In comic books, death is just another part of life. For superheroes, dying and coming back to life is as common as tragic origin stories, evil clones and overly dramatic poses.
However, Marvel Comics Editor-In-Chief C.B. Cebulski said that death might start being a little more permanent inside the Marvel Universe.
"I don't want death to be used to boost sales or to use as a shock value so people go 'Oh my God, Johnny Storm is dead!' or 'Wolverine is dead!' knowing that they're going to be coming back," the editor said at a comic convention in Sweden. "If we choose to do it now, we're going to add a little more weight and permanence to the decision."
At one point or another, almost every Marvel hero has died and returned from the grave, even popular heroes like the Hulk, Hawkeye, Thor, Iron Man and Captain America have perished only to come back issues later.
Cebulski also went on to discuss how the publisher went into the thinking that goes into the decision to kill off a character.
"The process of killing off a character is not an easy one, and a lot of people think death is something that we don't take seriously in the Marvel Universe but it really is," Cebulski said. "There's a lot of debates that happen because if a writer suggests that we should kill a character, it always has to be story driven first."
Regardless of this stance, the last few months have been especially brutal for Marvel's heroes. Several members of the X-Men have perished and several heroes have fallen as War of the Realms rages on around them. Even though half of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was killed and brought back to life over the past two Avengers movies, two major heroes, Iron Man and Black Widow, seemingly died for good.