minutes he raced around the cannon must have felt like years, maybe even decades.

The Flash endured unimaginable agony for an immeasurable amount of time, all while his body fell apart. It was like every atom in his body was dehydrating and decaying at once. Even when Barry was nothing but a withered skeleton, he kept running. Barry’s death was disturbing, a kind of torture that not even the sickest minds would inflict on someone, but it also saved the multiverse. It might have been utterly agonizing, but Barry Allen died a hero, running for hope.

So there we have ten of the worst ways that superheroes have died over the years. Which death not on this list do you consider to be the most brutal one there is? What do you think? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!