In honor of Marvel's seventy-fifth anniversary, we're doing a countdown of the most memorable moments in Marvel Comics history, based on YOUR votes!

Here are the last results of the countdown! Be forewarned, these memorable moments WILL include some spoilers of old famous Marvel stories!

Enjoy!

3. "The Famous Red, White Garb of...Captain America!" by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and George Roussos (Avengers #4)

It's interesting, looking back at the history of the Marvel Age, just how long Stan Lee took to revive what was once the company's most popular character. Another Golden Age hero, Namor, was revived just four months into the Marvel Age. In that case, though, Namor served as a villain in the new universe, so it made more sense to use him. The Human Torch had already been coopted by Johnny Storm. So that left Captain America and a couple of years went by without his return. Finally, after a test issue where Captain America came back in an issue of Strange Tales (it turned out to be an impostor, of course), Lee finally bit the bullet and brought Captain America into the Silver Age in Avengers #4. The full introduction of Cap is three pages long and I've been holding myself to just two, so we'll have to stick with just one page after the main the moment, the point where Wasp recognizes the frozen guy that the Avengers rescued while trying to hunt Namor and the Hulk down (you gotta love early Avengers - by issue #3 they're already hunting down one of their founding members)...





I've read this scene roughly a gazillion times over the years and it still gives me chills how Cap just collects himself and is all, "Yeah, okay, Bucky's dead, I'm in the future, but screw it, I'm Captain goddamn America" (and yes, it makes Cap's reaction to killing a terrorist who was about to kill a bunch of innocent people even the sillier when you see Cap's reaction here).

Go to the next page for #2-1!

2. "The Death of Jean Grey!" by John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Terry Austin (X-Men #137)

So Jean Grey had her mind warped to the point where she becomes Dark Phoenix and wipes out a whole planet of beings. The Shi'Ar decide to get involved and the X-Men are forced to fight the entire Imperial Guard to save their friend's life, who they feel is back to normal after Professor X placed a sort of psychic cap on her after the team fought Dark Phoenix themselves.

They're going along, getting their collective ass kicked by the much larger and more powerful Imperial Guard (but let me note, they're so awesome and so powerful but they seem to, like, never win a fight) when suddenly the blocks Xavier placed on Jean start to crumble and Phoenix returns!

Her teammates must now turn on her...



but ultimately, Jean decides that she cannot control the Phoenix force so she makes the ultimate sacrifice...



It's funny - the moment is awesome and unexpected (star characters in popular comic books just did NOT die in comics at the time, even in a title like X-Men where a member was killed off in their second mission) but looking back, Cyclops' exposition-heavy speech after the love of his life just incinerated herself is kind of funny.

This is the highest ranked moment on the list to later be retconned. It was later revealed that the Phoenix force was an independent cosmic being that made a deal with Jean way back in X-Men where it would save Jean's friends in exchange for Jean letting it take Jean's place and live life as a human being. So its "corruption" was really it losing traces of its copied humanity. So according to this retcon, it makes the sacrifice almost MORE noble, as it is one thing for Jean Grey to sacrifice herself for the good of mankind, it's a whole other thing for a COPY of Jean Grey to sacrifice itself for the good of mankind.

1. "The Death of Gwen Stacy!" by Gerry Conway, Gil Kane and John Romita (Amazing Spider-Man #121)

Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross made a point of framing the death of Gwen Stacy as the figurative end of the Silver Age, and it certainly does have that sort of feeling to it. It's such a momentous event that it is no surprise to see it ranked #1 on the list - it gets referenced CONSTANTLY. They even adapted it into the recent Amazing Spider-Man film franchise.





From the "Snap" to Spidey trying to convince someone (himself? God?) that Gwen isn't actually dead, that's still a painful thing to read. But an extremely memorable thing to read.

Okay, that's the list! Happy Seventy-Fifth Anniversary, Marvel! Here's to seventy-five more years of more memorable moments!