Despite what Avengers: Infinity War might have you think, superheroes never really go away, especially in the Marvel Universe. In countless comic books and movies like Infinity War, fan-favorite characters have perished in some of the most heart-breaking ways possible. And, unless they're Spider-Man's Uncle Ben, these characters almost always come back to life. Whether it takes a few pages or a few years, these Avengers, X-Men and other Marvel heroes usually end up getting revived through some sort of fantastic means. From alien technology to mystical spells and even events that shake the foundations of all reality, the Marvel Universe is filled with bizarre ways for characters to return to the land of the living without really trying.
Now, CBR is taking a look at 15 of the wildest ways Marvel heroes have been resurrected. In this list, we'll be focusing on characters who came back to life through some sort of vaguely cosmic or extra-dimensional means, like the Infinity Gauntlet or the Infinity Stones. We'll be focusing on characters who actually perished for at least a few moments in comics or film. Regardless of where they happened, these examples prove that it's hard to keep a good hero down.
15 WOLVERINE
Thanks to his mutant healing factor, Wolverine has survived thousands of injuries that would've been fatal to anyone else. In one of Logan's most infamous moments, the X-Man grew a whole new body from a single drop of blood. In 1987's Uncanny X-Men Annual #11, by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis, the X-Men were kidnapped by an alien warlord named Horde. In this fantasy-influenced story, he forced the team to go on a quest for the Crystal of Ultimate Vision in the impressively-named Citadel of Light and Shadow. While most of the X-Men were trapped in the castle's illusions, Logan and Horde met at the Crystal for a final duel.
Logan briefly gained cosmic awareness in a particularly trippy moment.
Although Horde managed to beat Wolverine, his final blow sent a drop of Wolverine's blood fall onto the Crystal. With a healing factor heightened immeasurably by the Crystal's power, that drop instantly grew into a fully-formed body, complete with his adamantium skeleton and claws. As his old body fell limp to the floor and Horde crumbled into dust, Logan briefly gained cosmic awareness in a particularly trippy moment. After briefly considering omnipotence, Logan rejected godhood, destroyed the Crystal and sent the X-Men back to Earth. Even though Logan seemingly perished for good in 2012's Death of Wolverine, he's currently in the midst of a much-hyped return after being resurrected through still-unknown means.
14 PHIL COULSON
Despite his unassuming demeanor, Clark Gregg's S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson is one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's most distinctive original characters. After debuting in 2008's Iron Man, Coulson served as the friendly face of the spy organization in Marvel Studios' first few movies. In one of the MCU's most shocking moments, the immensely likeable character was fatally wounded by Tom Hiddleston's Loki.
Despite that injury, Coulson showed up alive and well as one of the lead characters in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. As he said repeatedly, he could only remember recovering in Tahiti, which he described as "a magical place." While the mystery of Coulson's resurrection was teased throughout the show's first season, it was eventually revealed that he was revived by a S.H.I.E.L.D. program called Project T.A.H.I.T.I. Under Nick Fury's orders, Coulson was revived by chemicals harvested from a Kree alien's body. Although his memories of the process were initially rewritten, Coulson eventually learned the truth about the process. While he told some of the people in his life about his revival, he kept a relatively low profile and, oddly, never told any of the Avengers. For a short time during the show's second season, he obsessively wrote blueprints for a Kree city on walls, but that's a small price to pay for a literal new lease on life.
13 HEROES REBORN
After a particularly nasty battle in the early 1990s, the psychic entity Onslaught was formed when the darkest parts of Charles Xavier's subconscious and Magneto's mind merged. Created by Scott Lobdell, Mark Waid and Andy Kubert, Onslaught attacked humanity and took over New York in the heavily-teased 1996 storyline "Onslaught." In Onslaught: Marvel Universe #1, by Waid, Lobdell, Kubert and Joe Bennett, the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four all teamed up for a final showdown with the titular villain.
After he turned into a being of pure energy, the Fantastic Four and most of the Avengers all seemingly perished.
However, the heroes were shunted into the "Heroes Reborn" alternate universe at the moment they started to fade from existence. Using his immense, reality-warping mutant powers, Franklin Richards, the young mutant son of the FF's Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, created a pocket universe inside a ball where he recreated the heroes as he remembered them. During the ensuing "Heroes Reborn" reboot, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four were all re-envisioned as younger characters at the start of their superhero careers. Despite heavy criticism, creators like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld made these characters commercial successes for the first time in years. By the end of 1997, "Heroes Reborn" was over, and the heroes returned to the Marvel Universe where they quickly settled into their old roles.
12 THANOS SAVES EVERYONE
While Thanos has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most threatening villains in the Marvel Universe, his intentions aren't always all bad. While those morally complex intentions were on full display in Avengers: Infinity War, he's also helped some of Marvel's heroes battle some other threats from time to time. In one of his more selfless moments, the Mad Titan even sacrificed the life to rebuild the universe in 2003's Marvel Universe: The End, by Jim Starlin.
In this alternate reality miniseries, Akhenaten, a pharaoh from Ancient Egypt, was corrupted by an ultimate energy source called the Heart of the Universe. After Akhenaten finished off most of Earth's present-day heroes, Thanos led a small group of survivors against the villain and took the Heart's power for himself. When he did that, he noticed that the universe had a flaw that was slowly destroying it. Using a power far greater than the Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos became one with everything in existence and absorbed the entire universe, which briefly obliterated all of reality. After a talk with his nemesis Adam Warlock, Thanos rebuilt the universe, without the flaw, and brought all of the fallen heroes back to life. Although this version of Thanos wrote himself out of existence, the memories of this trippy tale were somehow passed on to the Marvel Universe's main Thanos.
11 HUMAN TORCH
Even though he's been relatively immature for over 50 years, the Human Torch is still an invaluable member of the Fantastic Four. In his most heroic moment, Johnny Storm tried to hold off an entire alien horde all by himself. In 2011's Fantastic Four #587, by Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting, the Torch was left watching over a group of young geniuses in the Baxter Building, the Fantastic Four's headquarters. After a vast swarm of alien insect warriors called the Annihilation Wave started infiltrating the building, Johnny pushed the back through a portal into the Negative Zone.
As he went supernova, he destroyed his only way home, and the bugs overwhelmed him.
As Hickman, Epting and Carmine Di Giandomenico revealed a year later in 2012's Fantastic Four #600, the Human Torch was resurrected by another group of Negative Zone insects. In order to torture the Torch, Annihilus, the Negative Zone's ruler, ordered the bugs to revive him in an incredibly painful process. After he being forced to fight in gladiatorial combat, the Torch launched a revolt against Annihilus and defeated him in combat. When the Torch returned to Earth a little while later, he held Annihilus' Cosmic Control Rod, which gave him command over the Annihilation Wave.
10 THE THING
Given his rocky exterior and Hulk-like strength, the Thing seems like the most indestructible member of the Fantastic Four. But in 2004's Fantastic Four #508, by Mark Waid and Howard Porter, Ben Grimm finally met his match. While Doctor Doom possessed the Thing's body, Ben asked Mr. Fantastic to finish him off before he could be used to hurt anyone. Tearfully, Reed Richards blasted his friend with a lethal energy bolt.
Since they weren't ready to live without the Thing, Mr. Fantastic took the rest of the Fantastic Four into the afterlife to revive their friend. In 2004's Fantastic Four #511, by Waid and Mike Wieringo, the Fantastic Four found Ben's spirit and met their creator, a cosmic being who looked like the team's real-world co-creator Jack Kirby. After speaking with the characters he helped create, Kirby used his pencil to erase some scars on Reed's face. Although Ben had reverted back to his human form, Kirby drew him a new rocky exterior and brought him back to life, adding that Ben had plenty of stories left in him. As the team left, Kirby promised them that they would earn a happy ending and gave them a sketch that showed a future where they were all old and happy together.
9 ASGARD REBORN
In Marvel's version of Norse mythology, Thor and the other Asgardian gods are bound to repeat an endless cycle of death and rebirth called Ragnarok. As 2017's Thor: Ragnarok showed, these events usually involve a giant final battle between the Asgardians and their enemies and end with the demon Surtur destroying the remnants of Asgard. Around the time the Avengers were disassembled and the Scarlet Witch went mad, Thor and the Asgardians went through another round of Ragnarok in 2004.
As he traveled the world, Thor freed Asgardians like the Warriors Three from their mortal shells.
After a few years out of the limelight, Thor and his allies started to return in 2007's Thor #1, by J. Michael Straczynski and Olivier Coipel. After Thor was summoned by his old human host, Donald Blake, he began to search for the other gods, who had all been reborn in human hosts. For example, the all-seeing Heimdall was reborn in the body of a grieving widower in New Orleans. As he traveled the world, Thor freed Asgardians like the Warriors Three from their mortal shells. After inadvertently reviving some Asgardian villains in this process, Thor completed his resurrection quest by freeing the warrior Sif from a terminally ill cancer patient. While all of this was going on, Thor also worked to establish the new kingdom of Asgard, which was a floating city over the rural town of Broxton, Oklahoma.
8 COLOSSUS
In one of the most completely unexpected sacrifices in Marvel history, the X-Men's Colossus gave his life to release an instant airborne cure to a global mutant plague. For most of the 1990s, the Legacy Virus ravaged the mutant community and proved fatal to characters like the villain Pyro and Colossus' sister Magik. To honor her memory, Piotr Rasputin injected himself with a formula that created a cure for the virus at the cost of his life in 2001's Uncanny X-Men #390, by Scott Lobdell and Salvador Larroca.
A few years after his noble sacrifice, Colossus was revived in 2004's Astonishing X-Men #4, by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. Ord, an alien from Breakworld, discovered a prophecy that claimed his planet would be destroyed by an X-Man. In order to prevent that, Ord stole Colossus' body and revived him using alien technology. He also used the Legacy Virus cure in Piotr's veins to synthesize a formula that neutralized mutant powers. While battling Ord, the X-Men discovered Colossus and welcomed him back onto the team. After defeating Breakworld's leader, Colossus fulfilled the Beakworld prophecy in a sense. After he briefly took over as Breakworld's leader, Colossus returned to Earth and left Breakworld, which quickly fell into civil war.
7 CHAOS WAR
With characters like Thor and Hercules, the Marvel Universe is full of numerous deities and cosmic beings who originally hail from different mythological traditions. While members of these pantheons have fought each other plenty of times, the Asgardians, Olympians and Marvel's other deities have teamed up to take on even greater threats in stories like Chaos War. In the Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente and Khoi Pham-led crossover, several Marvel deities formed the God Squad to keep Amatsu-Mikaboshi from destroying all of reality.
As a result of that cosmos-shaking conflict, several deceased Marvel heroes were revived.
In Van Lente and Tom Grummett's Chaos War: Dead Avengers, fallen Avengers like the Vision and the original Captain Marvel were resurrected long enough to perish while defeating the villains Grim Reaper and Nekra. In Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson and Doug Braithwaite's Chaos War: X-Men, several deceased X-Men including Banshee and Thunderbird were revived long enough to save the Earth from another corrupted deity. In Jim McCann and Reilly Brown's Chaos War: Alpha Flight, several members of the Canadian superteam Alpha Flight were resurrected and joined up with their still-living comrades to battle powerful entities called the Great Beasts. Unlike the briefly resurrected X-Men and Avengers, all of Alpha Flight lived through the crossover and went on to star in a new short-lived series.
SPOILER WARNING: The following entry has minor spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War.
6 DOCTOR STRANGE
In 2015's Doctor Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange used the power of the Time Stone to outwit one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe. While the Eye of Agamotto is usually just a powerful mystical artifact, it held an Infinity Stone in the MCU. By using the Time Stone, Strange was able to reverse the flow of time to resurrect the dead and alter time in several other mind-bending ways. A few moments after he used the Time Stone to revive his fellow Master of the Mystic Arts Wong, Strange used the Time Stone against Dormammu, a mammoth, impossibly strong cosmic being from the Dark Dimension.
Using the Time Stone, Strange trapped Dormammu in a time loop that made him repeat the same moment in time. In every one of these loops, Strange perished while confronting Dormammu before the moment began again. While this move might be familiar to anyone who's saved a video game right before a particularly difficult challenge, it gave Strange a unique way to deal with one of his most fearsome foes. By endlessly resurrecting himself, Strange essentially annoyed Dormammu into agreeing to leave Earth alone. While this method initially just seemed like a novel way to defeat Dormammu, Thanos used a similar move for a far more sinister purpose in Avengers: Infinity War.
5 PUNISHER
Since he was created by Gerry Conway, John Romita and Ross Andru in 1974's Amazing Spider-Man #129, the Punisher has taken out a decent portion of the Marvel Universe's criminal population. After the titles that he starred in were canceled in the mid-1990s, Frank Castle perished off-panel in a story that readers didn't see. Even though readers didn't know he was gone, the Punisher returned from the grave in 1998 in Tom Sniegoski, Christopher Golden and Bernie Wrightson's Punisher #1.
In a story is also known as Punisher: Purgatory, Castle was resurrected as an undead spirit of vengeance who used supernatural guns.
Since the character is usually relatively grounded, this supernatural turn didn't click with readers. After a few years, Castle was kicked out of the afterlife and fully restored in 2000's Punisher #1, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. A decade later, the Punisher had an equally strange resurrection after perishing in battle with Wolverine's savage son Daken. In 2010's Punisher # 11, by Rick Remender and Tony Moore, the Legion of Monsters revived the Punisher as "Franken-Castle," a Frankenstein-like creature made from his remains. After he helped the Legion take on a few villains in this divisive storyline, Castle used a mystical artifact called the Bloodstone to restore his normal state.
4 DOUGLOCK
Throughout the 1980s, The New Mutants chronicled the adventures of the Xavier Institute's youngest mutant students. Two of that team's most distinctive members were Doug Ramsey, who could speak and understand any language, and Warlock, a techno-organic alien who constantly changed his shape. Since Doug's universal-translating abilities aren't too useful in battle, Doug and Warlock figured out how to merge so Warlock's form operated as a kind of armor around Doug.
By the mid-1990s, both New Mutants had perished, separately, in battle, and Warlock's ashes had been scattered over Doug's grave. In 1994's Uncanny X-Men #313, by Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira, the Phalanx, a group of Borg-like aliens related to Warlock, assimilated those remains and inadvertently created Douglock. This new being had all of Doug's memories and looked like a cross between Doug and Warlock. After he served with a few of his old teammates and friends in Excalibur, a British X-Men team, Douglock discovered that he was actually just Warlock. Thanks to his unique bond with Doug, he had absorbed all of his friend's memories. In his short-lived 1999 solo series Warlock, he operated as a solo hero and kept his Douglock look. After disappearing for several years, Warlock had reverted to his more traditionally alien look when he popped up again in the cosmic crossover "Annihilation: Conquest."
3 BANSHEE
Over the past ten years, the X-Men's Banshee has been resurrected three times, although he hasn't stayed around for too long after any of them. In 2006's X-Men: Deadly Genesis #3, by Ed Brubaker and Trevor Hairsine, the Irish X-Man perished while trying to save an airplane full of passengers from crashing. A few years later, the immortal X-Men villain and Hellfire Club member Selene realized that the Transmode Virus, which was derived from Warlock's DNA, could resurrect the dead. In 2009, she used the virus to resurrect Banshee and an army of other zombified mutants under her control in X-Necrosha #1, by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost and Clayton Crain.
At the end of that crossover, Banshee and most of the other undead mutants went back to their graves.
After the Chaos War incident in 2010, Banshee was revived again in 2013 by the Apocalypse Twins, two of Apocalypse's heirs. In Uncanny Avengers #9, by Rick Remender and Daniel Acuña, Banshee returned as one of their mind-controlled Horsemen of Death. After Banshee was forced to fight his former friends and teammates, the X-Men took him into custody and began trying to bring him back to his old self. As Beast noted, the process of deprogramming him would take years of continuous treatment. Since he hasn't reappeared since then, it's safe to assume that those treatments are ongoing.
2 PHOENIX
As her occasional codename Phoenix implies, Jean Grey seems to have a knack for coming back from the grave. Despite that reputation, the real Jean has only ever perished and come back a few times. In 1976's classic X-Men #100, by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum, Jean was set to give up her life to take a space shuttle the team was in back to Earth. When she sent out a psychic plea for help, the Phoenix Force, a fiery, bird-like cosmic entity, responded. Although the details of the story have been reframed and rewritten a few times over the years, the Phoenix possessed a copy of Jean and took her place in the X-Men, while the real Jean healed in a cocoon in New York's Jamaica Bay. After the Phoenix was driven mad by power in "The Dark Phoenix Saga," the Phoenix vaporized herself, and the real Jean woke up and rejoined the X-Men.
On a somewhat simpler note, Jean perished fighting a mutant posing as Magneto in 2004's New X-Men #150, by Grant Morrison and Phil Jimenez. Over a decade later, the Phoenix Force resurrected Jean again in 2018's aptly-titled Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #1, by Charles Soule and Leinil Yu. Even though the Phoenix resurrected Jean so it could possess her again, Jean politely declined. Surprisingly, the Phoenix accepted her decision and just flew away into space.
SPOILER WARNING: The following entry has spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War.
1 THE INFINITY GAUNTLET
Like his cinematic counterpart, Thanos tried to collect all of the Infinity Gems to assemble the all-powerful Infinity Gauntlet in 1991's The Infinity Gauntlet, by Jim Starlin, George Perez and Ron Lim. In one of that cosmic epic's most memorable moments, Thanos snapped his fingers to make half of all life in the universe vanish in an instant. While he did the same thing in Infinity War, it happened before Thanos' brutal battle with Earth's heroes in the 1991 comic book. In the ensuing battle against Earth's remaining heroes, Thanos dealt with them in cruel-but-creative, ways.
This restored all of the heroes who vanished and all of the heroes who perished in battle with Thanos.
While he was momentarily distracted, the space pirate Nebula took the Infinity Gauntlet off of Thanos' arm and claimed its power for herself. Since she wasn't used to that kind of power, a redemptive Thanos and Adam Warlock, a cosmic religious figure turned hero, tricked her into restoring the universe to how it had been one day earlier. This restored all of the heroes who vanished and all of the heroes who perished in battle with Thanos. While a few characters remembered what happened on that day, most of them forgot and lived on blissfully unaware. Thanks to his connection with the Soul Gem, Warlock was able to cause disharmony in the Gauntlet and took it from Nebula. After a little time with infinite power, Warlock disassembled the Gauntlet and gave each Infinity Gem to a different keeper for the good of the universe.