Who's the most famous superhero who has never died?

lol I have no idea what the answer to this question is but this discussion is p hilarious

realizing that ALL SUPERHEROES MUST DIE is like an article of faith with the big two now

As mentioned upthread, I don't think anyone has lasted longer than Dick.

xpost I guess it's still a reliable selling point? Even though everyone surely knows it's totally bogus by now?

presumably the audience just likes watching its heroes suffer, over and over. isn't there a term for this?

I sort of assumed some of the lower-tier X-Men would have gotten through it all without dying, but it seems like they've all been killed off and brought back at some point. Apparently Nightcrawler died, went to Heaven, and then BAMFED himself back to life.

Most of the (then current) X-Men "died" in the late 80s because Claremont wanted to deconstruct the whole team for some reason... Only Wolverine and Longshot survived that story arc.

Trying to think of an X-character who (line-wide universal upheaval/rebootage aside) has managed to avoid even the brief presumption of their having died. Err...Beast? Wolfsbane, maybe? There aren't many. And even those two probably have 'deaths' I've forgotten about.

has dc's captain marvel/shazam ever died?

reading Gotham Central from the library rn, just hit an Infinite Crisis crossover issue where Cap bemoans over and over that Shazam is dead, but I dunno if he was just mistaken, in whatever comics that actually took place in

Oh yeah, the actual wizard Shazam died and Captain Marvel took his place on the cave throne iirc.

he get better yet?

Dunno, I abandoned DC prior to Flashpoint and never looked back. Maybe he's one of the Watchmen now.

Secret Wars aside, Peter Parker has never died, right?

(I'm talkin OG, 616-Peter)

Yes he did, and then Doctor Octopus transferred his mind into Peter Parkers body and became Superior Spider-Man.

Oh yeah

How 'bout Howard the Duck (just grasping at straws here)

got kidnapped out of the Marvel Universe and went into witness protection in 1996, so is safe from death now

also not a superhero

Luke Cage maybe?

Jesus

― I can't dérive fifty-feev (Noodle Vague)

sounds like somebody needs to read irenaeus

Peter also "died" during Kraven's Last Hunt.

IIRC DC meant to kill Nightwing in the Infinite Crisis, but they changed their mind and offed Superboy instead. So Dick Grayson really seems to be the answer to this question, unless someone can come up with a better example?

Dick Grayson gets killed by Luthor during Forever Evil.

Admittedly it's resolved in the same storyline as he needs to die to escape the Murder Machine and is nearly immediately resurrected (also by Luthor) but he is dead dead for a very short time. This death is also what allows him to go undercover in the Grayson book in a new identity.

Ugh, Forever Evil

Dick Grayson is also currently 'dead' in that following being shot through the head by the KGBeast in Batman, Dick hasn't no memory of his previous life and is living as a taxi driver called Ric (which is making the current Nightwang book less than rivetting as he mainly plays pool in a bar).

A long time since I've read it but surely the only acceptable Marvel answer is Fred Hembeck?

They brought back KGBeast? Wow.

Ok, so Dick isn't the right answer, I wonder who is? Maybe Sue Storm then?

Ray Palmer?

He's shrunk himself into isolation plenty of times but were any of them teased as death?

I would argue Sue Storm is more famous than Ray Palmer...?

Still curious about the Thing, though. If you don't count Secret Wars, has he ever died?

Fred Hembeck killed Sue Storm and The Thing.

In a (slightly) more serious answer, Sue's death in Secret Wars isn't an 'oh everyone dies so it doesn't count death's, it's a specific different thing. Does it even happen in Illuminati and not Secret Wars?

Talking of which, Reed killed the Thing in Latveria that time, which led to the whole FF eventually going to heaven to persuade Ben to come back to life. Jack Kirby was God in it.

This is a good question though.

Oh and there was also a future Invisible Woman that came back so two of them were in the timeline together and one of them died in a 'death of the invisible woman' storyline (unsurprisingly it was the future one).

Ah yeah, I've heard about the story of Ben's death, but I've never read it.

IIRC, Sue's "death" in SW was kinda ambiguous... I mean, she falls out of the life raft in SW #1, which would mean she died, but then at the end of the story the Sue Doom took as his wife somehow has the memories of 616 Sue, which could mean that this Sue wasn't an alternate universe version but the 616 version who Doom had saved. Though much of the finale of SW doesn't follow any kind of internal logic, so who know what happened there?

Btw after having Captain America go Nomad under Nixon, and killing him off under Bush 2, have they done anything with him this time?

Made him into a Nazi?

I guess Bendis did a future story in which Daredevil died, but has it ever happened in regular continuity?

I guess Born Again doesn't count, because the whole "there is no corpse" narration by Kingpin means the reader is never supposed to think he had died?

Daredevil is currently dead.

In that he died a couple of issues ago.

oh

lol

rip big man

I haven't read the issues, but the reviews seem to suggest DD is merely at death's door and in a coma, but not actually dead?

No he's actually dead. For several pages at least.

I might start reading this with the Zdarsky reboot. It's been a totally disappointing followup to the Waid run.

Daredevil also died in Shadowland, I think, although iirc there'd already been an announced 'Daredevil: Reborn' series when it happened.

Underdog

Underdog was shot in the face at the climax of the episode 'Polly's Wild Ride'.

Miles Morales hasn’t been around long enough to feel like a satisfying answer, but he’s fairly famous atm, and has never died(?)

Yeah, as I noted he's one of the few to have survived the hard reboot of the multiverse. Actually, I think Black Panther was, too, and I don't believe he's ever died.

Has Franklin Richards ever died (outside of Days of Future Past continuity)? He's been around 50 years.

Actually, unless there's been a T'challa death I overlooked, that might actually be the answer to the question posed itt. No mean feat, maintaining your Marvel mortality for 53 years.

i refer you to my earlier comment

See, Marvel does this stuff too but they're often able to make it coherent and fun. DC just seems like they're completely unaware of the narrative conventions which might render their bad ideas at least readable.

pro-tip for dc: rebooting your entire line every few years makes it really fuckin hard to care about what's happening month-to-month, especially when the detritus of those reboots leaves you with multiple versions of the same character which i'd venture to suggest shows your reboots aren't actually doing anything good or useful anyway

It's pretty sad that my Marvel/DC pull list went from maybe 75/25 pre-Flashpoint to a fairly consistent 98/2 ever since (and almost none of that 2% has been in-continuity material).