15 Comic Book Movie Deaths That Didn't Last

The reports of their deaths were greatly exaggerated.

It's something of a cliche to even mention it, but comic book deaths don't last unless they're in some way responsible for the origin of a character.

Only the likes of Uncle Ben and the Waynes will ever stay cold in the ground when there's an opportunity for further sales, which is why everyone as lofty as Superman, Batman, Captain America and Iron Man have all met the Grim Reaper, but then miraculously been saved from death.

These revivals are to be expected, but cinema has a more definitive take on death, so it should be the case that anyone who dies in a comic book movie should stay dead. Even in the least logical fantasy movies, death usually remains a constant, unless there are generic expectations (like with zombies); but that simply is not the case in this new, phenomenally successful genre.

Though some deaths have been important and lasting - like Uncle Ben, the Waynes and Rachel Dawes - the rules have been far more fluid when it comes to a surprising number of other characters, who have beaten off bad cases of death to walk again in the land of the living.

The defining rule here is that the character has to be believed to be dead, either by the audience or by their fellow characters, and we have to have been invited to mourn their loss as an important narrative point, making their revival a genuine twist.

Either that, or they just irrefutably die on screen, only to be rescued by mythology or the tinkering fingers of an over-zealous writing team who can't possibly conceive of potentially lucrative sequels without their most marketable character.

And it happens more than you might think...

 
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