Another character from a Zelazny story: Sam in Lord of Light. One of the demons “strengthens the flames” of Sam’s soul so that his soul survives the death of his body when he’s killed by the white tigers. Sam then is able to re-incarnate himself in another body. Not truly immortal, but so long as there’s a supply of clones available for reincarnation…
Gotta second Vandal Savage, along with the MacLeods.
Not any particular character, but Brian Stableford and John Varley are two writers who have written about societies in which basically everyone’s immortal.
Milo Morai from the Horseclans books. Very well fleshed out, as there were something like 18 books (not all of which centered on him, but the first half dozen or so did, and he popped up throughout the others).
**Sean Factotum ** did. Those books have one of my favorite tag lines:
Er… is my previous post okay?
Sure. At least, I don’t see anything wrong with it. 
Oooh. Good one.
How about the books by Farmer starting with “To Your Scattered Bodies Go.” Does perpetual reincarnation count?
I can’t believe no one has mentioned Highlander yet.
RTFOP.
In S.M. Stirling’s Drakon, the New Race Draka or Homo drakensis are immortal – that is, they have been gene-engineered to grow and age normally until the age of about 22, then “homeostasis” sets in and they age no further and can live indefinitely. They’re very tough, too, but they’re not actually immortal in the sense of being unkillable or invulnerable to harm. Gwen Ingolfsson (500 years old at the start of the book) notes at one point, “Drakensis are drakensis’ main cause of death,” i.e., they fight a lot of duels.
In Philip J. Farmer’s Riverworld series, everybody is immortal. The same would be true, I guess, of any story set in Hell or Heaven.
I think someone did. But it was only once. In the 1960’s. For 20 minutes.
Eugene Sue wrote a huge serialised novel called The Wandering Jew. It meanders all over the place but the title character does feature prominently.
He was writing in France in the 1840s or so, IIRC.
And I’ve forgotten who wrote Phra the Phoenician (early 20th C), who slept for centuries, waking up occasionally, usually at some historically significant time!
Sean McMullen used a similar idea in The Centurian’s Empire more recently.
Don’t think either were actually immortal, just that they slept a lot!!
What about Dr. Who?? i think he switched bodies does that count??
Hmm… don’t recall seeing DC’s **Resurrection Man ** yet, but maybe I missed it…
Yeah, it’s a dumb name. But he had his own series for a while, and his power is cool.
I can’t agree with everyone in Riverworld being immortal.
First of all, everyone there died before the books even started (except for the description of Sir Richard Burton’s death at the beginning of To Your Scattered Bodies Go).
Then, Burton is told to get off the Suicide Express, because you don’t get a number 667 resurrection. You’re out of luck if you gotta die that many times before reaching the next stage.
Plus, the guy that the group is with at the end of the last book says that sometimes a soul (or wah) just disappears after a death. Their theory is that they do go to the next stage and become one with the universe.
Although, not exactly fleshed out, there was an interesting story in DC comics about an immortal from Krypton. He had killed one of the beasts on Krypton that smelled horrible and had a horn that could heal any illness. He made a serum and took it that turned him into a human version of the creature (yes, this was pre-crisis)
The thing I liked about it was at the end of the story, Krypton explodes and he’s hanging out in the middle of space.
I guess he somehow ended up in the Phantom Zone.
Forgive me for not only bumping this, but sending it into a third page. At any rate, what Fiona was getting at when she pointed this out to Corwin was that the Jewel of Judgement, which Eric was wearing when he died, enhances the wearer’s power by speeding up their metabolism. This is a good thing in the short run, but dangerous if you wear it for too long at a time, which, she speculates, is why superficial wounds killed Eric.
I love the dialogue between them (well, the whole chapter, really): “Did Eric give you any cautions to go along with it?” “Well, he was pretty busy dying at the time. That limited our converstation considerably.”