Who died and stayed dead in the Marvel Universe?

The joke used to be that in comics, only three major characters ever stayed dead: Uncle Ben, Bucky and Jason Todd (Robin). Now that Bucky is back in action as the Winter Soldier and Todd is doing whatever he’s doing at DC, Peter Parker’s late Uncle Ben is one of the few who can’t pass through Marvel’s revolving door of death.

Despite Marvel’s reputation for constant resurrections, I highly doubt Uncle Ben will ever be resurrected in any way. His death is just too integral to Spider-Man’s origin, which I think is Marvel’s most powerful superhero origin. The saying “With great power comes great responsibility” rings as true as it did in 1962 and is the purest distillation of what it means to be a hero. Bringing back Ben would invalidate that and be really cheap. They did kill off Aunt May at one point in a non-sensational, affecting story but then brought her back, which was pretty cheap.

There is another Spider-Man character who died and never really came back: Gwen Stacy. In 1973, the Green Goblin threw her off the Brooklyn Bridge (or George Washington Bridge; it’s disputed) and as Spider-Man spun out a web to catch her, Gwen’s neck snapped from the angle and physics of the fall. That one sound effect “snap” is credited as the symbolic transition from the goofy Silver Age to the more realistic Bronze Age. Prior to this story, it was very rare for a main character to die and this was a wake-up call. The death was too monumental to bring Gwen back and aside from a few alternate future stories, she has stayed dead. Norman Osborne, the original Green Goblin, also died in this story to come back decades later, which was stupid.

Poor Peter Parker. He has more motivational guilt in the form of dead characters than anybody else.

The original Captain Marvel, the Kree warrior Mar-Vell, is dead and staying dead. He died of cancer in the early ‘80s and maybe Marvel thinks it would be too insensitive to real-world people with cancer to blithely resurrect him. The Captain Marvel name has lived on, first through the Avenger Monica Rambeau and now through Carol Danvers, the former Ms. Marvel. Marvel Comics legally has to constantly publish a character named Captain Marvel or the rights to use the name for a series will revert to DC’s Captain Marvel, who can now only appear in comics titled Shazam and not his character’s name.

James “Bucky” Barnes had been dead for many decades after he was injured in the explosion that sent Captain America into suspended animation during World War II. His resurrection as Russian assassin the Winter Soldier was very well done and didn’t seem like a cheat. The revelation that despite his harmless façade, teen Bucky was a killer who did the dirty work during the war, was compelling.

Who else died and came back? Phoenix, twice. Same for Wonder Man: He died after his first appearance, returned years later as a zombie (or “zuvembie” because Marvel in the ‘70s was still forbidden from using the term zombie as a legacy of the backlash against the horror comics of the ‘50s), regained his personality, served as an Avenger, was seemingly killed and then the Scarlet Witch resurrected him. The Thing died but the Fantastic Four went to Heaven to bring him back (Jack Kirby played God). Pretty much the whole Alpha Flight team died and returned. Elektra had a very memorable death in Daredevil, appeared in the trippy masterpiece Elektra: Assassin miniseries in the ‘80s and is now alive again in the present. Nightcrawler died but is back now after making some sort of deal in the afterlife. Hell, all the X-Men died in 1987 but got resurrected immediately by some cosmic gatekeeper. That list doesn’t even count the heroes who were presumed dead but actually missing, like Captain America, the Wasp, Karma, the Human Torch, etc.

Around 2000, the editors at Marvel issued an edict that death would be permanent in the Marvel Universe so heroic sacrifices would have more meaning. The X-Men then killed off Colossus, who chose to sacrifice his life to cure the Legacy Virus, a mutant analogue for AIDS. (His sister, Illyana Rasputin, had already died of the disease after being reduced from teenager to infant. She has since returned to her former teenage self — loooooonnnggg story — meaning all three Rasputin siblings have died and returned). The edict didn’t last too long and death became a revolving door again. I’m not sure what I think of this policy but it did lead to a fantastic scene where Kitty Pryde discovered a resurrected Colossus as bullets phased through her body and bounced off his metal chest.

So in the Marvel Universe, there’s no point buying a nice head stone. Just wait a bit and they’ll be back.