10 Incredible Comic Book Panels That Changed Everything

10. The Death Of Captain America

Marvel Comics

2007 was a pretty dramatic year for Marvel. Not only had the ludicrously overrated Civil War storyline reached its end, but Captain America scribe Ed Brubaker decided (not on a whim, imaginably), to kill off Steve Rogers too.

The world was sent a fluster, Brubaker received death threats aplenty, and Rupert Murdoch's Fox News shat itself for approximately 24 hours. The storm blew over soon after, but there's plenty to dissect regarding the way the onetime man with a plan perished - ostensibly - during that year.

Indeed, Michael Lark's sketch of the wounded Rogers probably did a lot to stoke the media storm that followed, with a remorseful Sharon Carter holding her partner who, noticeably bloodied, lent a visceral edge to the page.

It bears the echo of JFK's '63 assassination all too deliberately, and the visual of Cap dying a thoroughly undignified and all-too-real death further reiterated Brubaker's message of an American dream turned sour. Bucky would later take up the mantle of course, but Brubaker's death-arc certainly beats whatever the heck Secret Empire is.

Advertisement
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.