Ultimate X-Men

[The REAL Brian]

I dunno about that. I'll admit none of them got quite as prolific as Spidey did in the 90's, but Superman had a whopping 4 titles all to himself, and Batman that many as well, to say nothing of their "cousin" titles and miniseries. I think to this day DC's top two still have a book released every week.

...except they don't star either of them anymore, because Superman's co-creator won a legal battle and Grant Morrison decided to throw Bruce Wayne into the stone age.

Marvel and DC have their respective issues. I think if it had to be summed up, they're both greedy, just greedy in different ways. Marvel's greed causes them to run popular things into the ground until their readers are sick of them. Then they act like politicians and claim they know how lame things are now and promise to never do it again, proceeding to run the polar opposite of whatever they had done before into the ground. DC's greed causes them to hand the reigns to their "universe" entirely over to the flavor of the year writer, with not always stellar results. To say nothing of DC's dark legal past coming back to haunt them.

[IsaacMahomie]

Jumping off of a comment earlier... In some ways, the Justice League and Justice Society series have done some nice work with cameos and exchanging the heroes. There's some "blah" storylines, but I've found their handling of the characters to be quite good. (Salvation Run was particularly good, imo).
(and coming from some limited knowledge here...) DC's big trick is "killing off" one of the heroes, only to have another huge issue when they come back. (Death and Return of Superman, Batman Knightfall and R.I.P./Final Crisis/etc. Flash, ....) Marvel also finds a way to resurrect the fallen heroes, but DC started the whole "Death of Superman" thing and it caught like wildfire.
As for Marvel, somehow their writers still think its clever to disband and regroup the Avengers over and over.

[The REAL Brian]

I used to think DC started the whole "kill a hero, bring them back" but that was actually Marvel with Jean Gray. While she wasn't the very first hero ressurrection the point has been made that she kicked off the late 80's early 90's trend of it that really continues to this day. The Death and Return of Superman just got more press for obvious reasons.

I can heartily agree about the Avengers' unstable roster. The New Avengers was barely static for two years, one year of which was just them gathering all the members the promotional covers promised.

[fantasticraig]

Marvel is really bad about the bringing dead characters back with the X-Men. Jean Grey and Professor X have both been dead multiple times (Prof has also regained and lost the ability to walk multiple times, but thats a different issue.), along with several other people like Colossus and Magneto who get killed and then brought back when another writer decides that he wants to use them.

[The REAL Brian]

Marvel is really bad about the bringing dead characters back with the X-Men. Jean Grey and Professor X have both been dead multiple times (Prof has also regained and lost the ability to walk multiple times, but thats a different issue.), along with several other people like Colossus and Magneto who get killed and then brought back when another writer decides that he wants to use them.

What really cracks me up is Jean Grey, Magneto, and Colossus all died during Joe Quesada's first few years as top dog, when he declared "Dead is dead at Marvel." And they all came back to life a few years later.

To the credit of Colossus's return, his coming back was at least a story point, instead of just him being back for the sake of it. With Jean... well, she IS a phoenix. But Magneto... yeah, that was a continuity MESS. Xorn was pretending to be Magneto pretending to be Xorn. Yeah that was... that was crystal clear logic.

[LincM]

Odd how the hack writers often get X-Men on a platter, huh?

I don't know what you mean by "To the credit of Colossus's return, his coming back was at least a story point, instead of just him being back for the sake of it." Isn't the point of bringing a character back to write a story of intrigue and cleverness about how they returned to life/weren't really dead or whatever? Isn't that always the storypoint?

I admit, bringing back Scott after the Counter-X catastrophe - which literally stopped me buying comics years ago - was horribly handled and his motives and actions weren't in fitting with any general human motivation or grief response. It was just for the sake of bringing him back. Hell, killing him off in the first place was for just as poor a reason.

[IsaacMahomie]

Okay, now that we've bashed on comics for killing and bringing heroes back... What's the best you've seen?

The Death of Superman ranks pretty high for me.... I really liked Superman, and I was only ten years old when I read that graphic novel. That epic 22 page final issue was pretty memorable.... many comic book fights since have been a disappointment since that one.

[LincM]

Well, it's not exactly a resurrection, but Kingdom Come dealt with Bruce Wayne returning to being a vigilante of integrity and valour in a nice way, and bringing Colossus back from being a bad dude to a good dude for Excalibur back in the 90s was handled nicely, but I cant think of any actual death to life reversals that I thought were done well.

I like that they managed to leave Blink and Morph both dead for a long time (last I checked they both were, but I haven't for a long time), even though as characters, I quite liked both of them and would probably have enjoyed more stories of them, but it's kind of a show of integrity... leaving them dead is a show of respect for the reader. They're comic writers, not comedians: they're not supposed to pull the rug out from underneath their audience repeatedly. Leave that to comedians to do with their punchlines.

[fantasticraig]

It's not finished yet, but I'm liking how they are bringing Bruce Wayne back a lot.

Bucky's was handled really well by Brubaker too, especially since everyone expected that to suck.

[The REAL Brian]

The death of Barry Allen, the second Flash, stands as my favorite super hero death. He didn't just sacrafice himself to save the world, he made self sacrafice EPIC. He literally ran himself to death to stop the big bad.

[Silv3r]

Bucky's was handled really well by Brubaker too, especially since everyone expected that to suck.

Brubaker's handling of Bucky was great. I'm not huge on his Cap run (its good, but I found it to be a bit overhyped) but I found that element just perfect.

As for deaths, I thought Colossus' death in Uncanny X-men was brilliant. His revival was breezed over a bit too much for my liking, but I thought his "killing off" was handled exceptionally well.

[IsaacMahomie]

The "Knightfall" saga with Batman getting his back broken by Bane was interesting. I really liked the first part. But the fight with Azrael in the 3rd part got pretty... ridiculous... They had Nightwing get really pissed and just start beating up John Paul Valley without too much trouble. Nightwing seemed to have no problem repeatedly punching solid metal armor, it didn't even slow him down. That always kinda bothered me. I wanted Bruce Wayne to be the only one capable of beating Azrael. Which he does, but that's after the whole "lets just beat up the bad-Batman for 30 minutes" pow-wow kinda took the gravity out of the story.

[fantasticraig]

The "Knightfall" saga with Batman getting his back broken by Bane was interesting. I really liked the first part. But the fight with Azrael in the 3rd part got pretty... ridiculous... They had Nightwing get really pissed and just start beating up John Paul Valley without too much trouble. Nightwing seemed to have no problem repeatedly punching solid metal armor, it didn't even slow him down. That always kinda bothered me. I wanted Bruce Wayne to be the only one capable of beating Azrael. Which he does, but that's after the whole "lets just beat up the bad-Batman for 30 minutes" pow-wow kinda took the gravity out of the story.

That has ALWAYS annoyed me in comics. Batman tends to punch Mr. Freeze a lot too. And there is always people punching Iron Man.

[The REAL Brian]

Keep in mind Batman and Nightwing's uniforms are practically armor themselves. Their costumes, despite being drawn as spandex, are said to be bulletproof, fire retardant, and tear resistant.

The people punching Ironman usually have superstrength. Or are very stupid.

Another good "return" story is Iroman's storyline where Tony is shot and paralyzed, decides to fake his death, and has Rhodey take over as Ironman. Rhodey is not forgiving when he realizes Tony is still alive, and he leaves Stark Industries, taking the War Machine armor with him. Tony, for a time, has to use a robotic Ironman via thought-controlled remote. In a twist of fate, the remote actually stimulates his damaged nerves, eventual curing his paralysis. He makes his physical return of Ironman in one of my all time favorite suits, the modular armor(Frankly I don't know why future suits didn't work like this one- allowing Tony to mix and match the devices the suit can use. It is also one of the most iconic and recognizable designs.)

[IsaacMahomie]

Keep in mind Batman and Nightwing's uniforms are practically armor themselves. Their costumes, despite being drawn as spandex, are said to be bulletproof, fire retardant, and tear resistant.

Yes, but some acknowledgment of that would be nice. I get that they're highly capable fighters with Kevlar and all that, but couldn't it at least slow them down a bit? Or force them to improvise with table legs or lead pipes? The only time I can think of this being acknowledged is Batman breaking his hand when punching Superman.