I liked how they had all the greatest minds in the Marvel universe, working together to cure cancer to save Captain Marvel. It was great, because it raised two excellent questions. 1) Why didn’t they ever try to do this before he got cancer? and 2) Why did they stop trying after he died?
Seriously. It’s cancer. It’s killed more people than Dr. Doom, Kingpin, and Magneto combined. Short of the occasional invasion by Galactus, shouldn’t this be Reed Richards’ primary job?
Didn’t The Sandman die of old age in the series Kingdom Come?
Not sure that counts, though. I really came in here to mention the one you did – the death of Captain Marvel.
Sue Storm’s father got killed off in Fantastic Four back in the 1960s. So did The Hate Monger. for all I know they got resurrected along the line (I know someone wearing the HM costume shows up later, but it’s not the original guy), but if so, I hadn’t heard about it.
And the original Proty died, along with 1/3 of Triplicate Girl.
I don’t know if Cap’s cancer can really count as “natural causes” when he got it from a supervillain exposing him to nerve gas.
He also apparently doesn’t count as dead for this topic, because there’ve been alternate versions and ghosts and what not (not to mention that Skrull that had his soul implanted or whatever).
They were brought back for a while, then turned out the be clones or imposters or something. IIRC, the Green Goblin was behind it.
It’s from the ending of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. Batman fakes his own death, goes to the trouble of being buried and everything, only to have his plan undone by a certain Kryptonian’s super-hearing.
Geez, those Kryptonians are so annoying! Are you with me, folks? All the super-hearing and super-ventriliquism and super-whatever…super coupon-redemption, maybe… Ooh, look at me, I was raised under a red sun. I can hover. Well, stop it. It’s weird. Don’t you have a secret identity that needs to type up a newspaper story? Leave us earthlings alone.
not GG, the Chameleon. They were actualy LMD (life model decoys). I forget what the purpose was, but it was part of the unhinging of Spiderman leading up to the Clone fiasco.
I hate* to nitpick, but because this is one of my favorite stories by one of my favorite writers (though he’s been slipping in his latest works), I feel the need to correct you. It was Jim Starlin.
Jeff “The Patriot” Mace likewise quietly died in bed of cancer – and unlike Marvel, he had no powers, sure as he got the disease naturally long after he’d quit adventuring; in his prime, he was a crusading reporter with enough sheer damn athleticism to pick up a bulletproof shield and double for Captain America (!) when the big guy went missing near the end of WWII – but after saving a young Jack Kennedy from getting replaced by an impostor, our hero eventually retired and got old and got sick and, well, died.