Major superheroes/villains who died and have stayed dead - are there any?

By "major" I of course mean characters that who made several appearances in ongoing series, not characters who were written to die right from the start, like Rorschach.

I guess New Warriors characters are by definition minor characters; ditto New X-Men/Young X-Men characters. Also, Runaways characters.

General GLory?

Cypher is coming back Tuomas, In Young X Men apparently

Elongated Man - it's been nearly 2 yrs, right?
Deadman

Kraven the Hunter's stayed down, hasn't he?

Thankfully yes, though I'm not sure it counts fully since I think they had him succeeded once or twice by new Kravens. Not to mention the Ultimate universe one.

I wouldn't count Elongated Man as "stayed dead", really...

Ghosts are dead. You can look it up.

where Elongated Man runs into trouble is the whole "major superheroes" bit.

He's dead, but he's still having adventures, right? (I'm not really reading them, this is just what I've seen/heard in bits and pieces) Not only that, but is there any real doubt that they're eventually going to be fully restored at some point? Come. ON.

Though yeah, he's probably as much a solid B-lister as most of the Super Buddies.

According to Wikipedia Odin (of Marvel) is still dead/in a limbo, and has been do for 20 years. Somehow I thought Marvel would've brought him back, but maybe they actually respect the ending of Simonson's Surtur saga enough not to revive him? Not that this stopped them bringing Jean Grey back, though.

So, it looks like pretty much everyone mentioned in this thread, except for Elongated Man, has come back to life in the two years since I started it. Only in comics.

Elongated Man. I take it this is a DC character?

Yeah, been around since the early 60s, as part of a light-hearted husband-and-wife bantering detective team (The Thin Man DYS). Then his wife got raped and murdered by Dr Light in a big summer crossover - you know, for kids! - and he got sent to hell, or something.

(Possibly raped by Dr Light and murdered by the Atom's wife by shrinking down and stomping on her brain from inside? I don't read any of this shit, just see people talking about it on the internet and some of it sticks)

Banshee is still dead...?

I mean, he did come back, but as a dead dude

Possibly raped by Dr Light and murdered by the Atom's wife by shrinking down and stomping on her brain from inside?

This is pretty much what happened, though it was The Atom's ex-wife, and there were years between the rape and the death of Sue. Plus she was pregnant with Elongated Man's child when she was killed, and EM only found about it afterwards. Oh, and The Atom's ex-wife didn't mean to kill her, it was all just a part of a ridiculously contrived plan to get back together with her ex; said plan also included her faking an assassination attempt against herself, so that the Atom could save her in the nick of time.

Identity Crisis was one of the stupidest comics I've read in years.

They teased it a while back, but the Marvel (Mar Vell) Captain Marvel has stayed dead.

From the last issue of Thor, it looks like Odin is on the way back.

Then his wife got raped and murdered by Dr Light in a big summer crossover - you know, for kids!

I lol'd

They teased it a while back, but the Marvel (Mar Vell) Captain Marvel has stayed dead.

That bit was actually vaguely clever, if I recall - he was a sleeper agent Skrull who only thought he was Marvel.

Yeah, it was nice idea and it was handled pretty well too - he actually decided to stay as Marvel and not return to the Skrulls, Total Recall style. Too bad they decided he needed to die in a heroic sacrifice, it would've been interesting if he'd continued as the proper Captain Marvel.

mildly impressed nobody's been crass enough to bring a dude back from cancer. they've probably spent a million man-hours 'workshopping' it though

Then his wife got raped and murdered by Dr Light in a big summer crossover - you know, for kids! - and he got sent to hell, or something.

jesus, and it used to just be refrigerators they put the women into.

You gotta know that Brad Meltzer (or possibly JT Krul) has a follow-up to Identity Crisis planned where The Atom uses his shrinking ray to make a refrigerator really tiny and then feeds it to a woman and then remote-controlly return it to its original size in a mindblowing inversion of the women-in-refrigerators meme.
http://c1.cleantechnica.com/files/2008/07/p1_fridge2_si.jpg

Very Silver Age.

The original Captain Marvel is still dead right?

But the legend lives on.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/captain%20marvel.jpg

I've always dug the 70s Captain Marvel costume. It would make a much better costume for Marvel Boy or whatever that forgettable code name they gave him in Dark Avengers.

The OG Cap Marvel is dead, but since then at least two of his children have taken up the name and the suit - the first one even had the same "switching between bodies with Rick Jones" gimmick the original Captain had. I think both of the kids have died too, though, and at the moment there is no Captain Marvel, unless Marvel Boy kept the name after Dark Reign was over?

the "switching between bodies with Rick Jones" gimmick was roy thomas making a pretty explicit nod to the Fawcett Captain Marvel

Oh, I guess that explains it! I hadn't given it much thought, I just thought it was a pretty weird power/limitation for a superhero like Cap Marvel to have (and even weirder for Kurt Busiek to give it to his son too), but it makes total sense as a reference to the other Captain Marvel.

I never realized that switch thing before being a reference to the Big Red Cheese, but that being said, it is a total Roy Thomas thing to do.

Oh wow, you guys blew my mind with that connection! Makes SO MUCH SENSE NOW.

Mar-vell is dead dead. Banshee is dead dead. Nightcrawler and Cable are recent deaths with a pretty limited chance of sticking past the two-year mark that Tuomas has given us with this thread.

Janet Van Dyne has been dead since Secret Invasion...clock's ticking!

Oh, and Bill Foster Goliath has been dead since Civil War, not sure how major he is since I never read the old Avengers books.

I was about to say Bucky, but wiki sez they brought him back a few years ago. Ugh.

The Bucky story was REALLY GOOD though!! Like, it was seriously like, a year and a half or two years long bringing him back, which made it feel much more like a genuine event and a story. And there were some neat ideas attached to it, a different read on the World War II material. Nobody's been quite sure what to DO with Bucky since then, but I actually think it's a totally defensible story.

Janet Van Dyne has been dead since Secret Invasion...clock's ticking!

Wasn't there a recent issue of Avengers that revealed she's still alive, sort of, on some kind of quantum level? And that Hank Pym is working on bringing her back? So yeah, her revival will probably happen pretty soon.

It was an ongoing plot thread in Pym's Mighty Avengers (which I sort of liked even though most people were willing to acknowledge that it kind of sucked) and just this week it got pseudo-resolved in Avengers Academy.

I have to say, Thunderbolts and Avengers Academy have shown me that I have missed a gigantic chunk of the Marvel Universe by ignoring The Avengers.

I'd say the MU switched from being X-centric to Avengers-centric about...five years ago? Roughly in the House of M to Civil War timeframe.

wow, the batson = rick jones thing is fucking perfect; why have I never thought of that before

I'd say Janet Van Dyne will be back, there was no body. If I was betting, I'd put it on Ultron to bring her back more than Hank Pym. Ultron hates everything pretty much but The Wasp. I'd think Ultron wouldn't be too happy with the Skrulls for killing her in the first place.

Big Marvel Villains currently dead-

Bullseye - like that one is going to stick considering that The Hand have the body.

Sabertooth - although I think him and Wolverine might be fighting in hell right now.

I think the Abomination maybe just got back from being dead or at least I saw him on the cover of a recent comic.

James Robinson has been on a big killing spree in the DC universe and has taken out quite a few B & C level characters, some of which are kind of a shame. Arnold Wesker - The Ventriloquist is probably one of the cooler ones he aced in that funky Face the Face storyline in Batman a couple of years back. Robinson also killed the 90s villain KGBeast in that same storyline. Later on he killed off with a reset button built in Grant Morrison's JLA villain Prometheus.

Abomination is still dead, but the dead are fighting the living in that Chaos War kerfuffle.

I'd say Janet Van Dyne will be back, there was no body. If I was betting, I'd put it on Ultron to bring her back more than Hank Pym. Ultron hates everything pretty much but The Wasp. I'd think Ultron wouldn't be too happy with the Skrulls for killing her in the first place.

Ultron was in that issue where they found out about Janet van Dyne's "quantum body", but he didn't seem to care about Janet's fate, in fact he was perfectly happy to replace the nervous system of the body with his own. And he seemed content enough when Jocasta offered to become his bride so he wouldn't kill everyone. That was a pretty odd resolution to the whole plot, though I haven't yet gotten to the issue of Avengers Academy where Doc Casino said the story is continued.

Thunderbird is still dead, right?

yup

I wouldn't call Thunderbird a major superhero - didn't he only appear like in two issues of X-Men?

Dude was one of the defining characters of the Silver Age X-Men and how dangerous their world was! His specter hung over the books for DECADES, even down to his little brother hooking up with the Hellfire Club.

Sure, he was DESIGNED to die, but nobody knew that until he died.

you can find out how her powers went back to normal on Wikipedia; I won't spoil since EZ is currently reading

Thanks Dan!

I don't mind if you spoil it though. It'll be quite a while before I find out because I'm trapped in an Infinite loop in Starlin's subconscious.

i stopped after gmoz

Dude, that was eight years ago. That's, like, eighty in X-plot development years. I'm behind about a year and I feel like I have no idea what's up currently.

The question is why would you want to read? But then I'd been reading X-MEN on and off since 1981 so maybe I have a different view...

You can get away with killing off some of the X-men, except the originals and the 70s originals (for the most part), as they got like 200 characters. Crazy thing is that there are X-men fans that are die hard for Boom Boom or Forge or Strong Guy or Polaris.

that's the first time I've thought of Strong Guy in like a decade and a half

Strong Guy was recently killed, then resurrected without a soul, btw

Man i need to stay away from the MU

it was written by Peter David so it's actually been pretty entertaining

Trust Dan. He knows things.

haha oh man, are you up to date with what's going in in X-Factor right now because that phrase is currently an automatic YIKES

(btw if anyone is considering looking at X titles these days, most of the gold is in the periphery, particularly X-Factor)

Really enjoyed his second run on X-Factor, then lost track of it around 2009 when they were changing artist every month. Worth catching up?

well... yes and no

If you like the characters, it's absolutely worth it; I don't think anyone does team dynamics quite like PAD and he does an excellent job of juggling a large cast of very distinct, memorable personalities.

Having said that, some of the actual plots can get eye-rolly, but the actual character work within them is always excellent, plus he does a great job of interweaving stories and following through on consequences/ramifications.

I also recommend these X-titles:

New Mutants (again, mostly for the characters)
Wolverine and the X-Men (I love Bachalo's incomprehensibility, and a lot of the writing is genuinely funny)
X-Men Legacy (TEAM ROGUE, plus Frenzy is turning into an interesting character)
Uncanny X-Force (now that the book has direction and a smaller, more focused cast, the stories they've been telling have been outstanding, particularly the build over the first 19 issues)

There are other characters who are obviously writer faves and whenever they pop up as featured players in a story, they are great 90% of the time (Magik and Colossus are the reasons to read Uncanny X-Men, for example, and Pixie is basically great wherever she appears even if none of the artists can agree on how old she is).

I know she's somewhere between 8 and 24, but I've never been able to narrow it down any more than that.

is layla miller still around?

She is, and she still knows stuff, but she's becoming less cryptic about it and it's kind of a big unhappy mess for all of the characters involved (but not the readers, fortunately)

I'm not caught up yet with X-Factor. Probably a year behind.

The Madrox mini that predates this version of X-Factor is one of the best Marvel books in the past decade.

i'm also a year or so behind on X-Factor. i kinda got off-board when they did that weird time-travel sickly old Dr Doom storyline which was pretty bleh imho.

Dan is all this stuff up on MARVEL PRIME or whatever the hell their online archives are?
I swear I would have bought that four times over if it worked with ipad

a lot of it is. You can browse MDCU. You should be able to browse what's available here: http://marvel.com/digital_comics

If you have any specific questions I'm happy to check through my subscription.

There is some doofer that lets you watch your desktop on the iPad. Maybe that would work. Hassle, though.

They're usually about 12-14 months behind. So Uncanny X-Force is available through issue #8. X-Factor has 80 issues, up through #227 that came out last November.

Once the next Mac OS comes out I'll be able to mirror my desktop on my tv. I can't wait to read GIANT SIZED X-MEN.

xp to chuck: yeah, onlive might work.

I'm also at least a year behind at this point, which turns out to be a monumental problem with this many titles...and my poor neglected x-blog too! Someday! Someday!

I was enjoying PAD's nu-X-Factor for quite a long time, feel like it really started to drift plotwise at some point though. New Mutants I was LOVING, and not just because that cast was all my childhood friends..

X-Factor is the only Marvel I read--consistently entertaining and clever stuff, though occasionally the ideas don't quite come off.

I know this is a shot in the dark but some of you are on the train, what do you think about the current Avengers vs. X-Men storyline going on?

I went in expecting it to be total rub and it still might be, but there have been some things that could be interesting depending on how it plays out especially the whole parts with the Kree and Iron Fist, which seem to be tacking into some of the waters that Hickman has been laying out in FF and in SHIELD. It is still kind of a disjointed read, but I am curious where it is going or at least how those threads play out. The team that Cap sent out into space is one of the odder and really more interesting Avengers teams in a long time. In a Marvel way, kind of reminds me of the Animal-man/Starfire/Adam Strange/Lobo story arc from 52.

Man, I would actually like to see Marvel just bite the bullet and do one of these things as a totally integrated series like 52.

I'll read them in a year when they hit MDCU. Who is on the crazy Avengers space team?

Thor
Hank McCoy (The Beast)
Captain Britain
Ms. Marvel
The Protector (aka Marvel Boy)
Rhodey (War Machine)
Brunhilda the Valkrie

okay, that's pretty crazy.

Oh. Took me a second to realize that wasn't a list of deceased characters. I thought Marvel had been a lot busier in the past year than I realized.

Well technically, Thor did just recently get over dying and Tony Stark has just faked Rhodey's death in the Iron Man current storyline.

So, apparently Nightcrawler is still dead? Pretty surprised no one has resurrected him yet.

And Xavier is dead too, now; I wonder if that's gonna stick? On the one hand, he's a pretty major character, and he has died and been resurrected before, hasn't he? But on the other hand, they seem to have moved the Xavier/Magneto conflict to be between Cyclops (and his crew) and Wolverine/Kitty (and the X-school) now, so maybe they feel Xavier isn't needed anymore?

Well, Bing's front page spoiled the big Batman ending (X dies). Thanks!

Well, according to Uncanny Avengers, Xavier's brain is currently grafted on to a version of the Red Skull, so he's certainly not coming back in that body

tuomas, if kitty is the only character i have any interest in reading about, what comix is she appearing in atm?

more people than tuomas know that! she's in wolverine & the x-men as a lead teacher and will be in the new adjective-less X-Men

As discussed in the other thread, seems like Captain Marvel is the only answer to this question that will not change... Mostly because everyone agrees it would be in bad taste to bring back a character who died of cancer.

Dibny came back in the interregnum of posting on this thread btw, albeit rebooted.

Which Dibny? Or both of them?

Both.

wut

Gail Simone brought them back as part of Secret Six in the Rebirthiverse (and it's been a long time since I typed that).

Ralph was undercover as a mob heavy, Sue turned up in about #8 after Ralph had broken cover and was moping about being away from her.