Due To The Dead / Comic Books

Examples of Due to the Dead in Comic Books

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The DCU:

• In Booster Gold, Booster's motive for pulling up his socks was to pay tribute to Blue Beetle. Later, in a scene where he returned to Blue Beetle's funeral, Booster got up to eulogize him and was unable to speak. Tears of Remorse ensued: what sort of friend would be unable to pay his Due to the Dead?
• Code Name: Gravedigger: Throughout the series, Ulysses Hazard (a.k.a. Gravedigger) would personally bury those who fell in battle alongside him whose sacrifice meant something to him.
• Crisis on Infinite Earths #7: Supergirl's public funeral in Chicago, where she was eulogized by long-time and close personal friend Batgirl, was attended by literally thousands of people, many among whom were heroes and super-beings of greater stature or presence than herself (such as Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel); her actual final rites were conducted by her cousin Superman alone and in private outside his Fortress of Solitude, where he wrapped her in her cape and flew her off into space, heading towards New Krypton/Rokyn to leave her body with her natural parents, Zor-El and Alura (as seen in Superman (1939) #414).
• DC Comics Bombshells: After one battle between the Allies and the Axis, Wonder Woman stayed behind on the field while the rest of the Allies regrouped afterwards. When Steve Trevor asks her what she had been doing, she explained that she was burying all of the villager civilians that had been slaughtered by the Nazis before the battle. They deserved to go to the afterlife with more than just the touch of an enemy as their last contact on Earth.
• The Flash: Subverted when the Reverse-Flash died. The Rogues stole his body from the morgue and took it to the city limits to set it on fire. It then turns out that rather than a respectful funeral, they actually went there to mock and desecrate the Reverse-Flash's body; they were all absolutely disgusted by him and proceeded to throw things at his body and shout slurs at it while it burned.
• In Identity Crisis (2004), Sue Dibny's funeral was heavily attended, and Captain Cold, who's known for his professionalism despite being a villain, sent flowers.
• Injustice: Gods Among Us:
  • Oliver Queen's funeral is respectfully attended by members of both the Insurgency and Superman's Regime.
  • Two years later, while rescuing Insurgency and Regime members from a burning, reality-collapsing battlefield, the Flash (a Regime member) makes an effort to retrieve the body of Huntress (an Insurgent), who was killed earlier in the fighting.
  • Later, Superman forms a temporary truce with Bruce Wayne, his enemy, and allows him to collect the body of Renee Montoya after she dies of a heart attack while fighting Superman.
• Jonah Hex (2005): Despite his hatred of the both of them for his miserable and abusive childhood, Jonah Hex ends up making sure both his parents get some form of proper burial.
• The Legion of Super-Heroes and Teen Titans have a hall of statues commemorating their dead.
• When the Martian Manhunter died, the heroes of Earth built a pyramid for him in duplication of Martian burial traditions.
• The Sandman (1989) finale The Wake revolves around Morpheus' funeral. In an earlier story, Destruction visited the necropolis where the sacraments used to acknowledge the passing of an incarnation of an Endless are preserved. He tells one of the necropolis' residents a story of a previous necropolis that once stood in the same place that had lost its respect for the dead and treated their duties as a job and nothing more. Their disrespect towards the Endless when they tried to collect sacraments for the first Despair's funeral provoked the Endless into destroying their city, and the new necropolis was eventually built over the site. The new necropolis' funeral workers are considerably more respectful to the point of always referring to the dead as "clients" and not just "bodies". When the Endless visit this necropolis to receive the sacraments for Morpheus' funeral, the sacraments are collected with no fuss at all.
• Superman:
  • In The Death of Clark Kent, Superman wraps Conduit's body in his cape and takes him back to his father.
  • Starfire's Revenge: Subverted. Starfire assures Rodney that she arranged for his brother Derek's respectful burial, and she herself attended the ceremony. Later, it is revealed her mooks simply tossed Derek's body in the woods.
  • The Death of Superman (1961): Clark Kent's funeral is attended by Lois, Jimmy, Perry, Kara, Krypto, Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris, the Justice League, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and hundreds of people from Earth and beyond.
  • Way of the World: The funeral of Thomas Price, a little cancer patient whom Supergirl was unable to save, is attended by his whole family, as well as several super-heroes.
  • The Supergirl from Krypton (2004): The Amazons build a mausoleum, complete with a giant statue and four burning lamps to honor Harbinger's sacrifice.
  • In The Leper from Krypton, Superman is infected with a highly contagious and incurable alien disease. Since he will die within hours and he does not want to risk infecting others, Superman opts for building a rocketship which will take him to Flammbron, the hottest sun in the universe, where his body will be cremated. A huge group gathers around his rocket in front of the UN headquarters to say goodbye to Superman. He asks them to not build any memorials, steps into the rocket and takes off. The Justice League hold a private funeral, in which even Batman cries. Meanwhile, entire planets mourn the incoming death of Superman.
  • "Brainiac Rebirth": After leveling a world called Systus 2, Brainiac grants the survivors five minutes to pray for the dead, if such is their custom, before joining his army.
  • "Supergirl's Big Brother": Biff Rigger is given a hero's burial beneath the sea after sacrificing his life to save Supergirl's.
  • Supergirl Adventures Girl Of Steel: Clark and Kara return to the ruins of Argo to hold a funeral for the latter's family. They set up several torches, slabs displaying the name and the picture of the deceased, and flowers on a stand as a memorial, and Kara says a prayer.
  • The Death of Lightning Lad: All Legionnaires attend Lighting Lad's funeral, even those who are living in the 20th century (Superboy), questing in the remote past (Supergirl) and stuck into the Phantom Zone (Mon-El). After the funeral, Garth's transparent coffin is put to rest in a crypt, surrounded by electric bolts produced by a perpetual-motion device.
• Terra: Atlee is decidedly disturbed and upset by Deathcoil using the dead of Markovia as his puppets. She yells at him they belong to the earth now and should not be disturbed.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1987): When Artemis is taking her last breaths, she implores Diana not to forget to put a coin under her tongue for the ferryman, and Diana promises she will do so. When Temi dies shortly thereafter, Diana closes her eyes.
  • Wonder Woman: Dead Earth: After bearing witness to Diana's failed attempt at peacefully stopping her mother and her resorting to killing her "sisters", the humans put the Haedras to proper rest in graves.
• Zatanna (2010): While Zatanna acknowledges that they were all Asshole Victims, she still makes a point to reverse the humiliating Forced Transformation that Romalthi inflicted on the human gangsters before killing them. As Zatanna says, "The world needs to see that humans, not monsters, were killed tonight".

Marvel Universe:

• The Marvel Universe has shown that even villains pay the dead the proper respect. One example has several villains mourning the death of Stilt-Man. Even a few heroes showed up (even Spider-Man, who made fun of the guy while alive). There was also another example with The Hood, where he gives a eulogy for a fallen member of his gang, with the other members in attendance.
• Captain Marvel: In The Death of Captain Marvel, not only did the whole super-hero community come to mourn Captain Mar-Vell, even the Skrulls, his ancestral Arch Enemies, sent dignitaries to pay their respects - unlike his own people - and commemorated with the highest battle honour they could give an enemy on his death bed, in acknowledgement of perhaps their greatest Worthy Opponent. If that were not enough, as he is dying, Mar-Vell faces Thanos at the brink of death, who proclaims that such an undignified death is unbefitting of a warrior of Mar-Vell's stature (Mar-Vell being one of the very few people Thanos has ever respected) and fights one last battle with him, summoning up enemies past in a final gauntlet and celebration of his life of heroism.
• The Mighty Thor:
  • Thor staged a Viking Funeral for Eilif the Lost, who had given his life fighting the dragon Fafnir, in issue #343. Thor and Balder also drank a toast to Skurge the Executioner after he sacrificed himself at Gjallerbru, fulfilling his last request that they "laugh Skurge's last laugh together."
  • After Bill, a normal human fry cook from Oklahoma, sacrifices himself to save Balder from being killed in an ambush, Balder and the other gods give him a proper Viking funeral in honor of his heroism.
• Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt begins with Spider-Man visiting the wake for Joe Face, a snitch he had sometimes had pumped for information, leaving some money to help pay for the funeral. This starts him on reflecting his own mortality. Later Kraven, after shooting Spider-Man, has him buried in style, complete with a very fancy headstone. And he also had all his own funeral arrangements prepared at the end.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate Spider-Man
    • Peter Parker died fighting against the Sinister Six and saving his family from them. The funeral was seen in Ultimate Fallout. It was attended by all the city, and we saw the way most characters coped with his death. The comic also included Tony Stark having a flashback to the funeral of his brother Gregory.
    • Peter Parker resigned from the basketball team after uncle Ben's death. Kong considered it a lame excuse, and Peter was outraged by his lack of empathy.
  • Ultimate X Men
    • Charles Xavier was killed by Cable and only his bones remained. The X-Men held a funeral for him, and then Cyclops disbanded the X-Men as a fighting group. It was eventually revealed that Cable did not kill Xavier, but took him to the future, and organized the set up so that the X-Men did not bother following him.
    • The surviving X-Men hold a funeral at the mansion for all those who died in Ultimatum. That was A LOT of mutants.
  • The Ultimates: Hulk's rampage in New York was not the average superhero fight, but a 9/11-level type of disaster. It was followed by a massive funeral for the people that died in it.
• Wolverine:
  • Played with in one story, in which a trio of generic bad guys hunt him down with dogs. First he runs from them. Then, when an Innocent Bystander is killed in the crossfire, he slaughters them. He then takes a while to dig graves before he moves on... and is shown placing the two dogs' collars and the bystander's hat on the three graves, and leaving the dead men for the scavengers. ^note  This particular story wasn't written by a Marvel writer, but by a fan who entered it in "Write an Issue of Wolverine" contest the company held.
  • In Death of Wolverine: The Logan Legacy #5, Daken assaults an auction in Madripoor and slaughters everyone there except Viper, Mystique, and a former lover in order to retrieve the remains of Wolverine being sold there so he can give his father a proper burial. Later, when attempting to recover Logan's remains during Wolverines, Daken warns Sabretooth not to mock him over his insistence of treating them with respect. X-23 also honors Logan after his death. First by dyeing her forelocks blue and gold, his most iconic colors, as a tribute. Later she takes up the Wolverine name herself, with this as part of the reason.

Star Wars Expanded Universe:

• Star Wars: Kanan: After Stance is killed protecting Depa Billaba, Caleb, and the clone troopers bury him with his weapon and helm as his headstone and have a funeral for him (and the others who fell during the battle) before Depa submits to entering a bacta tank to help heal the wounds she received at Grievious's hands.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • In Star Wars: Legacy, Evil Overlord Darth Krayt keeps the lightsaber of Jedi Master Kol Skywalker inside a case of transparisteel to pay respect to what he considers a Worthy Opponent.

Other

• In All Roads, the graphic novel prequel to Fallout: New Vegas, the comic ends with the surviving Great Khans insisting on pausing their journey to give Chance a proper burial, to the irritation of their employer, Benny.
• Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire has the "New Hong Kong Wake" for honoring a murder victim by drugging the murderer into confessing and leaving them to die of an overdose. Louisa Dem Five conducts one in the Gallimaufrey arc.
• The Destine family of ClanDestine have a private graveyard for the bodies of Adam Destine's parents and children. One issue starts with Adam and the twins visiting the grave of Florence, who was really Rory and Pandora's sister, but posed as their grandmother (it's complicated). Special mention goes to the family Black Sheep, Vincent, who, despite evil deeds of an unknown nature, was still laid to rest in the family cemetery in the proper way (complete with an extremely weird statue as part of the grave marker, courtesy of his younger sister Samantha).
• Copperhead: Played with by the artificial humans, who specifically demand no burial or rite of any kind at the death of one of their own. Instead all efforts are focused toward completing their shared mission (which is a kind of ritual in itself).
• A disturbing example happens in Sin City, where Kevin, the cannibal serial killer, keeps his victims' heads mounted on the wall in his basement. At first, these could be seen as trophies, but since his surrogate father mentioned he was filled with guilt, it may have different connotations.
• Done very well in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (original Mirage continuity) Volume 4, with Splinter's death from old age. His funeral is very simple, and his body is laid in a casket, drifted onto a lake and set alight.
• In the Usagi Yojimbo story "Broken Ritual" (plot by Sergio Aragonés), a village is haunted by the ghost of a general whose Seppuku attempt is interrupted by a squad of enemy soldiers. The ghost is exorcised when Usagi waits for its next appearance and helps complete the ritual.

Evil

• Age of the Wolf: Civilized werewolves bury their dead in rituals that involve Human Sacrifice.
• The Flash: When Barry Allen killed Professor Zoom, the Rogues' Gallery stole the body, laid him out with his costume draped on the coffin... and furiously denounced Zoom for tarnishing their reputation by getting killed and blew up the coffin.
• Spider-Men II: Kingpin, who is not usually a man to do such things, crossed the whole country to attend the funeral of Barbara, the wife of his best friend, Miles Morales (not THAT one).