The Death Issues

Death in comics has a reputation for being cheap. Characters come back, publishers announce the return before the funeral has finished, and readers learned decades ago to treat a corpse as a plot device with a shelf life.

That reputation is earned, and it is also why the exceptions matter. A handful of issues used a death to change what the medium was willing to do, and the industry did not go back afterwards. Eleven of them, with the dates the books actually reached readers rather than the dates printed on the covers.

On sale 13 March 1973, cover-dated June. Gerry Conway and Gil Kane killed Spider-Man's girlfriend in a story that turned on a sound effect: the snap as the webline caught her mid-fall. Readers argued then and argue now over whether Spider-Man killed her himself by catching her too abruptly.

Before this, the girlfriend was safe by convention. After it she was not, and every subsequent superhero comic was written in a world where the supporting cast could be taken off the board. The following issue killed the Green Goblin, which is usually where the two-issue set is bought and sold together.

ASM #121 on eBay ›

On sale 17 June 1980. The Dark Phoenix Saga was originally to end with Jean Grey depowered and alive; Marvel's editor-in-chief judged that a character who had destroyed an inhabited world could not simply be let off, and the ending was rewritten so she died.

It is the rare case where an editorial intervention produced the better story, and it set the template for the company-defining event issue that Marvel has been rerunning ever since.

On sale 29 December 1981, cover-dated April 1982. Frank Miller killed the character he had created eleven issues earlier, in a sequence where Bullseye runs her through with her own sai and she crawls a block to die at Matt Murdock's door.

Miller reportedly asked that she not be resurrected, and got an assurance that did not survive the decade. But the issue itself is the moment mainstream superhero comics started reading like crime fiction.

Marvel's first graphic novel killed Mar-Vell not in battle but of cancer, contracted from exposure to a nerve gas years earlier in Captain Marvel #34. Jim Starlin wrote and drew it after losing his own father to the disease.

The character stayed dead for decades, unusually. It remains the only major superhero death that reads as a book about dying rather than a book about a fight.

On sale 11 June 1985, cover-dated October. Marv Wolfman and George Perez killed Supergirl behind a cover of Superman carrying her body that has been homaged more times than almost any image in comics.

The intent was partly editorial housekeeping: the post-Crisis Superman was to be the sole survivor of Krypton, so the cousin had to go. She was out of continuity for nearly two decades.

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The Flash's own title ended at issue #350, on sale 18 June 1985, a week after Supergirl died. Barry Allen's death in Crisis #8 followed, and unlike almost every other example here it held: he stayed dead for twenty-three years.

A generation of readers grew up with Wally West as the Flash because of it, which is the strongest argument anyone has ever made that a permanent death can be worth more than the character it removes.

DC set up a 900 number and let readers vote on whether the second Robin lived or died. The vote ran close, roughly 5,300 to 5,200 in favour of death, and reporting afterwards suggested a single caller may have dialled repeatedly.

Issue #427 reached stands on 8 September 1988 and #428 on 20 October. A teenage sidekick was beaten with a crowbar and blown up because of a phone poll, and the resulting guilt drove Batman's characterisation for the next twenty years.

Cover-dated February 1988. Cypher, whose power was understanding languages, died taking a bullet in an issue most readers did not see coming, because he was the least powerful member of a teenage team and those characters were supposed to be safe.

It is the least famous death on this list and one of the most quietly influential: the moment X-books established that the students were not protected by their own youth.

On sale 19 November 1992, cover-dated January 1993. Doomsday and Superman beat each other to death in an issue told in full-page panels, published in a black polybag with an armband, and covered by news outlets that had never mentioned a comic before.

It sold in numbers that have never been repeated and did more than any other single issue to inflate and then burst the speculator bubble. He was back within a year, which everyone expected, and none of that changed how many people bought it.

Superman #75 on eBay ›

On sale 14 September 1993. Not a death but an amputation of the thing that defined him: Magneto tore the adamantium out through Wolverine's pores, and the aftermath issue left the most popular character in comics with bone claws and a failing body.

It is included here because it is the nineties in one book: the company could not kill its best seller, so it killed part of him and shipped it in a foil cover.

On sale 14 February 1995. Aunt May died peacefully, at home, having revealed she had known Peter's secret for years, in an anniversary issue widely praised as one of the best Spider-Man stories of the decade.

Two years later the Clone Saga retconned it: the woman who died was an actress, part of a Norman Osborn plot. It is the definitive example of an excellent death undone by editorial reversal, and the reason readers now assume every death is temporary.

Sort these by what they changed rather than by who died. Gwen Stacy made the supporting cast mortal. Dark Phoenix made consequence a selling point. Elektra brought crime-fiction ruthlessness into a superhero book. Crisis used death as continuity maintenance. Jason Todd outsourced it to a phone line. Superman #75 turned it into an event with a press release attached, and Aunt May showed how quickly the industry would take one back when a later writer wanted her.

The through-line is that death in comics stopped being a story ending and became a publishing tool, somewhere between 1973 and 1992. Every one of these books is a step on that road.

A note on dates and sources. On-sale dates above come from the records on this site and differ from the cover dates by an average of about two months, which is why several of these deaths are commonly filed under the wrong year. This is comics history rather than database output, so the accounts of editorial decisions follow the commonly documented record; where numbers are disputed, and the Jason Todd vote tally is, the article gives the reported figures and says so.