10 Comic Book Deaths That Angered The World

Fanboys gotta hate.

Batman Damian Wayne death
DC Comics

In reality, death has no meaning whatsoever to comic book characters. However, in the hearts and minds of comic book readers, the demise of a popular character can be a matter of life and...Well, you get the idea.

Classic comic book deaths like that of Jean Grey in 1980€™s Dark Phoenix saga or Barry Allen in 1985 - 86'€™s Crisis on Infinite Earths provided fans with new talking points and writers with new storylines to explore. How would Cyclops, Jean€™s long-time lover, handle the death of his partner? How would former Kid Flash Wally West step up to the plate and become The Flash for a whole new generation?

However, since the sellout success of 1992'€™s classic Death of Superman series, comic book deaths can also be used as a cynical marketing tool, or worse, as the culmination points of shallow, editorially mandated crossover €˜events€™, placed at, or near to the story€™s climax in order to give these baseless tales some sort of lasting impact, or meaning. In any instance, the one thing to remember is NOT TO PANIC, comic book characters always return in the end (and more often than not, with improved powers and a shiny new costume).

So ubiquitous (and so rarely lasting) are comic book deaths, that Wikipedia even has a page about them. The first lines of which read, "€œIn the comic book fan community, the apparent death and subsequent return of a long-running character is often called a comic-book death. While death is a serious subject, a comic-book death is generally not taken seriously and is rarely permanent or meaningful€."

Well, all that can be said to that is that there are obviously some comic book fans out there that didn'€™t get the memo! Here's 10 (although there are obviously LOADS more) comic book deaths that drove fans into a frenzy and totally infuriated the funny-book reading world...

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I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction. I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long! If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it). I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work. Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that! Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?) Latcho Drom, - CQ