Back From The Dead / Comic Books

Resurrections in comic books.

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• Age of Ultron: The Fantastic Four tie-in left a huge Lampshade Hanging on this. The entire team except for Sue end up killed by Ultron's invasion, but Johnny's video will tells the viewers not to worry and assures them that the team will be back from the grave in short order. And sure enough, Sue and Wolverine use a Timey-Wimey Ball to punch the Reset Button hard, resurrecting the team and all the other heroes who died.
• In The All-New Atom, when Jason Todd, Donna Troy and Ryan Choi go to a (most likely fake) Heaven, they meet Ted Kord, who comments, "The recidivism here is shocking. Sometimes I think me and Bruce Wayne's parents are the only ones with a permanent parking space." He also comments "And Jason Todd, too? Didn't you just get parole, like, the day before yesterday?"
• Winifred Burkle returns from the dead in Angel & Faith, Season 10, even though she was believed to be Deader than Dead for years.
• In Astro City, this is the origin and source for The Gentleman. He is a fantasy-wish manifestation of Matilda "Tillie" Armstrong, a girl whose father was killed in a supervillain attack. Whenever there's danger, Tillie wishes The Gentleman — her dad — back to life, so he can save the day.
• Batman (Grant Morrison) saw the Bat Family Crossover "The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul" after Greg Rucka killed him off in Death and the Maidens.
• B.P.R.D. agent Ben Daimio is introduced desperately cutting his way out of a body bag. Readers later find out that he and his entire platoon were killed by a jaguar demon in South America. Daimio was the only one who came back, due to the demon possessing part of his soul.
• Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics): Walter Lawson, who had a Death by Origin Story so Captain Marvel could do a Dead Person Impersonation, returns in Marvel Team-Up (2019) #5 as Wastrel, and gets in conflict with the current Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel.
• A few previously dead characters are apparently revived in to Convergence. Some, like Kole, are brought back only because they've been pulled from their timelines before their canonical deaths, while others, like Lian Harper, seem to be flat out resurrected.
  • The Flashpoint (DC Comics) versions of Batman and Captain Thunder are stranger examples, in that they seem to remember actually dying but have somehow been revived with their timeline.
  • Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Supergirl is brought back from before her death, only to learn about her eventual fate.
• Daredevil:
  • When Bullseye killed Elektra, Daredevil tried to revive her with a technique that he only saw once and didn't exactly understand. He partially succeeded, but she Came Back Wrong, physically and mentally splitting into a white-clad version of her that incarnated all her good traits, and Eryinys, which was more demon-like and incarnated all her negative traits. Eventually the two were combined again, restoring Elektra to normal, and after that she got a reputation for coming back from the dead as much as the X-Men.
  • After Bullseye blew up a housing project killing hundreds, Matt finally had enough and brutally killed him. The Hand eventually revived him with a twist. Bullseye was beaten so badly that even the Hand couldn't fully restore him. He was left a crippled shadow of his former self, powerless to do anything but stew in his hatred of Matt. His attempts to get revenge on Matt for this ultimately cost Bullseye his sight as well.
  • In Daredevil: End of Days, Echo (Maya Lopez), who was dead in the Marvel universe, shows up, having been resurrected by The Hand.
• DC Pride 2022: The first story in the anthology shows Kate Godwin and Dorothy Spinner of the Doom Patrol alive and well at the pride parade after they were killed off during John Arcudi's run. However, this wouldn't last, as the later miniseries Unstoppable Doom Patrol had writer Dennis Culver disregard their resurrections and make it clear that Dorothy and Kate are still dead.
• Doomsday Clock not only sees Dr. Manhattan undoing the Ret-Gone he pulled on Alan Scott, the Kents and Saturn Girl, but also reverses Alan's original Heroic Sacrifice against D'arken and Jonathan's fatal heart attack in Superman: Brainiac, as well as resurrecting Damage, Yolanda Montez, and Beth Chapel, the latter two of whom were likely brought back due to being heavily featured in the Stargirl (2020) live-action show.
• Subverted by ElfQuest. After One-Eye of the Wolfriders is killed in battle, Leetah the healer succeeds in reanimating him, but he is effectively brain-dead because his spirit has left his body. His lifemate Clearbrook has his body preserved in suspended animation in the hope of someday reviving him, but eventually decides to free his spirit completely by letting his body finally die.
• Family: Gio and his associates got together to wack his older brother Silver for his indiscriminate murder of made guys, but he just disappeared in an explosion. He returns years later for revenge, apparently not having aged. Gio does ask him how it's even possible, but Silver notes that he shouldn't be so surprised that in a group of people with superpowers, one should be able to defy death.
• A story arc of Fantastic Four doesn't even bother with the pretense. A few pages before the end of an issue, the Thing is killed; the cliffhanger of the issue is Sue receiving a call from Reed about how he intends to bring him back to life. Naturally, a few issues later, the Thing is back as usual.
• Issue 799 of The Flash (Infinite Frontier) revealed that Robbie Long, Donna Troy's son with Terry Long; Cerdian, Temptest and Dolphin's son; and even the second Mr. Terrific's son, long thought unborn due to his mother dying when she was pregnant with him, were actually saved by Granny Goodness to use against the heroes.
• Ted remains dead up through Flashpoint (DC Comics); the new timeline effectively pushes a reset button on his life, so when he shows up he's years younger and the events leading to his death never happened.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (IDW):
  • Serpentor, who was killed off in the original Marvel comic, was resurrected for one arc, only to get killed again.
  • Snake-Eyes was killed off during the aforementioned arc, but comes back via cloning during the comic's final arc in the 299th issue.
• Great Lakes Avengers: Mr. Immortal's power is a parody of this; his only major power is that he will always come back to life a few seconds after dying.
• The Incredible Hulk:
  • Parodied in Peter David's run. Rick Jones' fiancee Marlo is dead. He goes to Doctor Strange and the following conversation ensues.
    Rick: Wong, have you returned from the dead?
    Wong: Well, yes.
    Rick: And Doc, have you come back from the dead?
    Doctor Strange: Yes, but I am a professional.
    • Eventually, he asks the Leader to bring her back from the dead, and the Leader does.
  • In issue #434, following the death of Nick Fury at The Punisher's hands, several of Fury's old "Howling Commandos" buddies laugh, drink, and jokingly float numerous theories involving android duplicates, alien intervention, and the like until they reach the casket at the graveside. They're still sitting there speechless and shocked even after the rest of the attendees have left. That said, it was revealed that the "Fury" who died was indeed an LMD and the real Fury was still alive.
  • Subverted in Fall of the Hulks when it appears Glenn Talbot has come back. Eventually, Red Hulk reveals he's just a LMD. The real Talbot is still very much dead.
• King Thor:
  • Initially subverted and then played straight with Gorr. He is seemingly resurrected by Loki to kill him after he kills Thor, but reveals that his body is actually a simulacrum manifested from the All-Black symbiote, which his consciousness has merged with and is controlling. After All-Black is destroyed, he's resurrected in full and left to live the rest of his mortal life on Indigarr.
  • In the glimpse the Lord Librarian shows Shadrak of the far future, the Goddesses of Thunder establish a new version of the Avengers with a resurrected Phoenix-Logan as one of its members.
• In Journey into Mystery (Thor after Thor had died at Onslaught's hands), the Norse gods discover they are targeted by Set, the Egyptian God of the Dead. They travel to his country and are attacked by two people Set's mooks had killed. They bring one, Red Norvell, back to the land of the living by the expedient of grabbing him and dragging him back with them.
• This is usually subverted in any Judge Dredd stories where previously killed characters return in later stories. In other words, they tend to be anything from a parallel dimension, an imperfect clone, a family descendant of the deceased character who is doing exactly what his/her parent used to do, a robotic replicant, etc. ... but NEVER actually turn out to be the original character back from the dead. Characters who have indeed returned from the dead in coordinance with this trope, however, include the Dark Judges (though, technically, they're already dead to begin with), the Angel Gang (except for Link Angel), and PJ Maybe.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Half the cast were supposedly killed in the original novels.
• Lunar Girl and Scarlet Sparrow: At the start of the book, a man wearing a hooded cape comes to the grave of one Angelo Ombra, and begins an incantation to resurrect him. Near the end, he manages to finish the spell and resurrect him right as Maya (Lunar Girl) shows up at the cemetery.
• Marvel 2099:
  • In Ghost Rider 2099, Kenshiro "Zero" Cochraine is killed during a fight with a gang, and he uploaded his consciousness into the cyberspace to prevent losing the data he hacked. There, he came in contact with a collective of Benevolent AIs known as the Ghost Works, which restore his consciousness into an android body. The 2019 reboot of the same story plays things a little different; Zero was already in the system by the time other gang hit, died in an explosion and ended up in Hell, which had taken the form of a digital space called Ghost Works due to people's beliefs. There he met the original Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze, who is now King of Hell, and he restored him into the body of an android that Zero had just found.
  • Spider-Man 2099: Volture 2099 was originally left for dead after Miguel left him drop from the top of a skyscraper's elevator shaft. However, several issues later, he comes back with no visible marks on his body, looking for revenge. Miguel demands an explanation, but is never given one.
• This is Moon Knight's origin, although it varies whether the god Khonshu is real and brought him back, or Spector was just Not Quite Dead and really badass.
• The Multiversity:
  • Lord Volt had been killed in the first Crisis, but is now alive again in the current multiverse.
  • In Pax Americana #1, Captain Atom is supposed to revive President Harley after the assassination, but this is prevented when scientists kill Captain Atom himself by putting a black hole in his head.
• Everyone who died in Our Worlds at War eventually came back (though it took the New 52 and DC Rebirth for Maxima and Strange Visitor to return), but Steel was revived in the same story to pilot the Aegis armor.
• In Preacher, Jesse's girlfriend, Tulip, is brutally murdered in front of him. God brings her back to life as a sort of a bribe, because He's scared of Genesis, which has taken up residence inside Jesse. God figures if He gives Jesse back his girlfriend, maybe he'll leave Him alone. In the finale Jesse and Cassidy are also revived (Cassidy is also no longer a vampire) by God as part of a deal Cassidy made with Him.
• One villain in Red Sonja: Queen of Plagues is resurrected for a Back for the Finale appearance in The Forgiving of Monsters a dozen issues later.
• Red Xmas: In Melvin's narration Flashback, he talks about how, eight hundred years after Santa was burned to death, his Earthly remains were exhumed from the ground, and he was brought back to life by a pagan cult dedicated to worship him.
• Secret Wars (2015) has Thanos getting his entire skeleton ripped out by Doctor Doom. A scant few months later, in The Ultimates (2015), the eponymous team breach the edge of all existence, where Thanos' spirit had been lingering, which lures him back to the realm of the living.
• Shade, the Changing Man has the main character return from death numerous times, though never unscathed.
• During the Siege event, Loki realizes that he's been making a massive mistake: He wanted to make Asgard greater than ever, but let his hatred of Thor get in the way of that. In a last ditch effort to stop the Void, he uses the Norn stones to empower the New Avengers to give them a fighting chance. When this doesn't work, Loki takes the full blunt of the Void, dying while tearfully apologizing to Thor. Fortunately, Thor brings him back to life, now as a child with no memory of his evil deeds or his previous life beyond the age of twelve, but still has the guilt of what happened, with Thor's encouragement he becomes a kid hero.
• Spider-Man: Between Carnage and the Green Goblin, it would seem that death is more of an inconvenience than anything. Though the Goblin is notable for lasting twenty-odd years, which seeing as he is an Arch-Enemy is probably a record.
  • Averted in The Amazing Spider-Man (1963), when Peter's parents, Richard and Mary Fitzpatrick-Parker, claimed to not have been killed in an airplane crash, and ended up staying with Peter for a while. It turned out they were impostors. Robot impostors. Zig-zagged with Uncle Ben - he's never been permanently resurrected; however, in The Amazing Spider-Man (Dan Slott) #500, he was brought back to life, as a gift from Doctor Strange... for 5 minutes, to have a conversation with Peter. Since then, however, he's remained in the realm of the dead.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski) attempted to be edgy when it devoted a 12-part series that ran across multiple Spider-Man titles and ended with Peter Parker getting his eye ripped out by Morlun before getting killed. Of course, no matter how much the arc attempted to convince the readers that Peter was truly dead, he ended up coming back with more organic powers, as well as a new suit built for him by Tony Stark.
• The comic Star Trek: Countdown, which ties into The Film of the Series Star Trek (2009) but is set many years after Star Trek: Nemesis, has the Enterprise commanded by Captain Data. Apparently, the scene at the end of Nemesis where B4 whistles Irving Berlin wasn't just an indication he'd picked up some of Data's personality traits, it was the first step of a complete Grand Theft Me.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • In Star Wars: Legacy, Darth Krayt gets killed but his body is resurrected. So when Cade Skywalker kills him again, he makes sure that he won't come back again by sticking his body on a shuttle and sending it straight into Coruscant's sun!
  • In a multiple media example, Boba Fett first reappeared after being eaten by the Sarlaac in Dark Empire II and went on to appear in many, many, many stories after that.
• Superman:
  • The Death of Superman: After "dying" in battle with the mindless monster Doomsday, four Doppelgangers appear. Which one could be the real Superman? Is it the mysterious black-and-blue colored Superman with the thick shades? Nope! He's a hyper-advanced clone, controlled by the Eradicator, and powered by Superman's "corpse." Is the half-Terminator Cyborg Superman the real deal? Nope! He's Hank Henshaw, using stolen genetic material and Kryptonian alloy stolen from Superman's rocket. Is the Metropolis Marvel who claims to be a clone the real deal? Nope! He's a... well, he's a clone of the real deal. Is the mysterious armored Steel the new Superman? Nope! He's John Henry Irons, and never really claims to be the new Superman. So, in the end, Superman was actually resuscitated soon after his "death," spent some time in a coma, and eventually was woken up by androids.
  • In Death & the Family, Lucy Lane, who had died in battle with Supergirl in Who is Superwoman?, is reborn thanks to her suit changing her DNA. Lana Lang comes back from the dead, too; ironically thanks to Insect Queen restoring her body in order to possessing her after killing her.
  • The Death of Lightning Lad: The Legion of Super-Heroes has the honor of having the first ever death and resurrection of a major comic book character. In January of 1963, Lightning Lad died saving Saturn Girl. He remained dead for almost a year, and was resurrected using lightning rods and the sacrifice of Legion pet Proty.
  • The Death of Luthor: Lex Luthor accidentally kills himself, but he is revived by Supergirl so he is forced to serve his life sentence fully.
• Terra from Teen Titans, with a catch. She never learned that she resurrected and believed a lie that she was an orphan who was changed into a replica of Terra. It turned out the real Terra truly was dead. The second Terra was revealed to be a member of an underground race called the Stratans, who decided to send out a liaison to the modern world in a guise people would've been familiar with, using DNA implants to make it look like Tara Markova came back. The Stratans admit this was a poorly thought out move considering what a sociopath Tara turned out to be, but that was nothing compared to when the Time Trapper got his hands on her and warped her memories.
• Parodied in Too Much Coffee Man, where the eponymous character appears to be killed and resurrected so many times in the span of a few minutes that his friends stop caring.
• The Ultimate Marvel universe was destroyed in Secret Wars (2015), but it was restored at the end of Spider-Men II. Even characters who had died before that, such as Giant-Man (who died in Ultimatum), Captain America (who died in Cataclysm: The Ultimates' Last Stand) and Thor (who died in Secret Wars), were back in the action.
• In Violine, Muller pulls this off twice, the first time claiming he was too evil for crocodiles to finish him off (though losing two arms to them), the second time fighting them off himself with his robot claws.
• The Warlord: The villain Deimos kept coming back, but each time worse than before: first time he had the sword scar across his face; second time, his body was fused with the dog that killed him; third time he was a head on a hand; final time he was a skull in a magical golem body.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): After Robert Kanigher turned Steve Trevor into the quintessential Useless Boyfriend, he was killed off to give Wondy some angst for her depowered mod era. Eros decided Steve's corpse looked like a nice way to court Diana and wore it for a while as "Steve Howard," then Aphrodite took what she could recover of Steve's memories, abducted and mind wiped a Steve from another universe and implanted those memories into that Steve to give Diana the love of her life back in a decidedly creepy fashion.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): As per George Pérez's reimagining of the Amazons, every single one of them (including Diana) has been brought back from the dead as their origin; they are created using the souls of women murdered by men who are given new life in bodies formed of clay.
  • Wonder Woman (2006): Zeus decides to revive the Long-Dead Badass Achilles to lead his new Gargareans, whom he intends to have replace the Amazons. Things don't work out for Zeus as Achilles eventually decides to reject him and refuse to help Zeus subjugate humanity.
  • Wonder Woman: Warbringer: The Amazons are the rehoused souls of women who were killed in battle while praying for the protection of others, given a chance to live once more so long as they take an oath to defend the wider world from the evils Themyscira can act as a doorway for. By the end of the series Diana has truly joined the ranks of the Amazons after falling in battle against Jason, and when given the chance to join her sisters, she bartered for Nim and Theo to be brought back as well, since it was them she was praying for, but they were quickly killed right after her.
• X-Men:
  • Depending on the Writer, Jean Grey's Phoenix powers fully manifest whenever she "dies". This has led to her gaining Death Is Cheap as a reputation. However, most of her demises were merely plot devices to activate her powers, so it's debatable whether or not they count. Technically, she's only "died" twice.
  • Psylocke was once fatally stabbed by the man known as Vargas while protecting Rogue and Beast, who were badly beaten by the villain. One year after her death, Betsy awoke where she had died, unaware of how she had survived, and was soon reunited with the X-Men. It is later revealed that the responsible was elder brother Jamie Braddock with his Reality Warper powers.
  • Lampshaded in Astonishing X-Men. After Kitty finds out that Colossus isn't really dead, she warns him that if he's a clone, robot, ghost, or from an alternate universe, she's okay with that, but if he's a shapeshifter or an illusionist, she'll kill him. Obviously, this happens a lot.
  • Lampshaded in X-Factor (2006) when Siryn gets the news that her father, Banshee, one of the X-Men, is dead. She simply doesn't believe it; the X-Men come Back from the Dead more than anyone else in the Marvel Universe (once the entire current team sacrificed themselves only to be resurrected at the end of the issue), so she's sure he's just pretending to be dead as part of some plan. In Uncanny Avengers, he does return — as one of the Apocalypse Twins' Horsemen of Death.
  • Infamously, Doug Ramsey/Cypher was forcibly resurrected in Necrosha. Notable for this taking place 20 years after his in-universe death.

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