The 5 Greatest Resurrections in Comic Book History

It’s hard to watch our favorite comic book characters die especially when we know they’ll eventually be brought back to life by some complicated cloning process or, god forbid, a retcon punch, but sometimes, just sometimes, comic book resurrection stories can be amazing, so let’s take a moment to celebrate a few of the stories that got it right.

 

 

5. Captain America’s Original Resurrection

 

It’s sad that Cap’s resurrection story in 2009 was so terrible (don’t even talk to me about time bullets!) because his original return to the land of the living in 1963 is classic comic book storytelling.

 

Anyway, Cap dies (or at least falls off the map) when he and Bucky are trying to stop a drone plane during World War II. They manage to blow up the plane over the ocean but Cap falls into the icy water and is frozen while Bucky is definitely, totally, without a doubt, completely killed (wink, wink).

 

 

Which brings us to one of the greatest comic book sequences of all time, the ridiculous discovery of Captain America’s body. It starts with Namor wandering around the arctic venting his frustrations after he loses a fight with the Avengers and thinking about how much he hates the human race. He randomly comes across the probably-not-considered-offensive-in-its-time scene of a group of Inuit worshipping a man frozen in ice and loses his shit, attacking the men and screaming that they should all be worshiping him instead, because check it out, he’s about to throw this ice guy so far right now.

 

 

 

The throw is actually pretty impressive as Capsicle gets tossed into warm enough water to melt the ice he’s trapped in and is sent drifting right alongside the Avengers’ sub, presumably interrupting their Yellow Submarine sing-along.

 

 

Cap thaws almost instantly and spends a few moments being really sad about how Bucky is definitely dead then introduces himself to the team. The Avengers already recognized him but demand he prove that he’s really Captain America. How does he do this? He kicks all their asses, because a bad guy would never do that.

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the team Cap! Sorry about Bucky though, really, that’s a shame.

 

 

 

4. Johnny Storm Takes Over the Negative Zone

 

The worst resurrection stories happen when a writer decides to retcon the character’s death and insist that something we weren’t originally shown has resulted in the character having never actually been dead despite all the grieving and burying and body cremating that might have happened afterwards.

Captain America was shot by a bullet, but what you didn’t know was the bullet sent him into the timestream!

Batman was shot with Omega Beams, but what you didn’t know was the Omega Beams also sent him into the timestream!

Jean Grey was shot by moon lasers, but what you didn’t know was that she wasn’t Jean at all! And probably something else involving timestreams!

 

Lazy. Which is why I love Johnny Storm’s resurrection, because the manner of his death would have made it incredibly easy to bring him back to life like this but instead of having him never die, he just kept on dying.

 

To explain, Johnny was killed when he stayed behind in the Negative Zone to close a portal to keep Annihilus and billions of creatures from invading Earth, so thanks for that.

 

 

But the last we see of Johnny he’s being dogpiled by monsters that seemed to have killed him, yet there’s no definitive prognosis of death since the team can’t recover his body without letting those same monsters into our universe.

 

Judging by that image alone it would be easy to bring Johnny back and just say he got away then hid in a cave or something for a year and never actually died at all. But writer Jonathan Hickman doesn’t play that way. Instead, during Johnny’s resurrection story he made it very clear that Johnny had actually died at the hands of Annihilus.

 

Several times.

 

 

And had been brought back to life each time using space worms and Negative Zone tech that can rebuild his body.

 

 

This would seem like a bit of a death cop-out except this is the Negative Zone, you know, that place made of anti-matter where everything is backwards so death isn’t quite the same as in our reality. You can die, but you can also resurrect easily if someone puts you back together, so Johnny actually died over and over and over again at the hands of Annihilus who would then have his body reconstructed so he could torture him to death again.

 

The dumb part of that plan was that Johnny got stronger every time they brought him back to life. Not one to wait around to be rescued, he eventually broke free, gathered himself up a new team of heroes, kicked Annihilus’ ass, stole the Cosmic Control Rod and returned to Earth just in time to save the planet from a Kree invasion and make fun of the team’s new outfits.

 

 

Flame on!

 

 

3. Green Lantern: Rebirth

 

In 1994 Green Lantern fans had to suffer through a travesty of a tale called Emerald Twilight, debatably the worst story in DC history, that went out of its way to completely destroy the character of Hal Jordan.

 

 

To save you from having to read that horrendous excuse for a story, I’ll recap: Hal Jordan goes crazy after Coast City is destroyed, starts fighting and killing other Green Lanterns, steals all the energy from the Central Power Battery, destroying the Green Lantern Corp completely, started calling himself Parallax and ultimately destroyed all of time and space (it got better). Our hero.

 

He slightly redeemed himself later when he pulled a Reverse-Dark-Phoenix and died reigniting the sun.

 

 

 

Ten years later a real hero emerged in the form of writer Geoff Johns who scribed Green Lantern: Rebirth which restored Hal Jordan’s life, character and reputation. In this story we find out that the reason Hal had gone crazy wasn’t because he was an asshole but because Sinestro had infected him with a fear entity called Parallax that manipulated him into wreaking havoc and destruction. Even though Hal was now dead and had become the Spectre, Parallax was still attached to his soul and continued to be as bad an influence as Zack Snyder has been on Superman.

 

 

 

With the help of Kyle Rayner, the Spectre and the last remaining Guardian, Hal is able to break free from Parallax’s influence and become his awesome, non-homicidal maniac self again.

 

 

 

With his soul now free, Hal’s given the option of going to heaven or coming back to life and kicking ass as a Green Lantern again.

 

 

He chose to kick ass. He chose wisely.

 

 

 

2. Resurrection Man Dies in Every Issue

 

 

All right, I’ll admit, this entry’s cheating a little bit but I don’t care because man do I love me some Resurrection Man. I’m not talking the New 52 Resurrection Man though, that title was boring, I’m talking about the original 90’s version of Resurrection Man (Mitch Shelley) who was the worst, most entertaining superhero of all time.

 

Let me explain. Resurrection Man’s power is what I call Immortality Plus. He can die but every time he does he comes back to life with a brand new super power, which is the coolest thing I can imagine doing in a monthly comic. As a kid I absolutely loved finding out which power he was going to get next and how he would use it, but since that was the best part of the story it meant that poor Mitch Shelley had to die all the time. And I mean all of the time.

 

 

In the very first issue of his title he’s killed twice, the first time while trying to stop a drive-by shooting and the second time rescuing the driver of an exploding truck. In a lot of ways he was the worst hero of all time, dying left and right and getting killed during every fight and rescue attempt he waded into, despite having super powers, all so we could see him resurrect with new abilities each month. He even died about three times while his non-superpowered ex-wife and her boyfriend were trying to murder him. And every second of it was pure entertainment.

 

 

 

1. Bucky Barnes

 

James Buchanan Barnes, aka Winter Soldier, aka Bucky, has the greatest resurrection story in comic book history. Hands down, accept no substitutes, this is the perfect way to bring a character back to life.

 

 

 

Bucky died in the same explosion that supposedly killed Cap, except he was closer to the blast and wasn’t a super soldier so was actually dead when he hit the water and also lost an arm.

 

 

The Russians find his body, recognize him as Cap’s partner and suddenly he’s the hottest frozen corpse in town. They patch up his wounds and then go to great lengths to resuscitate him, thinking that he might have super soldier serum in his veins. They manage to bring him back to life and discover that he lost all his memories and is still a pretty great fighter, to which the Russians say, awesome, have some brainwashing and a robotic limb, you’re now our greatest assassin.

 

 

 

So now Bucky’s alive, brainwashed and killing people for the Russians, but how the hell do you account for him having not aged when he shows up in the present? Brilliantly! Since as the Winter Soldier he had no memories and no personal life outside of assassinating people, the Russians treated him like an ice cube tray and put him back into cryogenic stasis whenever they weren’t using him, meaning he’s only aged about 10 years or so in total when we meet him again.

 

 

 

Eventually the Russians send Winter Soldier on a mission where he has a run-in with Cap and a few other Avengers. Cap and Bucky have an emotional showdown over the Cosmic Cube, which Cap uses to restore Bucky’s memories, but neglects to remove the memories of him killing hundreds of people against his will because Cap likes his sidekicks angsty in his old age.

 

 

In any case, it’s a brilliant piece of storytelling from all angles, but you don’t have to take my word for it, Captain America: Winter Soldier opens in theatres April 4th.