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Death in comics is something that nowadays we know to be a pretty common occurrence. We’re in an age where we’ve got several big comic events happening each year, and one of the common tropes of writers doing these events is to kill of at least one character. Usually a major one. 

Most of the time, though, these deaths just don’t stick, and while I’ll highlight my favorite deaths that DIDN’T stick later, this article is for my favorite deaths of characters who didn’t (or have yet to have) come back.

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5. Little Boy Blue (Fables)

Blue started out in Bill Willingham’s Fables series as the weak naïve sort of young teen character, but was one that certainly grew into his own importance with time. It was in the climax of the series’ first major arc against the Adversary that Blue would meet his fate. After becoming one of the most bad ass characters in the series and taking on tons of awesome weapons and items from tons of different fairy tales, Blue went out like a true hero, and the rest of the Fables have been dealing with it since.

Rose Red has confessed her love for him and a gang of animals has formed a sort of religious cult around him where they believe that Blue will come back to save them in their time of need. While I’m not sure if it’s possible or not for him to come back (characters in Fables have returned from death before), this one has stuck so far and it’s a death I’ll remember for a long time.

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4. Marv (Sin City)

Frank Miller’s Sin City is one of my favorite series, and the film adaptation is also one of my favorite movies, so I definitely have a weak spot for it, and especially this character. Marv was a fantastic character because of how greatly flawed he was. His story is about him attempting to avenge a hooker that he’d fallen in love with because nobody else had ever shown him the same compassion that she had. Through Miller’s story you really get a great idea of who Marv is as a man and how far of lengths he’d be willing to go to for someone that he barely knew. You really find yourself hoping for his success, and after he makes his way through all the horrible people who did horrible things to his lady friend as well as a number of other hookers, you find yourself believing he made it out clean.

However, Sin City isn’t a place murderers get away free, even if they were killing people much worse than themselves, and the story ends with Marv narrating his own death. It’s a scene that resonates not only in comics, but also in film, and his death will always be one of my favorites.

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3. Gwen Stacy (The Amazing Spider-Man)

The death of Peter Parker’s first major love interest was one that really shook the world, and it’s still effecting Peter to this day. He’s always falling back to two big events in his life: the deaths of both Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy.

Though it’s Ben’s death that left more of an impact on Peter, it was Gwen’s that left more of an impact on the readers. It’s especially impacting on both Peter and the readers because it was his web that actually caused the infamous *snap *.

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2. Nightcrawler (X-Men: Second Coming)

This one’s still recent, and there is a chance that Kurt could come back from his fate, but until then this death is one that really hit me hard. It’s not just that I’m a fan of Nightcrawler, but in the way that his death was handled. He went out like a true hero, making a sacrifice for the greater good, and some of his last words were confirming that his sacrifice was indeed “worth it.”

The part that really hit me, though, was the immediate reaction by Wolverine. I was already in tears at the end of that issue, but then his funeral and eulogy in the following issue of Second Coming really put me over the edge. If there is one death in mainstream comics which I think was handled perfectly, and which really effected me more than anything else, it was this one. What makes it worse is having the Age of Apocalypse version of Kurt as a member of X-Force and everyone making references to our Nightcrawler… the tears just don’t stop.

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1. Morpheus, Dream of the Endless (Sandman)

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While Nightcrawlers death may have been the superhero death that hit me hardest, nothing has affected me more than the death of Dream. It was something that readers of Gaiman’s Sandman series should have expected since very early on in the comic, but regardless, nobody wants to see the character die, and when the inevitable death finally comes it hits even harder than you thought it would. Not only was the lead-up and reference to the oncoming death brilliantly done, but the event itself was amazing.

The Dream lord was completely aware of his fate and he wanted just as little as we did, but knowing what had to happen he goes forth to his sister, Death, and we get a two-page spread that has been ingrained in my mind. Whereas I cried my way through Nightcrawlers death, the death of Dream had me stop cold in my tracks, put the book down, gather my emotions, and then continue reading the story. I literally had to stop reading for a few minutes because I was so overcome with emotion from this characters death. Dream was replaced by Daniel, who has appeared in some DC Comics (Morrison’s JLA being an example), but Morpheus remains deceased and his death remains one that continuously affects me. 

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So those are my top five deaths in comics! Do you agree? Disagree? Who did I miss? Be sure to sound off in comments!