10 Comic Characters Who are Still Dead After 20 Plus Years Part 3

With so many characters returning from the dead in comics I thought it would be interesting to look at who has remained dead over the last couple of decades. This is the first in a series off such posts.

Rules I’m playing by in this post and any time I revisit this post:

A death still counts if:

·        They returned briefly but returned to the grave in such a way that their original cause of death applies, even if they died again in their return;

·        A character time travels to the present from a time period before their death, as long as this does not interfere with their death;

·        A character appears because they were actually visited in the afterlife;

·        In the case of DC’s changing timeline, their status in the current timeline is unconfirmed.

·        A clone is distinct from the original.

A death does not count if:

·        A character’s adventures take place in the future (and therefore are alive/not yet born in the present);

·        A character continues to have an active or semi-active present due to being a vampire, ghost, zombie, or other member of the undead, or due to being “one with the universe”;

·        In the case of DC’s changing timeline, a new version of the character who is more or less the modern continuity version of the deceased character has appeared.

·        A clone is likely to have the soul of the original.

Finally, in the event that a dead character is revealed to be an imposter, the death still counts for the imposter (barring other circumstances) but not the original.

For now I’m skipping characters who died in their first appearance, even major ones such as Ben Parker, though I may cover such characters in later posts.

1.      Captain America (Jeff Mace; patriotic hero originally fighting criminals as the Patriot; after the second Captain America’s death he took over before retiring shortly after World War II; died of cancer). First appearance: Human Torch #4 Spring 1941. Death: Captain America #285 September 1983.

2.      Changeling (shape-shifting evil mutant; reforming after being diagnosed with cancer, he posed as Professor X and was killed by Grotesk; briefly revived as zombie but returned to grave). First appearance: X-Men #35 August 1967. Death: X-Men #42 March 1968. X-Men #65 February 1970 revealed that it was he and not Professor X who died in the fight with Grotesk.

3.      Doctor Midnight (Elizabeth Chapel; blind heroine who could see in the dark, successor to the original Doctor Mid-Nite; joined a gathering of heroes to fight Eclipso but was killed by him). First appearance: Infinity Inc. #19 October 1985. Death: Eclipso #13 November 1993.

4.      Nuke (Albert Gaines, hero with radioactive powers; went mad when he learned his own radiation was killing his parents; Doctor Spectrum encased him in a bubble to contain him, but he burnt up all the oxygen). First appearance: Defenders #112 October 1982. Death: Squadron Supreme #3 November 1985.

5.      Sheriff Root (Hugo Root; alcoholic racist police officer; after forced to maim himself by Jesse Custer, he had his son Arseface retrieve his gun belt and then committed suicide). First appearance: Preacher #1 April 1995. Death: Preacher #4 July 1995.

6.      Rorschach (Walter Kovacs; crime fighter driven mad after a particularly nasty case; killed to prevent him from exposing a secret that would bring the world closer to World War III).First appearance: Watchmen #1 September 1986. Death: Watchmen #12 October 1987.

7.      Steeplejack (Melvin Plumm, criminal successor to an earlier version; attended a meeting at the Bar with No Name to deal with the Scourge of the Underworld, only for the Scourge to kill everyone present). First appearance: Ms. Marvel #14 February 1978. Death: Captain America #320 August 1986.

8.      TNT (Thomas N. Thomas; high school chemistry teacher who with student Dan Dunbar is involved in an accident involving radioactive salts, giving them both powers, with Dan becoming Dyna-Mite; though he lived longer in the Pre-Crisis continuity, Post-Crisis he was killed in 1942 by Nazi saboteurs). First appearance: Star-Spangled Comics #7 April 1942. Death: Young All-Stars #1 June 1987.

9.      Wing (Wing How; sidekick to the Crimson Avenger; sacrificed his life to stop the Nebula Man). First appearance: Detective Comics #20 October 1938. Death: Justice League of America #100 August 1972 (as mystery deceased hero; identity revealed in Justice League of America #102 October 1972).

10.   Writer (Grant Morrison; claimed that Animal-Man was a comic character that he was writing; had the ability to literally rewrite reality; as a member of the Suicide Squad, he had writer’s block and ending up getting killed by a Beastiamorph during the War of the Gods). First appearance: Animal Man #25 July 1990. Death: Suicide Squad #58 October 1991.

10 More Comic Characters Who are Still Dead After 20 Plus Years

With so many characters returning from the dead in comics I thought it would be interesting to look at who has remained dead over the last couple of decades. This is the first in a series off such posts.

Rules I’m playing by in this post and any time I revisit this post:

A death still counts if:

·        They returned briefly but returned to the grave in such a way that their original cause of death applies, even if they died again in their return;

·        A character time travels to the present from a time period before their death, as long as this does not interfere with their death;

·        A character appears because they were actually visited in the afterlife;

·        In the case of DC’s changing timeline, their status in the current timeline is unconfirmed.

·        A clone is distinct from the original.

A death does not count if:

·        A character’s adventures take place in the future (and therefore are alive/not yet born in the present);

·        A character continues to have an active or semi-active present due to being a vampire, ghost, zombie, or other member of the undead, or due to being “one with the universe”;

·        In the case of DC’s changing timeline, a new version of the character who is more or less the modern continuity version of the deceased character has appeared.

·        A clone is likely to have the soul of the original.

Finally, in the event that a dead character is revealed to be an imposter, the death still counts for the imposter (barring other circumstances) but not the original.

For now I’m skipping characters who died in their first appearance, even major ones such as Ben Parker, though I may cover such characters in later posts. 

1.      Blue Beetle (Dan Garrett; archaeologist with mystical scarab; seemingly killed fighting Jarvis Kord and encouraging Jarvis’ nephew Ted to take over as the Beetle, he was revived by the scarab; half-mad, he died for real after the scarab shattered in battle with the Ted Kord Blue Beetle). First appearance: Blue Beetle #1 June 1964. Death: Blue Beetle #18 November 1987.

2.      Blue Eagle (James Dore Jr., aka American Eagle and Cap’n Hawk; inherited pair of wings from father that gave him flight; during the battle between his team, the Squadron Supreme and the Redeemers, Lamprey drained the power from his wings; he tried landing on Pinball to break his fall, but only ended up killing them both). First appearance: Avengers #85 February 1971. Death: Squadron Supreme #12 August 1986.

3.      Alex DeWitt (girlfriend of Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner); strangled by Major Force and stuffed in a fridge; this led to the term “fridging” being coined to refer to cases where a female character is killed to advance a male hero’s story). First appearance: Green Lantern #48 January 1994. Death:  Green Lantern #54 August 1994.

4.      Fritz the Cat (anthropomorphic cat who has sex and drugs adventures; killed by ice pick; death was creator Robert Crumb’s protest of the movie). First appareance: Help! #22 January 1965. Death: The People’s Comics 1972.

5.      Lady Liberty (member of a shady government group called the Force of July; killed battling Kobra). First appearance: Batman and the Outsiders Annual #1 1994. Death: Suicide Squad #30 Late June 1989.

6.      Melter (Bruno Horgan; Iron Man foe with a melting device; shot to death by the Scourge of the Underworld, who was disguised as his assistant). First appearance: Tales of Suspense #47 November 1963. Death: Avengers #263 January 1986.

7.      Nite Owl (Hollis Mason; policeman active as a costumed crime fighter during World War II; killed by thugs erroneously believing he had come out of retirement) First appearance: Watchmen #1 September 1986. Death: Watchmen #9 May 1987.

8.      Dorothy Parker (head of the criminal Parker Girls, who forced Katchoo, one of the lead characters of Strangers in Paradise, to work for them; shot in the face by her agent Tambi, who felt Parker was becoming too erratic; Tambi made the death look like a suicide). First appearance: Strangers in Paradise #1 September 1994. Death:  Strangers in Paradise #12 January 1998.

9.      Scourge of the Underworld (original; one of a number of people hired by Thomas Holloway to murder super-villains; this version killed the most of any, starting with the Enforcer and cumulating with a massacre at the Bar with No Name; after being captured by Captain America, he was killed by another Scourge). First appearance: Iron Man #194 May 1985. Death: Captain America #320 August 1986.

10.   Gwen Stacy (Peter Parker’s girlfriend; Green Goblin tossed her off a bridge, the Spider-Man shot a web-line to break her fall, but that apparently broke her neck). First appearance: Amazing Spider-Man #31 December 1965. Death:  Amazing Spider-Man #144 May 1975.

10 Comic Characters Who are Still Dead After 20 Plus Years.

With so many characters returning from the dead in comics I thought it would be interesting to look at who has remained dead over the last couple of decades. This is the first in a series off such posts.

Rules I’m playing by in this post and any time I revisit this post:

A death still counts if:

·        They returned briefly but returned to the grave in such a way that their original cause of death applies, even if they died again in their return;

·        A character time travels to the present from a time period before their death, as long as this does not interfere with their death;

·        A character appears because they were actually visited in the afterlife;

·        In the case of DC’s changing timeline, their status in the current timeline is unconfirmed.

·        A clone is distinct from the original.

A death does not count if:

·        A character’s adventures take place in the future (and therefore are alive/not yet born in the present);

·        A character continues to have an active or semi-active present due to being a vampire, ghost, zombie, or other member of the undead, or due to being “one with the universe”;

·        In the case of DC’s changing timeline, a new version of the character who is more or less the modern continuity version of the deceased character has appeared.

·        A clone is likely to have the soul of the original.

Finally, in the event that a dead character is revealed to be an imposter, the death still counts for the imposter (barring other circumstances) but not the original.

For this first post I’ve tried to avoid characters who were intended to die in their first appearance such as Ben Parker, though I may cover such characters in later posts. I’m also saving a key female Marvel character for a later post; as Marvel has a more stable continuity than DC, I want to space out the Marvel characters where I can. Plus I don’t want to use up all the “big guns” in one post.

1.      Aquababy (Arthur Curry Jr.; infant son of Aquaman and Mera; a water breather, Black Manta trapped him in a sphere and filled it with air, causing him to gradually suffocate to death). First appearance: Aquaman #23 October 1965. Death: Adventure Comics #452 August 1977.

2.      Black Hood (Matthew “Kip” Burland, policeman left for dead by the Skull before being trained by a hermit to fight crime; despite being retired with a new Black Hood as successor, he was murdered by the Eraser). First appearance: Top-Noth Comics #9 October 1940. Death: Mighty Crusaders #11 March 1985.

3.      Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell, Kree spy who “went native” while acting as a crime fighter on Earth; later given cosmic awareness by Eon; sealing radioactive canisters damaged by Nitro gave him canister that he later died from; while he returned and died again during the Chaos War, he would have still returned to the grave at the end of the Chaos War even if he had not died again, so I’m still counting him). First appearance: Marvel Super-Heroes #12 December 1967. Death: Marvel Graphic Novel #1 1982.

4.      Enforcer (Charles Delazny Jr., costumed killer who battled Ghost Rider and other heroes; he was the first victim of the super-villain killer Scourge of the Underworld, who shot him in the chest with an explosive bullet). First appearance: Ghost Rider #22 February 1977. Death: Iron Man #194 May 1985.

5.      Mark Hazzard (heroic mercenary in the New Universe; shot by his ex-wife’s new husband Gordon, then strangled Gordon before collapsing; in a coma and with no chance of revival, his son told doctors to take him off life support).  First appearance:  Mark Hazard: Merc #1 November 1986. Death: Mark Hazard: Merc Annual #1 1987.

6.      Nighthawk (Kyle Richmond of Earth-712; billionaire crime fighter who worked with the Squadron Supreme until they began their Utopia program, then formed the Redeemers to stop them; despite having been brainwashed by the Squadron, Foxfire induced a heart attack in Nighthawk in order to prove her love to Dr. Spectrum; she was then killed herself by Nighthawk’s former foe/would-be lover Mink). First appearance: Avengers #85 February 1971. Death: Squadron Supreme #12 August 1986.

7.      Red Skull (Albert Malik; Communist criminal later confirmed to not be the original Nazi villain; battled the 1950s Captain America; shot out of a helicopter by a rogue Scourge of the Underworld working for the original Red Skull). First confirmed appearance:  Young Men #24 December 1953 (earlier imposters may prove to be Mailk but this is his earliest confirmed appearance). Death: Captain America #347 November 1988.

8.      711 (Daniel Dyce, a DA framed for a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison; digs his way out of prison and fights crime while still based in prison; killed by mobster Oscar Jones). First appearance: Police Comics #1 August 1941. Death: Police Comics #15 January 1943.

9.      Shrike (Vanessa Kinsbury, a woman with psychiatric issues given powers by the Overmaster to fight the Justice League along with the Cadre; becoming a born again Christian, she joined the Suicide Squad and on her first mission with them was gunned down by Ogaden soldiers).  First appearance: Justice League of America #235 February 1985. Death: Suicide Squad #25 March 1989.

10.   Whizzer (Robert Frank; somehow gained superspeed after being bit a cobra and then getting a transfusion of mongoose blood; suffered a heart attack battling his old foe Isbisa). First appearance: USA Comics #1 August 1941. Death: Vision and the Scarlet Witch #2 December 1982.