Unexplained Recoveries in comic books.
The DCU
- Batman:
- The first arc of All-Star Batman features the return of Two-Face, who had previously committed suicide in "The Big Burn" arc of Batman and Robin. While Two-Face shooting himself in the head is referred to, no attempt is made to explain how he survived that, especially with no ill-effects if he failed to kill himself.
- Batman: Black and White: "A Game of Bat and Rat" begins with a hoodlum announcing that he has killed Batman by shooting him at close range with a rocket launcher. Batman shows up less than an hour later, not only still alive but apparently not even seriously injured, though his cape is a bit tattered. It's never explained how he survived.
- The Post-Crisis incarnation of Chief O'Hara (a character imported from the 1960s live-action TV show) was introduced in Batman: Dark Victory only to become a casualty of the Hangman killings, but later resurfaces alive and well in the 2000 Silver Age arc and during Grant Morrison's run in Batman issue 700, both instances taking place during Dick Grayson's time as the original Robin (which contradicts Dark Victory establishing that O'Hara was killed well before Dick Grayson became Robin).
- Superman:
- Parodied in The Black Ring: Mister Mind gets killed several times over the course of the arc, each time reappearing later apparently unharmed. The thing is, he's perfectly willing to explain how he did it, it's just that nobody else is interested, and he always gets cut off when he tries.
- In Starfire's Revenge, Supergirl gets shot while she is depowered, and a mook makes sure she is dead; yet still she is alive again in the next issue for unexplained reasons (it is speculated since her powers were going on and off, her super-healing returned and restarted her heart after Starfire's mooks left)
- In The Planet Eater Trilogy, Brainiac gets dragged into the titular machine's core, which is supposedly a death warrant. He reappears shortly later, declaring his alliance with Superman is over, and declining to explain how he survived.
- The Other Side of Doomsday: When Flash and Atom learn T.O. Morrow's is behind their wives' disappearance, Flash points out the Justice League watched him disappear several months ago, and his own computers stated he ceased to exist. Morrow shrugs it off by telling he "ceased to exist" on Earth when he was whisked away to another dimension.
- Infinite Crisis:
- In order to give the series a big death, an editorial mandate came down to kill Nightwing. The staff rebelled, offering to kill Conner Kent, aka Superboy in his place. Despite this, he still catches an energy bolt to the chest, leaving him lying in a pool of his own blood. But he's seen uninjured before the end of the book, with no explanation for how He Got Better. The hardcover was given a few extra pages to keep the splash pages intact, and some of this space was given to Dr. Mid-Nite informing Batman and Robin that Nightwing would survive.
- Lady Quark also showed up in Infinite Crisis as one of Alexander Luthor's prisoners, despite having been subjected to a Kill and Replace plot way back in L.E.G.I.O.N. '94 #62. No mention was made as to how Quark was suddenly alive again.
- A well known "skill" of Batman's Arch-Enemy The Joker is to come back from obviously fatal ends. He's been shot, electrocuted, blown up, thrown off buildings, etc., but turns up a few months later without so much as a mention. One story arc ended with him clutching a crate of explosives to his chest and gleefully shooting it, with Bats barely escaping the detonating building. A few months later, he's back in a Santa suit on a road trip with Robin...
- In Kyle Baker's Plastic Man series, Woozy Winks dies dramatically in the "On the Lam" plotline, but comes back smiling with no consequences in the last panel. For a while, being invulnerable like that was Woozy's power. Storywise, A Wizard Did It.
- The "Hunt For Raven" storyline in Teen Titans ended with Miss Martian stuck in a seemingly irreversible coma. When Miss Martian next appeared in Supergirl (2005), she was completely recovered with no mention to her condition.
- Wonder Woman (1987): Plastique was meant to be dead when Phil Jimenez wanted to use her in "The Witch and the Warrior", he decided to use her anyway. One of the heroes exclaims that they thought she was dead, but then everyone's far too busy to go looking for an explanation.
Marvel Universe
- Poked fun of in the Marvel Western mini-series Blaze of Glory. When someone tells Two-Gun Kid they thought he was dead, his response is "I was. I got tired of it".
- Captain America has had quite a few deaths go by where he reappeared again with no explanation and the death itself completely ignored by the plot.
- In Dan Jurgens' Captain America vol. 3 #50, Captain America dies. He's fine by his next appearance, and his death is never brought up again. John Ney Rieber planned to write a follow up mini-series addressing this.
- Captain America and The Falcon had an ongoing subplot about Sam coming unhinged because of Scarlet Witch's manipulations during Avengers Disassembled. Sam's mental state gradually got worse before he seemingly snapped out of it, and he was last seen confronting Anti-Cap. The series abruptly ended the next issue, with the final few pages showing Cap finding Sam's abandoned Falcon suit in a graveyard, ominously fluttering in the wind. This, coupled with Anti-Cap claiming to have killed Sam, was clearly meant to make his fate ambiguous. When Sam returned a few months later in Ed Brubaker's Captain America series, there was no mention of his prior disappearance or what exactly Anti-Cap had done to him.
- In Civil War II #0, Doc Samson is shown Back from the Dead with no explanation. We wouldn't get an explanation for another two years, in the pages of Immortal Hulk.
- Daken's solo series ended with him committing suicide by blowing himself up after losing his Healing Factor. He later returned in Uncanny X-Force as the leader of the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, with no explanation as to how he'd survived or regained his powers.
- Dark Reign:
- Andrea von Strucker is killed by Zemo in Citizen V and the V-Battalion #3, while her brother Andreas is killed by Norman Osborn in Secret Invasion: Dark Reign #1. They both return at a club in Illuminati #2, saying their father "took care of that."
- X-Man Nate Grey returns in Dark X-Men, after turning into energy and spreading across the Earth in X-Man. Granted, the point of the miniseries was him pulling himself back together, but even still. The thornier issue was how he regained his powers in Uncanny X-Men in 2018 after having lost them in New Mutants several years before. This is later explained as the Life Seed having given him his powers back, and boosted them.
- The Daredevil villain Nuke was killed after being blown up by the Iron Nail during Rick Remender's Captain America run. He later showed up alive and well in the Death of Wolverine mini-series, not even sporting any signs of injury.
- Elektra Lives Again: Bullseye dies. It's not clear how he comes back. Then again, this book is generally considered out of continuity.
- In the Fantastic Four story arc 'Master of Doom', The Marquis of Death turns Doctor Doom's heart to stone and his blood to acid, then sends him back in time where he is eaten by a megalodon shark. When he is revealed to have survived, he gives no further explanation than "my hate kept me alive."
- An issue of Dark Avengers some years later did give an explanation. The Thunderbolts, during an unrelated time travel mishap, rescued Doom from the megalodon and healed him, though without knowing who he was at first. Doom then hijacked their time machine and returned to his present, but sent the team into the future to prevent anyone from knowing about his moment of weakness; his talk of The Power of Hate saving him was merely an ego-saving lie.
- The Incredible Hulk:
- Betty Ross died of radiation poisoning from a blood transfusion by the Abomination, but her death was an illusion by Nightmare. She really washed up on a beach and was brought back to health by General Ross, but if the previous events never happened, it doesn't explain what she was recovering from.
- The Leader died in an explosion in #400, showed up as part of the Home Base organization and died, which may have been a hallucination by Nightmare, showed up at a trial in She-Hulk, and escaped from Hell with no explanation. Much like Samson, his resurrection is finally given an explanation in Immortal Hulk.
- The 2002 Weapon X series had a few deaths that were later overturned:
- Former X-Men member Maggott was heavily implied to have been executed in the Neverland concentration camp in issue #5, and his death was later confirmed when he turned up as a zombie during the Necrosha event. He remained dead for quite a while, but then showed up in Uncanny X-Men #600 and Domino Annual #1. He's since appeared as a member of the team again, but nobody has touched on his supposed resurrection yet.
- Likewise, fellow X-Men member Cecilia Reyes was supposedly among the Neverland prisoners who were gunned down offscreen by Agent Zero in Weapon X: Days of Future Now #3, and her death was later confirmed in the letters page of New Excalibur #1. She resurfaced years later in the second NYX mini-series, with no explanation given as to how she'd survived or escaped Neverland.
- Near the end of Brian Bendis' run on Moon Knight, Madame Masque was killed after accidentally bashing her head against a fire hydrant. She later showed up as a recurring villain in Hawkeye, with absolutely no acknowledgement of how she'd survived.
- One of the final issues of Hawkeye finally explained this by mentioning that Madame Masque keeps a multitude of cloned bodies in case of such events. This is actually a plot point that had been established years earlier in Kurt Busiek's Avengers run, but had been forgotten by subsequent writers.
- Also in Moon Knight, Echo was killed after Count Nefaria blasted his Eye Beams through her chest. She showed up alive and well in Charles Soule's Daredevil run, with the only explanation being a line in the issue's recap page saying that she'd mysteriously been resurrected through "supernatural" means. Her death isn't even mentioned in the actual issue itself.
- Runaways ended with Chase Stein getting hit by a car. He later appeared alongside the rest of the team in the Daken: Dark Wolverine series and a crossover with the Avengers Academy.
- Prior to that, the second series ended with Klara being severely injured, and yet in the Secret Invasion tie-in, which took place mere hours after the end of their previous adventure, she is shown to have completely healed.
- Iron Man:
- The Mandarin was killed by Ezekiel Stane in the penultimate issue of the Matt Fraction run. He later appeared alive and well in the 2018 The Punisher run, with no explanation for his survival.
- In the same run, Firepower was seemingly killed after having his armor torn open and sinking into the ocean. He later showed up in Black Cat, with Iron Man not even expressing surprise at his return.
- Parnell Jacobs was shot several times by his old partner, Stuart Clarke, in an issue of The Punisher: War Journal. Despite clearly being dead (complete with a shot of his dead face with the eyes wide open), he later showed up as a major supporting character in the second War Machine series. He even looked several years younger and was in much better physical shape.
- The original Titanium Man was killed in an explosion at the close of a 1995 storyline, and Tony even found his dead body under the rubble. Titanium Man returned years later through unknown means, and to this day it's never been explained.
- Doctor Demonicus and the rest of the Pacific Overlords were seemingly killed when the nation of Demonica collapsed and sank into the sea at the end of Avengers West Coast #95. Over a decade later, Demonicus randomly showed up in Brian Bendis' New Avengers run, and even joined the Hood's supervillain army.
- The Sentry's wife was once killed by Ultron, and he resurrected her in a way that was never explained. Sentry himself in Dark Avengers was turned into combination of The Worf Effect and this. First he was aborted from time by Morgan Le Fay. After Morgan's defeat, he returned, scaring the hell out of all his teammates. Then his head was blown up by alien weapon, and in the next issue he acts like nothing happened. And then he's disintegrated by the Molecule Man, only to reform without much issue. He even allows himself to be killed for good in Comic Book/Siege, with his very explicitly dead body subsequently dumped in the sun... and then pops up in Uncanny Avengers a little while later. Sheesh...
- Bob Reynolds is a psionic who is basically the Dr. Manhattan of the Marvel Universe, with a ridiculous level of power over his own form, and his surroundings (usually as The Cape persona, the Sentry). Pulling himself back together after every increasingly outlandish death is likely an extension of his near-omnipotence and a tongue-in-cheek allusion to superheroes always coming back after seemingly being killed off.
- Spider-Man villain Hammerhead has been killed multiple times in seemingly irreversible ways, including a nuclear explosion, only to bounce right back with some hand waved explanation, if any at all. In the Ultimate universe, he had his head exploded by Gambit in Ultimate X Men, only to appear sometime later in Ultimate Spider-Man, right as rain. When another character points out that he's supposed to be dead, his response is, "It sucked. I came back."
- Spider-Man villain Mysterio commits suicide in Guardian Devil, shows up with a hole in his head in Friendly Neighborhood Spider Man, and shows up in Amazing Spider-Man, explaining he helped fake Harry Osborn's death, but not explaining his own death. The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) eventually revealed that he genuinely died, but subsequently made a Deal with the Devil to return to life.
- In Amazing Spider-Man #687, Rhino and Silver Sable appear to die from drowning, one of the easiest types of deaths to recover from. In Amazing Spider-Man #690, Silver Sable is said to still be alive. The Rhino shows up alive in Amazing Spider-Man Vol 4 #2.
- During The Thanos Imperative miniseries, Drax the Destroyer, Nova, Star-Lord, and Thanos all died, the last three being in a universe that was collapsing in on itself. All of them except for Nova have reappeared in major series with no explanation for their survival or escape. Pretty blatant example, since all of them died only two years before their return. Even more blatant for Drax, because he was outright confirmed to be dead, charred remains and all.
- Original Sin finally revealed what happened: It's apparently impossible to die in the Cancerverse, which explains how Drax survived. He, Star-Lord, and Thanos were subsequently able to escape after Nova committed a Heroic Sacrifice by combining the Nova Force with the Cosmic Cube, creating a gateway back home.
- Ultimate Spider-Man: The end of the "The Death of Spider-Man" arc ends with Peter Parker's death after his final battle with the Green Goblin, who also dies, with Miles Morales subsequently taking up the Spider-Man identity. In the first issue of Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, two years after his death, Peter suddenly shows up alive and well at Miles' house, seeking to take back his web-shooters and get back in the game. He later explains that he simply woke up one day in an abandoned lab, and has no idea how he returned from the dead. The arc ends with he and Mary Jane Riding into the Sunset, leaving Miles to carry on the fight as Spider-Man.
- Captain Britain was supposedly killed in an explosion during Ultimatum, and was even listed in the "In Memorium" section at the end of the series. He showed up in a later issue of The Ultimates with no mention of his "death", though he was now shown to be dying of cancer caused by his supersuit.
- Psylocke was also listed in the "In Memorium" section, only to turn up alive in a later Ultimate Comics: X-Men story arc.
- The Ultimate End tie-in to Secret Wars (2015) features Ultimate Captain America in the clash between the Ultimate and Earth-616 heroes, where he can be seen battling Sam Wilson, Earth-616's Captain America. Ultimate Cap had previously been killed in Cataclysm: The Ultimates' Last Stand, as had the Ultimate Punisher, who also appears in Ultimate End. However, the final issue revealed that the characters in Ultimate End were not actually the characters we thought, but came from a world (Earth-61610) where worlds similar to the mainstream and Ultimate Marvel universes had accidentally fused.
- In Thunderstrike #23, Eric Masterson destroys Seth, who shows up in The Mighty Thor.
- What The—?!: In issue #25, Forbush Man dies. This death is not referenced in his following appearances in Nextwave and Captain America: Who Won't Wield the Shield.
- Wolverine:
- Sabretooth died in Wolverine #55, but that was a clone, so he never really died. But Sabretooth did die according to Wolverine Goes to Hell, where Sabretooth is one of the dead opponents in Hell.
- Wild Child appears to die by being impaled by Omega Red and thrown into molten steel, in Wolverine: Origins #39. Wild Child reappears in Wolverine Vol 2 #304.
- Sometimes the recovery can be the result of a Series Continuity Error, when one writer or artist is unaware of what his/her colleagues did to the characters. Take the X-Men and their spin-offs for example.
- Hellfire Club members Harry Leland and Friedrich von Roehm were both killed in Uncanny X-Men #209 (September, 1986), yet both turn up alive for a Club meeting in New Mutants #61 (March, 1988). The deaths had happened in an issue written by Chris Claremont. New Mutants creative team Louise Simonson and Bret Blevins apparently did not know of this development and re-used the characters.
- Paolo, the right-hand-man to supporting character Aleytis "Lee" Forrester, was brutally killed in Cable #11 (May, 1994), an issue written by Glenn Gerdling. Apparently nobody told this to Larry Hama and Chris Claremont, so Paolo turns up alive in X-Men Unlimited #9 (December, 1995) and Uncanny X-Men #386-387 (November-December, 2000).
- Dazzler dies and returns many times throughout New Excalibur, without bothering to explain how.
- Vanisher dies in New Mutants Vol 3 #13, and returns in Astonishing X-Men Vol 3 #48 without explanation.
- The D-list Spider-Man villain Hippo (an uplifted hippo) was introduced losing An Arm and a Leg to the Mac Gargan Venom, which he replaced with prosthetics, and then shortly afterward was Eaten Alive by Venom when attempting to seek revenge. Subsequently, Hippo has shown up in good health in stories such as The Superior Foes of Spider-Man, and with his limbs intact.
- X-Force: Stryfe is destroyed in X-Cutioner's Song, ends up in Blackheart's Realm, and shows up alive, attacking Latveria in a pyramid that explodes, shows up again and makes a Heroic Sacrifice, and is still alive in Messiah War. The characters involve even point this out, but there's time-travel going on, so Stryfe just asks what they're talking about, and the plot just moves on.
- X-Men: In "Eve of Destruction", Jean recruits a team to infiltrate Genosha and distract Magneto. Wolverine fatally stabs Magneto, leaving his body on the ground. By New X-Men, he's retconned to just being badly injured. Then a Mega-Sentinel eradicates Genosha, with him as the first victim. Then he apparently turns out to have survived that and had been pretending to be Xorn in the mean-time, which ends with his head getting cut off. Then in Excalibur vol. 3, Magneto pops up on Genosha, just fine and dandy. Xorn? Who? Never heard of him! Eventually, in House of M, Doctor Strange speculates that some of this unexplained recovery was due to Scarlet Witch's reality warping going out of control.
- And again with Mags in an appearance in New Avengers, just after House of M, where he's in a helicopter which quite suddenly blows up, with no body to be found. The characters treat this like he's totally dead for realsies this time. He reappears in Uncanny X-Men a few months later, with no mention of said explosion at all.
- X-Men: Blue reveals that Quicksilver is one of the characters who survived the destruction of the Ultimate Marvel universe during Secret Wars (2015). This ignores the fact that Ultimate Quicksilver had already been long dead by the time Secret Wars took place, as he was killed by Kang the Conquerer in one of the last issues of The Ultimates before the post-Cataclysm Retool.
- The final issue of X-Statix ended with the entire team seemingly perishing, which was confirmed in the later X-Statix Presents: Dead Girl mini-series, which featured several members of the team in the afterlife. Despite this, Doop later returned as a supporting character in the X-Men books, while the 2019 X-Statix relaunch subsequently confirmed that Mr. Sensitive, Dead Girl and Vivisector had also all either survived or returned from the dead via unknown means.
- Lampshaded in one of the U.S.Avengers tie-ins to Secret Empire. Squirrel Girl is shocked to see Ares alive and well, kicking HYDRA ass. She even mentions that last she remembered, he was ripped in half by the Sentry during the Siege of Asgard. This is actually a Justified Trope as Ares was resurrected during Contest of Champions (2015) and after leaving Battleworld, decided to set up shop in England with the other heroes there. Squirrel Girl simply wasn't around for any of that, and Ares didn't care about advertising his return.
- In the original Howard the Duck comic book, Howard's archenemy Dr. Bong had a French duck maid named Fifi, who ended up getting killed off in the 19th issue after helping Howard escape. In spite of this, she returned alive and well to assist Dr. Bong in his scheme to make television programs more realistic out of his irrational contempt for Saturday morning cartoons in the fifth issue of The Sensational She-Hulk.
- During Venomized, the Poisons killed and consumed Rage, D-Man and Eye Boy. All three characters subsequently returned to the Marvel Universe shortly after without explanation.
Other Comics
- Mortadelo y Filemón: In the 50º anniversary album a lot of previously deceased enemies appear with little or no explanation.
- In The Bad Eggs, Jumbo Johnson has his head crushed during a rock slide in the third issue. By issue four, he's up and walking again, and no one ever brings up that he was nearly killed from the incident.
- Across the various Star Wars media, there's a reoccurring joke about a certain Jedi Master called K'Kruhk
who often gets killed on screen/panel and is seen alive and unhurt in later media. He's even aware of the trope, once commenting that "I've died any number of times in my life. Or so I've heard.". The kicker is in Legacy, set 138 years after A New Hope. K'Kruhk is not only still alive, but he suffers another "getting better" moment within a few issues of the comics. - The Transformers (Marvel):
- In one issue Megatron is becoming increasingly unstable and violent over shame that he didn't get to kill Optimus Prime. Brawl, one the Decepticons, finally gets fed up with Megatron's brooding and yells at him to get over it. Megatron promptly crushes Brawl's skull with his bare hands and smashes apart corpse against a nearby wall. Brawl later turns up perfectly fine.
- Quake, an otherwise completely forgettable Double Targetmaster, was caught in a pretty massive explosion during a battle with Unicron. He then turns up in the very next issue, perfectly okay. Then in the final issue, he was part of a strike team that seemingly got caught and killed. He turns up again in the sequel series, Generation 2, still perfectly okay, and gets killed again.
- The seeker Dirge was killed off in the G.I. Joe crossover. He turns back up in Generation 2 only to blow himself up in an attempt to take down the Swarm.
- Monica's Gang: Downplayed; many characters get injuries, black eyes and bandages (often Jimmy Five and Smudge after being beaten by Monica), but appear without any wounds a few moments later. That is spoofed in one Mister B story (a character from the same franchise that parodies shows explaining how magic tricks work, resolving "comic books mysteries" instead) — Mister B explains that the injured characters actually go through a long process of recuperation until they fully recover, but the writers find those scenes so boring they simply cut off the pages showing them.
- The joke ending for The Walking Dead is made of this trope. A bunch of folks who died in the series 'get better' and go fight some zombies again. By punching them. A lot.
- The Transformers: Robots in Disguise: Subverted with Sideswipe. When the Decepticons invade his ship he's caught in a grenade explosion, which damages him severely enough to reduce his arms to skeletons and prevent him from walking. Brawl then finishes him off with a Coup de Grâce. When he's retrieved from the ship, his body's intact and the fatal head wound was changed to a wound in his chest that put him in a coma. However, even with that unexplained recovery, Sideswipe would still die from his wounds.
- An odd example in The Transformers: Lost Light where this happened to a corpse: Ambulon was killed in an earlier issue by being sliced clean in half down the middle, and then Ratchet jury-rigged his body into a weapon to escape the situation they were in. Despite this, when the Protectobots find his body, it's not only intact, but it's in such good condition that its combination mechanisms still work. Even if one assumes they decided to restore his body when interring him, they did one hell of a good job...
- In Warlord of Mars, Tardos Mors returns to life without any explanation inside the Red Spire of Helium, while he was thought to have died far away in the North Pole. Turns out that is a double created by the White Martian spirit Xerius to take control of Barsoom. This trope is played yet again straight when Tardos is seen alive again in Dejah of Mars, despite the one we saw previously was confirmed to be a copy and the real one died long ago.
