1. Captain Marvel
Captain Mar-Vell, or Captain Marvel as us backwater Earthlings say it, was the greatest soldier of the nefarious Kree Empire who turned against his leaders to protect our planet after becoming enamored of our customs and potential to be gods someday. Thats the story in the comic books but outside the comics, Captain Marvel was created by Stan Lee and Gil Kane in 1967 in Marvel Super-Heroes #12 to take advantage of a well-known comic book name just sitting around unused after National Comics nee DC had sued Fawcett Comics out of business and the original Captain Marvel out of print. Short-sighted and opportunistic things like that happen in the world of major comics all the time, just ask Alan Moore, but a doctoral thesis could be written about the title of Captain Marvel and all the claimants to it over the seventy years it has been in existence but this space only has room for this particular claimant. Other than his name, Captain Marvels lasting claim to comic book fame is that he seems to be the only major character from either of the Big Two who has died and stayed dead. Wow. In stories dealing with battles against mad gods, deranged scientists, and waves of anti-matter trying to destroy positive universes you would think one of these outlandishly clad people would have died and had the decency to stay in the ground but off the top of my head and after the research Ive done its only the good Kree commander whose dirt nap hasnt been disturbed. Why is that? I would say the way Mar-Vell died is the answer because he didnt fall in battle against Thanos or some other cosmic threat. No, he was victim to something that is less common in the four-color world but all too common in the real one, cancer. In the acclaimed The Death of Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin from 1982, it was revealed that The Protector of the Universe was exposed to a highly toxic carcinogenic nerve gas called Compound 13 while fighting Nitro of Civil War fame back in 1974 in issues 34 and 35 of his solo title. While Cap continued righting wrongs on Earth, Titan, a moon of Saturn and his adopted home, and the rest of the universe, eventually the illness began to take its toll on him after being held back by the nega bands he wore as a source of power. Eternal kid sidekick, Rick Jones, who had teamed with the Kree warrior to do a tired imitation of the Billy Batson/Big Red Cheese shtick for a minute in comic book time, shamed the big brains of the 616 into trying to develop a cure for the cancer that was eating his partner alive but just like the nega bands had held the cancer back until it overflowed Caps body, the bracelets also would not allow the cure that Earths heroes had created to stem the tide. Cap seemed to be past caring because while on his death bed his enemy, the Mad Titan, Thanos, had come to him in a vision to ease his passage into Lady Deaths domain with one last brawl with various other enemies. So Captain Mar-Vell, late of the Kree Empire, was able to go out fighting but still accepting of his fate.
IMPACT: Since Mar-Vells death, his name has lived on in one form or another in the 616 but the original Kree soldier, other than various cameos in event comics here and there, has not. All told there have been ten different characters that have picked up the name since 1982 and that is not counting the ongoing cameo in Avengers vs X-Men, the summer extravaganza currently buzzing through Marvel Comics. The name Captain Marvel is just as difficult for its current publisher as it was for Fawcett Comics back in the Golden Age but in the highly competitive cross-pollinated superhero market of the early 21st century, its a guarantee the trademark on the title isnt going to lapse because Marvel will not let a comic hit the cyber spinner rack with that name on its cover be published by a different company.
OPINION: Im not so green that I dont know the only reason Marvel Comics hasnt resurrected their original Captain Marvel for good is because the company hasnt been able to find a viable way to make the character a hit yet. Thats not a bad thing as I see it though because the way he died does not lend itself to a sleazy reboot. Theres a reason why cancer is not and should not be used as a cheap plot device in a comic book and thats because it hits a little too close to home for everybody from publishers and creators on down to readers. Sadly, many of us know not just one person but several who have suffered and/or died from that illness so seeing a character perish in a comic book from it only to be reborn when a hot new writer comes on board a year or two or even thirty years later would kill all suspension of disbelief. Because when suspension of disbelief is lost that is when comics as a medium itself will be lost.