This is "Death Takes Its Toll," a feature spotlighting comic book deaths that I thought were particular wastes of a worthwhile character. This is sort of like my feature about notable examples of characters being "fridged," except that this is open to all sorts of characters and not just those that have been fridged.

Although, unsurprisingly, the first few heroes featured have all been women. My buddy Will Harris suggested this one, the deaths of Doctor Mid-Nite and Wildcat in the great Eclipso massacre of 1993.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within was one of the better company-wide Summer Annuals crossovers that either DC Comics or Marvel Comics came up with. Written by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming, the concept of the series was that Eclipso, a relatively minor villain from the 1960s (who had the great hook that he was stuck in the body of a heroic scientist named Bruce Gordon, but whenever an eclipse occurred, Eclipso would take over Gordon's body and go off and do some villainous stuff), now had the ability to possess anyone who was holding a special black diamond (that had been scattered around the globe) when they were angry.

Eclipso planned to possess as many superheroes as he could as part of a plan to eventually conquer the Earth. The Annuals showed various heroes getting possessed and then an awesome story where the remaining superheroes have to free a possessed Superman (one of Guy Gardner's best moments of all-time took place in that story arc, when he was the only superhero able to break Eclipso's control of Superman - a victory made all the more sweet by the fact that Eclipso had previously possessed Gardner and then discarded him as not being useful enough to him, since Guy had then-recently lost his Green Lantern ring). The heroes then stop Eclipso's plan from his base on the moon (they are led by Bruce Gordon, who has built a variety of solar-powered weapons for the non-possessed heroes to use - most of the non-possessed heroes were of the weaker side of things, power-wise), but Starman seemingly dies in the process (all crossovers have to include at least one superhero dying, apparently).

Eclipso then decided that his problem was that his plan was too visible and he tried to work in secret, but Lar Gand (the superhero who was known as Mon-El before Crisis got rid of Superboy's existence) took on the new superhero name of Valor and stopped Eclipso's SECRET plan. So now Eclipso was like, screw it, I'm going to just take over my own country. So he possessed the people of the small South American country of Parador (likely a reference to the then-recent film, Moon Over Parador, where Richard Dreyfuss plays an actor hired to impersonate a small South American country's dictator after the dictator dies suddenly) and used the drug money from the country to help fund his future attempts to take over the world.

Bruce Gordon, through his connection to Eclipso, figures out what the villain is up to and he tries to get the big league superheroes to help him but they all turn him down...

He then turns to Amanda Waller, who was in semi-retirement following the end of the amazing Suicide Squad comic book series.

She sends Gordon, Gordon's wife, Mona, the Creeper and Cave Carson into Parador to see what Eclipso is up to...

(Bart Sears and Ray Kryssing drew the first three issues of the series to help give it a big launch before they moved on to other titles)

Their mission goes horribly wrong and Carson's legs are both broken, but at least they know Eclipso is a credible threat, so they put together a team of superheroes known as the Shadow Fighters. The Shadow Fighters specifically go into Parador to save a little girl who has been kidnapped by Eclipso.

Things do not go well for the Shadow Fighters...

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By this point, Keith Giffen has also left the series, leaving just Robert Loren Fleming to write the book by himself. The art team is now Audwynn Jermaine Newman and Ray Kryssing. Eclipso #12-13 is the big battle between the team and Eclipso...

Since the team was put together by Amanda Waller, it includes a number of characters left over from the aforementioned brilliant John Ostrander/Kim Yale Suicide Squad team, including Major Victory and Nemesis. Plus, Peacemaker and Manhunter both appeared a number of times in the pages of Suicide Squad.

The remaining non-Suicide Squad heroes were the Creeper, who had been involved from the start plus Commander Steel (the grandfather of the dead Justice Leaguer of the same name) and two former members of Infinity Inc., Doctor Mid-Nite and Wildcat.

Mid-Nite and Wildcat were both female minority heroes who were second generation versions of classic Justice Society of America members. Both were regular members of Infinity Inc. and Doctor Mid-Nite, in particular, was used a lot in that series as she stood out as a character as she really was more of a DOCTOR than she was a superhero. Doctor Beth Chapel was a very interesting character and what made it all stand out even further is that Fleming NAILS her character in this story line. So it makes her impending death even more brutal.

The Shadow Hunters are supported by a number of DC scientist characters, like Bruce Gordon's father-in-law plus Will Magnus and Chunk (from the pages of the Flash) who have built a bunch of weapons. The heroes seem to be incompetent and a spy for Eclipso shows Eclipso that the heroes are nowhere near close enough to being ready enough to mount an actual attack on Eclipso.

Then, the first big twist...the attack is happening RIGHT NOW. The spy who showed Eclipso otherwise? He was Nemesis, the master of disguise!

However, that wasn't enough and in the next issue, things went really bad...

The heroes showed up at Eclipso's stronghold but were soon overwhelmed. Creeper was in the jungle and he was devoured by hounds (Creeper, though, was famous for his healing powers, so it should not be surprising that he came back - I bet it was always intended that he would heal from his seemingly fatal wounds), but Wildcat went after him...

Beth followed her friend and when she found Wildcat, she valiantly tried to save her life, but Eclipso wouldn't let it happen...

Now, Major Victory was the last surviving member of a joke superhero team known as the Force of July. Similarly, Commander Steel was an extremely minor character whose main purpose was tied to his dead grandson. If you are going to kill people off, THOSE are the types of heroes you kill off, and Fleming actually handled their deaths really well, with them dying together as heroes...

Later, we see the dead bodies and Steel and Victory died back to back...

The deaths of these heroes compelled the rest of the world's superheroes to band together against Eclipso and Nemesis (who was one of the few survivors of the attack) led the heroes back to stop Eclipso once and for all.

Wildcat was a decent character and her loss was a bit of a waste, but Dr. Beth Chapel was a MAJOR waste. They weren't even tied to the other heroes who died. It wasn't a good idea to kill them off like this. And, of course, while Mark Shaw later turned up alive, Beth and Yolanda, naturally, were never resurrected. If you're going to kill off some minor superheroes to make a supervillain look tough, maybe don't choose two of the only minority female superheroes in the entire DC Universe as part of the heroes killed off.

Thanks to Will for the suggestion! Okay, folks, I'm sure you have lots of suggestions for this feature, so feel free to send them to me at brianc@cbr.com!