Marvel revolutionized death in superhero comics. Death wasn’t exactly something that happened very often in comics, especially when it came to heroes. Most of the time, an issue would end with a cliffhanger meant to make the readers think that the hero was dead, but it would be revealed otherwise. Supporting cast members became icons on their own, and were mostly safe. Important characters rarely died. The House of Ideas went in another direction and showed the way that the deaths of major heroes, villains, and supporting cast members could affect the characters and stories in their comics. Of course, once death became a bigger deal in comics, resurrections would become more common as well.
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Sometimes resurrections can be a great thing, but there are also times when it just won’t work. The deaths were too important, or the characters were never interesting enough to come back despite how important they are. Some of them were replaced and the replacements were better. Marvel brought these four heroes back, but they honestly never should have tried. each of them failing in different ways.
4) Human Torch I
There are lots of Marvel heroes who aren’t well-known, and the most important is easily Human Torch I. Jim Hammond was an android that could transform into a fire-controlling titan. He was one of the first Marvel characters, and helped Captain America and his former enemy Namor battle the Nazis. In fact, he was the person who killed Hitler, making him one of the most important superheroes ever. The publisher has tried to bring Jim to the present day in the 616 numerous times over the years, but it’s always something of a failure. A big reason for this is the fact that he’s 86 years old and all of his coolest actions happened decades back. It’s cool to get flashback stories with him (or his recent appearance in The Ultimates (Vol. 3), which mainly just reminded of us of how based he is), but the House of Ideas has never found a way to bring the original back to prominence in the present day.
3) Silver Fox
The ’90s were great for Wolverine. In 1991, readers got “Weapon X”, which told the story of the Weapon X program and Wolverine getting his adamantium skeleton. Over in Wolverine (Vol. 2), starting with issue #48, we learned that the supersoldier program used memory manipulation, including sound stages to act out the events they were going to implant. Wolverine (Vol. 2) #50 showed the bar where Wolverine brought Silver Fox, who was Wolverine’s Cherokee girlfriend in the late 1800s/early 1900s, after Sabretooth killed her. The issue ended with a bombshell, revealing that she had somehow survived til the present day and was enhanced like a Weapon X subject. This was a strange choice, and it would eventually end with it revealed that she was either a clone or an impersonator, and she died again. It was such a strange story idea; it was obviously done for shock value and then it was done away with completely. It was a bad idea and there was no reason for it to ever happen.
2) Thunderbird I
Giant-Size X-Men #1 introduced readers to an entirely new team of X-Men. One of the members was Thunderbird. John Proudstar was an Apache mutant with superhuman strength, speed, durability, and super senses. He was an angry Native warrior with basic powers that the X-Men already had covered with Colossus and Wolverine. When Chris Claremont came aboard X-Men, one of his first acts was to kill Thunderbird. He died to show the stakes of the X-Men’s adventures and stayed dead for years.
At some point, his brother James was introduced, with the same powers as his dead sibling, and he became Warpath. He was everything John was but better and allowed to grow as character, eventually joining the X-Men. Thunderbird was resurrected in the Krakoa Era after Scarlet Witch created the Elysium Fields, which allowed mutants to resurrect people that died before Xavier started downloading everyone’s consciousnesses. After his return, Marvel did basically nothing with him and still hasn’t. He’s still alive, but it’s honestly not worked out. Warpath is everything his brother should have been, so there’s no need for John to have ever been brought back (although, Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird by Native wrestler Nyla Rose was amazing and maybe if she had been able to write a series starring the character, things would have been better).
1) Captain Marvel I/Mar-Vell
Captain Marvel I was the original cosmic Marvel hero. The Kree soldier Mar-Vell had super strength, speed, invulnerability, flight, and energy manipulation powers because of the Nega-Bands, and was once bonded to Silver Age Marvel sidekick extraordinaire Rick Jones. He’s honestly the closest thing to Superman that Marvel ever had — an alien who came to Earth and became the planet’s defender, loving humanity like he was a human — and nearly everyone who read Marvel in the late ’60s and ’70s loved him. He was Thanos’s first archenemy, and writer/artist Jim Starlin brought the character to the next level. Mar-Vell was amazing and then Marvel and Starlin decided to kill him. Marvel Graphic Novel: The Death of Captain Marvel revealed that the character was suffering from the Kree version of cancer from fighting the villain Nitro. His death was poignant and devastating, and the book is one of the greatest death comics ever.
Over the years, Marvel has tried numerous times to bring him back to life. Sometimes, it’s just a spirit version of him in the realm of Death. Once, it was a Skrull pretending to be him that started to actually believe he was Mar-Vell. There was a time lost version of the character who eventually had to go back and die. The Earth X Trilogy starred a resurrected version of the character in the future (most of it is actually awesome, so this one is an outlier). Most of his returns to the world have been a mistake, because his death was so amazing that undoing it feels disrespectful to the character.
What dead Marvel characters do you think shouldn’t be resurrected? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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