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

Enjoy!

20. "Bruce Banner Gets Caught in a Gamma Bomb Explosion" by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman (Incredible Hulk #1)

Man, these early Marvel origins are awesome. So much pathos, so much characterization and it is all done in so few pages. Paul Reinman really had a way of making Kirby's art look really weird - in a good way. The horror of Bruce Banner's screams is, to borrow a term, incredible.





19. "Captain Marvel Dies" by Jim Starlin (Marvel Graphic Novel #1)

Jim Starlin had a great run on Captain Marvel, which kicked off his whole series of cosmic Marvel stories. In 1982, he brought that chapter of his career to a close with this graphic novel, where we see Captain Marvel slowly succumb to cancer. In the end, Captain Marvel is joined by his old enemy, Thanos, to finally embrace death...





Captain Marvel and Warlock got such great sendoffs (and they're quite similar, too). Sadly, Warlock's missed the Top 75 (it was relatively close to making it - probably somewhere in the low 80s).

18. "Skurge's Last Stand" by Walter Simonson (Thor #362)

Skurge the Executioner was, for years, basically just a glorified henchman for the Enchantress. His place in comic book history was forever altered when Walter Simonson had the disillusioned brute join forces with Thor to help rescue some humans who were trapped in Hel. They were near escaping across the Gjallerbru bridge but Hela's forces were bearing down on them. Someone had to hold off the attackers while the others escaped. Obviously, Thor volunteered for the suicide mission. Skurge knocked him out, though, and took his place. There is a great moment that I sadly don't have space for where Skurge collects the various weapons from the other members of the mission and smiles, as he awaits the oncoming forces. He then begins firing on the horde of vile attackers.

Then we get the following...





Stunning.

You know a death is awesome when no writer dares to overturn it (the same, I suppose, goes for Captain Marvel).

Go to the next page for #17-16!

17. "Fantastic Four Steal a Rocketship and Get Bombarded With Cosmic Rays" by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and George Klein (Fantastic Four #1)

Has Marvel ever done a story where Ben Grimm complains about Sue Storm cajoling him into doing the ill-fated space mission?

This moment contains two iconic panels - the four friends racing in the dead of night to steal the ship and the ship getting bombarded with cosmic rays (which is "the" moment for the countdown, by the way).





16. "Jean Grey Becomes the Phoenix" by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and Sam Grainer (X-Men #101)

X-Men #100 has an awesome ending where the X-Men have rescued their captured friends and escaped from a space station but their space shuttle has been damaged enough that no one can pilot it without dying, as there is a solar flare going on. Jean Grey pulls a Skurge and volunteers for the mission, pulling the information on how to fly the shuttle from the astronaut who piloted the X-Men to the space station. Jean uses her powers to try to keep the radiation out but by the time the issue ends, it seems like her powers are failing and she is getting a full dose of radiation (similar to the cosmic rays that hit the FF).

The next issue shows the shuttle crashlanding (but at least all in one piece) and then we see what happened to Jean...





The story was later retconned that a cosmic being known as the Phoenix switched places with Jean during the flight down to Earth.