The X-Men Fatality Timeline (1st Draft)

[Lorendiac]

People occasionally complain that death in the X-Men titles has become a bad joke. By “occasionally,” I mean such complaints can only be heard about 99.9% of the time. After all, every once in awhile all the people who love to complain about this all have to stop for breath! :)

I finally decided it was time to measure the exact size of the problem, by putting together a comprehensive list of X-Men Deaths (and Returns). As far as I know, no one else has ever tried to list them all at once, in the same document, complete with specific issue numbers. (If someone has already done this, I hope one of my readers will point me to the correct URL so I can compare my work to my unknown predecessor’s work and see what I missed on the first pass.)

DISCLAIMER: This is not yet a completely comprehensive listing. I am counting on my fellow fans, people who are more up-to-date on their X-Men continuity than I am, to help me fill in the gaps. (For instance, I couldn't even remember just when it was in the 1990s that Havok died all over again, so I left it out! Anybody have the answer on the tip of your tongue? Speak up!)

Likewise, if you know of any other "Deaths" or "Returns" of X-Men that I missed, please say so! I know they're out there; I spent much of the mid-to-late 90s largely ignoring the X-Titles, so there's no telling how many I'm missing from that era in particular!


A Few Ground Rules

These are subject to change without notice as I work out the bugs in my approach to the problem :)

1. I only want to list “deaths” of characters who were serving as X-Men at the time, or had previously done so before they died. Right now, I don’t care about people who had only been members of the New Mutants, X-Force, X-Factor, Alpha Flight, Excalibur, or any other group (or any combination of the above).

As one example: This rule means I don’t list the first apparent “death” of Emma Frost back in the Dark Phoenix Saga, when she clashed with Phoenix and was declared (by Phoenix) to have not survived the experience. It must have been about twenty issues later that we found out she had (somehow) pulled through. Emma later became affiliated with the X-Men, but that was far in the future.

2. I’m taking a fairly liberal definition of “death.” If the character was definitely, undeniably dead, with an identifiable corpse and all that, I count it. But I probably will also count it if the character was firmly believed to be “dead” by surviving X-Men and other friends and relatives, for more than a couple of minutes, even though they were wrong. Or if there was later a retcon explaining that the dead body had been someone else entirely – an impostor was buried at the funeral everyone attended! It’s hard to tell where to draw the line, and I may redraw it at any time! :)

3. I’m trying to report each case “straight” – if readers were meant to think a character was dead at the time, then in the listing for that event, I generally just describe it as “that person died.” If there were later retcons, I deal with those separately. So Professor X’s death in X-Men #42 is described as if he really died in #42, without mention of the later retcon until we reach the story of his return on my Timeline.

4. I’m ignoring stories from alternate timelines. I don’t really care about the death of an evil analog of Professor X in Exiles #2, nor the deaths of any other “analogs” of characters we know in the “regular” X-Titles. By the same token, I don’t bother listing the time in 1982 that Chris Claremont wrote the X-Men/New Teen Titans crossover, with a temporary “resurrection” of Dark Phoenix, because as far as I know the events of that story were never referred to again as being “established history” in any later Marvel or DC comic, so I figure it’s “out of continuity” from both publishers’ points of view. Likewise, I have no interest in trying to include "Ultimate X-Men" continuity in this Timeline.

NOTE: I generally abbreviate "Uncanny X-Men" as "UXM."


THE X-MEN FATALITY TIMELINE

1968. X-Men #42. Written by Roy Thomas.

Professor X dies fighting Grotesk He is critically injured when Grotesk’s equipment explodes, and, going for the extra point, gasps out to his loyal X-Men that he had already known he was dying from an incurable disease, anyway!

The text on the cover includes this stirring promise: “Not a hoax! Not a dream! Not an imaginary tale! This is for real!”

(It somehow fails to offer to us a nice price on the Brooklyn Bridge.)

1970. X-Men #65. Written by Denny O’Neil.

Professor X returns. Which isn’t too difficult, from his point of view, since he was never dead and buried to begin with! Someone else was in the coffin at the funeral! As a retcon, we are now told that it was actually Changeling (formerly a villain) who died. For some reason, Professor X had given Changeling telepathic powers and then told him to take Xavier’s shape and fill his shoes with the X-Men, without bothering to bring the X-Men (except for Jean Grey?) up to speed on this “clever plan.” The Professor was going to be occupied with getting ready for a big showdown with an alien invasion when it showed up (as it did in this issue).


1973. The Incredible Hulk #161. Written by Steve Englehart.

Calvin Rankin, Mimic, dies after absorbing a great deal of radiation from the Hulk’s body. He did this deliberately, in the end, because his power to suck energy out of other people was increasing in range and he might eventually end up killing people without even trying. (Reminiscent of Superman’s enemy The Parasite.)

1975. UXM #95. Written by Chris Claremont.

Thunderbird (John Proudstar) dies.

1980. UXM #137. Written by Chris Claremont.

Jean Grey, aka Marvel Girl, aka Phoenix, aka The Black Queen, aka Dark Phoenix, dies in the concluding chapter of what later became known as the Dark Phoenix Saga. It looks as if she telekinetically triggered an alien energy weapon to blast herself before she could relapse into the insanity of the Dark Phoenix. Her funeral occurs in the following issue.

1983. UXM #167. Written by Chris Claremont.

Professor X’s body has been previously infected with a Brood egg, and his body now is transformed into a Brood Queen. So as far as his original body is concerned, the Professor has essentially “died.” Fortunately, Shi’ar technology is equal to the challenge of transferring his mind to a clone-body which does not suffer from the crippling injuries experienced by the original body many years earlier.

1985. Fantastic Four #286. Written by John Byrne (or I think that’s what the credits said – I’ve also seen an assertion that Chris Claremont was brought in to “revise” some of the dialogue at the last minute, uncredited, for some reason).

Jean Grey emerges from a “survival pod” which had just recently been found over in Avengers #263. It turns out she is not the “Jean Grey” who went nuts and wiped out a star, complete with billions of sentient residents of one of its planets, in the Dark Phoenix Saga.

1987. X-Men Annual #11. Written by Chris Claremont.

Wolverine gets his heart ripped out, which would normally mean that a character was dead, even when that character is Logan. However, one drop of his blood falls on an alien god-gem thingie which conveniently goes into third gear and restores Wolverine, alive and well, from that single drop of blood.

1988. UXM #227. Written by Chris Claremont.

The concluding chapter of the Uncanny X-Men’s share of the “Fall of the Mutants” event. Claremont apparently decided to go for the all-time record and kill off at least eight X-Men, and one woman who was arguably affiliated with them despite the lack (we thought at the time!) of mutant powers, in a Nine-For-The-Price-Of-One Death Scene! As far as I know, no other comic book story set in “regular continuity, using the characters of Timeline 616” has ever managed to kill off that many X-Men at once!

(Watch – now someone will dust off an old story I either never read or long since forgot, and tell me how badly mistaken I am!)

In alphabetical order, the following characters voluntarily sacrifice their lives in order to power up a special magic spell cast by Forge: Colossus, Dazzler, Havok, Longshot, Madelyne Pryor, Psylocke, Rogue, Storm, and Wolverine.

Later in the same issue: All of the nine characters I just mentioned are miraculously raised from the dead by the great sorceress, Roma. The only faster X-Men resurrection that I can think of, offhand, was that stunt with a drop of Wolverine’s blood falling on that god-gem.


1988. X-Factor #38. Written by Louise Simonson. Part of the "Inferno" crossover.

Madelyne Pryor, wife of Cyclops, now calling herself the Goblyn Queen, also now revealed as a clone of Jean Grey, created by Mister Sinister way back when, kills herself after ranting about her entire Secret Origin, etc., to tie up some loose ends.

[Lorendiac]

1989. UXM #247. Written by Chris Claremont.

Rogue and Master Mold get knocked through the Siege Perilous and vanish from mortal ken (the Siege Perilous was previously provided to the X-Men by Roma after she resurrected a bunch of them). As near as I can recall, the other X-Men subsequently react as if Rogue has “died.” In the sense that her body probably no longer existed anywhere in Timeline 616 until such time as the Siege Perilous gave her a second chance on her life, I suppose they had a point.

1989. UXM #248. Written by Chris Claremont.

Storm dies. There is a perfectly identifiable corpse left behind in the wreckage of villain Nanny’s airship after a dazed and confused Havok blasts it out of the sky. What more proof could you want?

1989. UXM #251. Written by Chris Claremont.

In a “Fever Dream” flashback possibly connected with Gateway’s access to dreamtime (or not?), a captive Wolverine “watches” something that apparently “really happened” at their Australian base some days earlier, well before he returned to base from personal business elsewhere – and promptly got ambushed by the Reavers. In the “vision” that he sees: Psylocke uses her telepathy to “encourage” Havok, Dazzler, and Colossus to go through the Siege Perilous, and then follows them herself. Her apparent motive was that otherwise all four of them would get skragged by the Reavers, who were fast approaching – according to a possibly “prophetic” vision which Psylocke, in turn, had experienced in the previous issue. (Was all that clear as mud?)

[Score card: At this point, Storm is dead (everybody thinks), and five other X-Men - Rogue, Psylocke, Havok, Colossus, and Dazzler - have all passed through the Siege Perilous recently, which is supposed to be very nearly the same thing as dying in anticipation of possible rebirth. Thoroughly confusing the issue: At this time, and for quite some time thereafter, most of the other people in the Marvel Universe (including some former X-Men and the other close friends and relatives of the missing ones) still firmly believed that a group of eight X-Men had “really died” in Dallas back in UXM #227, being totally unaware of a) the resurrection and b) the Siege Perilous thing.]

1989. UXM #253. Storm is back! Albeit in the body of a young girl, and apparently with her memory, as well, regressed back to her days as a child thief in the streets of Cairo, Egypt, with no recollection of the X-Men at all. For some reason, she has ended up in Cairo, Illinois. Whoever passes judgment on the souls that enter the Siege Perilous may have thought it would be a real howler to “accidentally” send her back to the “wrong” Cairo, on the far side of the world from the one she used to live in? Or maybe it was all a bureaucratic filing error?

(About a year later, it will finally be explained to us that Storm never actually “died” in the first place. A S.H.I.E.L.D. LMD (Life Model Decoy) “died” in her stead. Nanny just loves playing her little mind games.)

1989. UXM #255 Written by Chris Claremont.

Psylocke is back, totally amnesiac (we are told). Roma, or whoever passes judgment on the souls that wander through the Siege Perilous, apparently thought it would be a very uplifting and appropriate experience for her to lose her conscious memories and fall into the clutches of the ninja outfit known as The Hand (the same outfit that trained Elektra, back in the day) so that they could change her to look rather Asian (but keeping the purple hair) and brainwash her to be a loyal telepathic ninja assassin who just happened to be loyal first and foremost to Iron Man’s old sparring partner, The Mandarin. (No, I don’t quite follow the Siege Perilous’s “logic” on this point, either!)

1989. UXM #259. Written by Chris Claremont.

Colossus is back, totally amnesiac, except for having a vague idea that his name is “Peter Nicholas.” (Actually the Anglicized version of part of his name.) He is considerably luckier than Psylocke in the resurrection sweepstakes, however. He ends up in the SoHo apartment of a couple of friends from a previous adventure, although he doesn’t recognize them and they don’t recognize him (since they previously only met him when he was in his giant organic steel form). He also gets shot in the arm by their enemies, but he’ll pull through.

Meanwhile, in a separate subplot that has zero contact with the “Colossus in SoHo” one that starts in this same issue, Dazzler is back. Totally amnesiac – unlike Colossus, she doesn’t even remember any part of her name. On the other hand, she also lands among friends – the Siege Perilous apparently dumped her on a nice quiet stretch of beach near the Malibu residence of singer Lila Cheney, and she is conveniently found by Guido, an employee of Lila’s who quickly recognizes her as a former member of Lila's band and makes sure she gets good care.

1990. X-Men Annual #14. Second story in the Annual. Written by Chris Claremont.

The concluding installment of the “Days of Future Present” arc that ran through four annuals in 1990.

In a backup story set before the conclusion of the lead story in the Annual, a high-powered adult Franklin Richards (from the future of an alternate timeline first shown to us in “Days of Future Past”) meets Wolverine in Madripoor and is annoyed by the presence of Jubilee and Psylocke, total strangers who never had any part in the X-Men history of his timeline. So he makes them vanish into thin air. In context, it appears that he didn’t just “teleport” them somewhere else – he “erased” them entirely! Wolverine, of course, manages to persuade him to bring them back by the end of the story.

The way I figure it – and I could be wrong – during the panels between when Franklin made Jubilee and Psylocke disappear, and when he brought them back, they did not physically exist anywhere. I figure that qualifies as being “dead” even if they made complete recoveries with no particular trauma suffered from the experience.

1990. Marvel Comics Presents #54. The relevant story is the first installment of an 8-part serial, written by Michael Higgins.

Mimic is back! We don't know that right away; he is currently a Wolverine impersonator, but by the end of the serial we will get it all explained to us in loving detail.

1990. UXM #269. Written by Chris Claremont.

Rogue is back. Oddly enough, not the least bit amnesiac! (Maybe the Siege Perilous is biased in her favor? On the other hand, it dumps her back at the old base in Australia, which had long since been reclaimed by the Reavers, so maybe the Siege wasn't really doing her any huge favors after all.)

It also turns out that Carol Danvers is back – but I don’t think she had ever been considered to have a separate, personal membership in the X-Men, just as herself. (I think. I am not an expert on the intricacies of Carol’s continuity.)

1990. UXM #270. Written by Chris Claremont.

Havok is back. He has suffered a fate similar to Psylocke’s; evidently he landed some time earlier, amnesiac, in Genosha, and was somehow conditioned to be a loyal servant of their oppressive, bigoted (against mutants!) government. He doesn’t remember that he used to be an X-Man, or that Scott is his brother with a partial immunity to his power (and vice versa), or much of anything. (Why the Siege Perilous wished this upon him is far from clear. Had he and Psylocke in particular accumulated an awful lot of bad karma that they had to pay for?)


1999. X-Men #97. Written by Terry Kavanagh, but plotted by Alan Davis if I have this right.

Cyclops sacrifices himself and is merged together with Apocalypse. Professor X offers the shocked comment that now he can’t detect any trace of Scott’s mind or soul! Most of the X-Men apparently interpret this to mean: “No question about it, boys and girls - Scott is dead! May he rest in peace!” His wife Jean has more faith in him – but I believe that hers remains the minority opinion for quite some time. So I’m taking this as a “death scene” for him, and listing it on that basis.

[Lorendiac]

2000. UXM 390. Written by Scott Lobdell.

Colossus dies voluntarily, as a human sacrifice to stop the Legacy Virus. (Yes, I personally believe a “super-powered mutant” can still be a “human” sacrifice. I have serious trouble with the assumption that one stupid mutant gene makes a guy a “nonhuman.”)

(In a later comic, we learned his body was cremated and the ashes scattered, so you'd think he would have been dead by the time that cremation process was finished if he hadn't already been when it started. But when did a little thing like that ever stop an X-Man?)

2000. UXM 391. Written by Scott Lobdell.

Although this story does not show Cyclops’s “miraculous return,” it is published before the story that does! So chronologically, it is arguably the “first” reappearance of a healthy Cyclops who is his own man again, free and clear. His memory apparently got somewhat damaged by the psychological trauma of the whole experience with Apocalypse, however, because he simply can’t remember that he already asked his long-lost father “why did you never come back for me?” almost twenty years earlier (our time), and Corsair already explained.

(If I recall correctly, the basic excuse provided by Claremont in the early 80s was that Corsair "knew" his two sons were dead, since he last saw them dangling from a burning parachute thousands of feet above the ground, so what was there on Earth that he really wanted or needed to go back to? When he broke out of captivity, he preferred to dedicate his life to getting revenge for the deaths of his wife and children! Only many years later did he find out the kids had survived because of the mutant superpowers he never knew they had. Made sense to me!)

2000. X-Men: The Search for Cyclops #4. Written by Joseph Harris.

Better late than never? Now that UXM #391 had already shown us that Scott Summers was back in the land of the living, good as new (except for those ugly memory problems I mentioned), Marvel finally decided it might as well publish the last part of the miniseries that was dedicated to explaining how he did, in fact, get separated from Apocalypse and returned to active duty with the X-Men. Pity that UXM #391 had already destroyed any faint shred of “suspense” regarding just how this was going to play out, though.

2001. X-Treme X-Men #2. Written by Chris Claremont.

Psylocke dies when Vargas runs a sword right through her and then flees the scene, leaving the corpse behind for the other X-Men to grieve over. Seems like an open-and-shut case of death.

2003. New X-Men #148. Written by Grant Morrison.

Jean Grey and Wolverine are trapped on Asteroid X as it goes hurtling straight toward the sun, courtesy of Magneto. Wolverine finally kills Jean with his claws on the theory that it's a quicker, more merciful death than being roasted alive as the heat increases.

She gets over it, though - we see her eyes fire up before the issue ends. Somehow the death was a necessary preliminary step before she could access the full power of the Phoenix or some such thing (according to what she says later. You know how Phoenixes are). Wolverine had not anticipated that result, incidentally, but it saved him from dying himself.

2003. New X-Men #150. Written by Grant Morrison.

Magneto, previously posing as Xorn for many issues, manages to fatally injure Jean Grey with a big electromagnetic pulse, so that she soon dies.

[Yes, yes, I know, it was later retconned to not be Magneto at all. But for the moment, I prefer to describe things as they seemed to be happening at the time.]

2004. Astonishing X-Men #4. Written by Joss Whedon.

Colossus is back.

2005. UXM #455. Written by Chris Claremont.

Psylocke is back! As I recall, no clear explanation is provided in this issue.


***** END OF TIMELINE *****

Down here at the bottom, later drafts of this Timeline will try to list Grand Totals for how many times a character has "Died" and "Returned." But I know I don't have all the data yet; I'm waiting for helpful feedback from my readers before I try to commit myself on the subject of who has done it the most often, who is in Second Place, and so forth :)

[davros42]

Wow. That's pretty impressive.

I can't wait till all the other titles get factored in as well.

[Holland]

So thats what was missing from the 90's!
No deaths!

[mattbib]

1998. X-Factor #149. Written by Howard Mackie.

Greystone, insane from time-hopping, constructs a time-ship. Havok enters the ship to try to dissuade Greystone, but it's already activated. They try to disable the reactor, but both perish when it blows up.

1998. Mutant X #1. Written by Howard Mackie.

In an alternate universe, Havok awakes in the body of that world's version of him, who had himself just been blasted by a Sentinel.

2001. Mutant X #32. Written by Howard Mackie.

Still in the alternate universe, Havok disappears into that world's Nexus of All Realties while putting an end to the threat of the Goblin Queen.

2002. Uncanny X-Men #411. Written by Chuck Austen.

Havok's body somehow survived the explosion in X-Factor #149 and was transported to a hospital where he recovered from his physical injuries but remained catatonic. He was transferred to a state-run convalescent hospital for homeless, unidentified patients. His psyche was finally rescued by Carter Ghazikhanian in the Uncanny #416-418 arc.

[Lorendiac]

So thats what was missing from the 90's!
No deaths!

In all humility, I strongly suspected the lack of material on my First Draft for most of the 1990s was largely due to my own ignorance of much of the X-Men continuity from around, say, 1994 to 1999 or thereabouts. I was expecting my readers to list half a dozen things I had missed (and the death of Havok has been conveniently provided already by an alert reader!) Is there simply not much else to know about in that period?

Bearing in mind, of course, that I'm only counting honest-to-goodness X-Men who die, and not just their friends, relatives, etc. Illyana Rasputin didn't make the cut, even though I own a copy of her death, because she was never an X-Man in the first place. Ditto for most of the other victims of the Legacy Virus (as far as I know!), until the sacrifice of Colossus years later.

[mattbib]

Revanche should probably be included, as she was was more or less in Psylocke's body...no?

[Holland]

Well Maggott and Cecelia Reyes supposedly died off panel.

[mattbib]

Well Maggott and Cecelia Reyes supposedly died off panel.2003. Weapon X #5. Written by Frank Tieri.

Maggot, captured by Weapon X, was among the mutants gassed and killed at the Neverland concentration camp. One of his slugs survived and escaped the camp.


Also...

1995. Uncanny X-Men #325. Written by Scott Lobdell.

Storm rips out Marrow's heart, killing her, in order to disarm a bomb, thereby saving hundreds of humans.

1996. Storm #4. Written by Warren Ellis.

Marrow didn't die! She had two hearts...

[streator]

2003. Uncanny X-Men #430. Written by Chuck Austen.
iceman is shot with an arrow and shatters, seemingly killed. archangel briefly mourns his friend's death.

2003. Uncanny X-Men #431. Written by Chuck Austen.
all that remains of iceman's shattered body is his head, and bobby's eyes and mouth are apparently still moving.

2004. Uncanny X-Men #433. Written by Chuck Austen.
carter (annie's son) can hear iceman's thoughts in his head. they are imprisoned in azazel's jail along with jubilee, havok and husk. iceman claims to be unable to remake his body because there is no enough water in the air. havok offers to urinate so iceman will have available water to reform, no joke. "I had an awful lot of water to drink right before we got off the X-plane, and I’m sure I could produce about a body’s worth’ Alex says, smiling, as Bobby’s head just gasps in horror."

2004. Uncanny X-Men #434. Written by Chuck Austen.
iceman's fellow captive teammates agree to let him take some water from their bodies in order to reform his own. they are suddenly attacked by ginniyeh, one of azazel's minions. they battle her until suddenly she begins to waste away, as iceman has taken all of the water out of her body and reformed his with it, killing her. iceman is back.

[streator]

2003. Uncanny X-Men #418. Written by Chuck Austen.
husk and archangel battle mutant werewolves and are fatally injured in the process. warren flies with husk in his arms to a wooded area, and both collapse. a maggott crawls over paige's eye with no reaction, implying that she has died.

2003. Uncanny X-Men #419. Written by Chuck Austen.
paige is alive, having been healed by warren's newly discovered secondary mutation, blood that heals.

2005. Wolverine #25. Written by Mark Millar.
northstar is stabbed through the chest by wolverine and killed.

2005. Wolverine #26. Written by Mark Millar.
northstar's corpse is stolen by the hand and he is resurrected, becoming one of their deadliest assassins.

2005. Wolverine #31. Written by Mark Millar.
northstar is still presumed dead by the x-men, but he is secretly being held in s.h.i.e.l.d. custody where they are trying to purge the hand's brainwashing from jean-paul.

[mattbib]

1987. X-Factor #15. Written by Louise Simonson.

Angel, his wings having been amputated after being irreparably damaged during the Morlock massacre, leaves the hospital and goes to JFK Airport where he had apparently filed a flight plan for Arizona, to "fly one last time." His teammates arrive just in time to watch Angel's plane lift off the runway, but it turns out over the ocean instead of toward the Southwest. And the plane explodes into a ball of flames, leaving everyone to believe Warren had committed suicide.

1988. X-Factor #24. Written by Louise Simonson.

Angel survived death only to become...Death! We later learned that it was Cameron Hodge who had staged Angel's suicide in an attempt to gain control of his fortune so that he could fund his own group, the Right. However Apocalypse had teleported Angel out of the plane just before it exploded, only to implant some of his own shapeshifting techno-organic cells in Angel's body and turn him into his Horseman.

[streator]

2002. X-Treme X-Men #16. Written by Chris Claremont.
rogue and gambit battle with vargas, who ends up impaling the both of them with his sword. rogue is laying on top of gambit, both of them seemingly dead.

2002. X-Treme X-Men #17. Written by Chris Claremont.
rogue suprisingly asks for help as her fellow x-men begin to walk away from what they think are lost teammates. bishop pulls the sword from rogue and gambit's bodies. both gambit and rogue are still alive, but barely. rogue is manifesting many powers in hopes to heal herself. she manifests wolverine's powers, including his healing factor, and grabs vargas' sword and goes after him. she tells gambit that it isn't his time to die and flies off. rogue finds vargas and confronts his lackeys, defeating them. rogue and vargas fight, she possibly kills him and returns to the x-men, passing out on gambit and passing out.

2002. X-Treme X-Men #18. Written by Chris Claremont.
gambit and rogue are taken to a makeshift emergency room. rogue stops moving after storm seemingly dies as well. she finds herself dying and in the afterlife. phoenix (jean) appears and tells rogue to worry about gambit and live. doctors are unable to stop gambit from bleeding, and he is hooked up to a breathing machine. they don't think he will make it. beast shows up and works on helping gambit. rogue chases after gambit in the afterlife, finding him as he tells her it is his time to go/die. rogue's powers have stopped working, and she is once again in critical condition. rogue convinces gambit not to "go into the light". he doesn't and both survive.

2002. X-Treme X-Men #19. Written by Chris Claremont.
gambit and rogue are alive, although powerless. they are healing from their wounds and both have since regained their powers.

[Lorendiac]

Revanche should probably be included, as she was was more or less in Psylocke's body...no?

I wondered about that, but decided to duck the issue for the moment. I think I read the Revanche/Psylocke showdown when it was first published . . . and I don't think I've actually sat down and read that material all the way through since then. (If I did, it was a long time ago.) So I was having real trouble trying to remember if anything about Revanche's situation would let her "qualify" as an X-Man one way or another, and decided to sit back and wait for others to comment (and, perhaps, wait for myself to go back and reread that silly storyline when I have some spare time to dig it out of a long box? :))

[spoon_jenkins]

1980. UXM #133. Written by Chris Claremont.

Cyclops, who along with the other X-Men has been captured by the Hellfire Club, suddenly finds himself on the astral plane. During a sword duel in the astral plane, Cyclops is stabbed through the chest by Mastermind. Back in the physical world, Cyclops collapses. Nightcrawler exclaims, "Cyclops - is dead!"

1980. UXM #134. Written by Chris Claremont.

On the splash page, Cyclops gets back up and Nightcrawler exclaims, "Cyclops is alive!"

[streator]

2002. Uncanny X-Men #405. Written by Joe Casey.
chamber and nightcrawler are in a jet when it explodes, leaving their teammates to think they are either dead or missing.

2002. Uncanny X-Men #407. Written by Joe Casey.
nightcrawler was able to teleport he and chamber out of the jet in time, but he had to teleport blindly. they ended up at a fellow circus performer's house in remote bavaria, and do not contact the x-men for some time. they later do and rejoin the team.

2002. Uncanny X-Men #410. Written by Chuck Austen.
a squad of x-men are dispatched to scotland via a blackbird and crash as giant fireballs nail the jet. archangel manages to grab stacy x but after the crash she finds him wounded and not breathing. xavier takes control of stacy x and administers cpr to warren.

2002. Uncanny X-Men #411. Written by Chuck Austen.
warren is still unconscious and ends up being held captive by black tom cassidy, who is sucking the nutrients out of him.

2002. Uncanny X-Men #412. Written by Chuck Austen.
warren is freed from black tom cassidy and his skin turns from blue to normal.

2002. Uncanny X-Men #413. Written by Chuck Austen.
warren is alive and has suffered a broken arm and leg. he heals and is fine for the time being.

[Lorendiac]

1980. UXM #133. Written by Chris Claremont.

Cyclops, who along with the other X-Men has been captured by the Hellfire Club, suddenly finds himself on the astral plane. During a sword duel in the astral plane, Cyclops is stabbed through the chest by Mastermind. Back in the physical world, Cyclops collapses. Nightcrawler exclaims, "Cyclops - is dead!"

1980. UXM #134. Written by Chris Claremont.

On the splash page, Cyclops gets back up and Nightcrawler exclaims, "Cyclops is alive!"

I'd forgotten about that one when I wrote this - probably because, as you pointed out, it was a "cliffhanger" ending that lasted a month from a contemporary reader's point of view, but only a minute or so from the X-Men's point of view "in continuity." I don't think it qualifies for my Timeline, but I did get a good laugh out of your summary that brought it all back to mind :)

[spoon_jenkins]

I'd forgotten about that one when I wrote this - probably because, as you pointed out, it was a "cliffhanger" ending that lasted a month from a contemporary reader's point of view, but only a minute or so from the X-Men's point of view "in continuity." I don't think it qualifies for my Timeline, but I did get a good laugh out of your summary that brought it all back to mind :)
Yeah, it must've freaked people out at the time having to wait a month. But wait you get to read it back to back it's kind of funny. I have the issues individually reprinted in Classic X-Men, so I've never seen them one after another in TPB format, but I think the two pages so be facing each other (without the cover intervening). No LMDs posing as bodies here; Nightcrawler just got a little excited. :rolleyes:

[streator]

2001. Uncanny X-Men #393. Written by Scott Lobdell.
dazzler is apparenttly killed by magneto as he turns her sound powers against her and reduces dazzler to a pile of ashes.

2001. X-Men #113. Written by Scott Lobdell.
dazzler is revealed to be alive, using her powers to disguise herself as xavier and enabling the x-men to take out magneto.

[streator]

1997. X.S.E. #3, Written by John Ostrander.
shard is killed by emplates and transformed into one of them.

1997. X.S.E. #4. Written by John Ostrander.
bishop has shard taken to stark/fujikawa headquarters, where her mind is downloaded to a holographic projector.

1996. Uncanny X-Men Annual #20. Written by Terry Kavanagh.
bastion attempts to destroy shard's holo-matrix, and in the process shard is converted into a photonic being, sustaining herself by absorbing light.

1997. X-Factor #136. Written by Howard Mackie.
sabretooth slashes through shard's torso and she disintegrates, assumingly dying in the process.

1997. X-Factor #140. Written by Howard Mackie.
shard is revealed to be alive and is wandering through a dreamscape. she arrives back in her x.s.e. timeline and in her old body before it became an emplate. she joins the x.u.e., a band of renegade law enforcers.

1998. X-Factor #141. Written by Howard Mackie.
it is revealed that shard is still present in the 616 timeline, residing inside polaris' body. fixx, a fellow x.u.e. officer is psionically linked with shard and manages to send them all to the 616 universe. shard emerges from polaris' body, still a photonic being.

2000. Bishop: The Last X-Man #12 . Written by Joe Harris.
the chronomacer (fitzroy) makes shard partly human once again.

2000. Bishop: The Last X-Man #14. Written by Joe Harris.
shard escapes from the chronomacer and is absorbed by bishop and shot into the timestream, once again assumed to be dead.

[Dizzy D]

1987. X-Men Annual #11. Written by Chris Claremont.

Wolverine gets his heart ripped out, which would normally mean that a character was dead, even when that character is Logan. However, one drop of his blood falls on an alien god-gem thingie which conveniently goes into third gear and restores Wolverine, alive and well, from that single drop of blood.


I believe more X-men than just Wolverine died in that issue (specifically: Longshot and Psylocke), but I don't have the issue here.

(Sorry I don't have the issues here, so somebody else should help you out)
Revanche was an X-man, the X-men accepted her because they didn't know if she was Psylocke or not and she went with them on missions to Genosha and the Empyrean's island.

Joseph, the Magneto-clone is another X-men who died.

Jean Grey was also declared death when Trevor Fitzroy attacked the Hellfire Club, in fact she had moved her mind to Emma Frost's body.

Do you also want to know the deaths of people who would become X-men later in their careers (Cannonball for example)

[mattbib]

2000. Uncanny X-Men #404. Written by Joe Casey.
Synpyre is muredered by Mystique.

2005. Alpha Flight #9. Written by Scott Lobdell.
Without explanation Sunpyre reappears with Big Hero 6, all of whom are mind-controlled, as they battle the Alphans.

2005. OHOTMU: Teams 2005. Written by various.
It's revealed that the Sunpyre who appeared with Big Hero 6 was not the original, but an alternate universe version who had been brought to the 616 reality by Honey Lemon through her Power Purse.

[mattbib]

2002. Weapon X: The Draft -- Wildchild. Written by Matt Nixon.
Sunfire is shot and killed by Wildchild.

2002. X-Men #133. Written by Grant Morrison.
Sunfire is revealed to still be alive, working with the X-Corporation in Mumbai.

2005. Rogue #11. Written by Tony Bedard
After having his legs severed by Lady Deathstrike, and his powers absorbed by Rogue, Sunfire appears to die.

2006....
It's only a matter of time.

[Dizzy D]

2002. Weapon X: The Draft -- Wildchild. Written by Matt Nixon.
Sunfire is shot and killed by Wildchild.


I can't remember him being killed by the bullets. He crashes to the floor, but the bullets hit shoulder and chest, so probably weren't fatal. They cut away from the scene too quickly to see if Wild Child actually kills him or just wounds him.

[mattbib]

I can't remember him being killed by the bullets. He crashes to the floor, but the bullets hit shoulder and chest, so probably weren't fatal. They cut away from the scene too quickly to see if Wild Child actually kills him or just wounds him.Three bullets to the chest and he didn't get up...enough to give the reader the implication that the character's dead if you ask me. Heck, many of the "deaths" in this thread were never confirmed...

[streator]

2005. New Excalibur #1. Written by Chris Claremont.
dazzler, in battle, has a heart attack and is presumed dead. later, rachel summers senses brain activity in dazzler's body, and with help dazzler is revived.

2002. Wolverine (2nd series) #175. Written by Frank Tieri.
wolverine battles sabretooth in the weapon x compound, and collapses. a doctor pronounces him to be deceased.

2002. Wolverine (2nd series) #176. Written by Frank Tieri.
wolverine is physically dead and his spirit runs into some old foes and colossus' spirit. he is convinced to return to the realm of the living and awakes inside a weapon x body bag. wolverine was physically dead for 23 minutes, the issue later states.

1994. X-Factor #100. Written by J.M. DeMatteis.
dying from the legacy virus, the villain haven attempts to heal madrox but fails. he is assumed to be dead.

1994. X-Factor #101. Written by J.M. DeMatteis.
a funeral is held for madrox.

1994. X-Factor #105. Written by J.M. DeMatteis.
an amnesiac jamie madrox stumbles into x-factor's empty georgetown base and sees himself in an x-factor team photo.

1995. X-Factor #111. Written by John Francis Moore.
val cooper sees madrox in washington d.c. but is unable to make contact with him.

1996. X-Factor #128. Written by Howard Mackie.
x-factor is hunting down some fugitives and when they capture one of them he is revealed to be madrox, alive and well.

1996. X-Factor #129. Written by Howard Mackie.
madrox explains that the infected madrox who died in issue 100 was a dupe, not the real jamie madrox. he mentions suffering memory loss and being abducted by a governmental agency that wanted to turn him into a secret agent. he began to regain his memory and was contacted by havok to join the brotherhood. madrox declined. he was then hunted down by x-factor and captured.

2000. X-Man #70. Written by Warren Ellis and Steven Grant.
nate grey and an alternate nate grey switch bodies, and nate's original body is killed.

2000. X-Man #75. Written by Steven Grant.
to save the earth from a villain known as harvester, nate grey dissolved and became a part of everything on earth, effectively dying (at least in the physical sense).

[The Lucky One]

Illyana Rasputin didn't make the cut, even though I own a copy of her death, because she was never an X-Man in the first place.

That's not entirely correct; actually, all 9 of the "classic" New Mutants became the X-Men for a brief period of time during UXM annual #10. (Thus, Cypher's death in NM #61 should probably make the list, as well as Warlock's death in NM #95 and resurrection as Douglock in... uh, Excalibur #76, maybe? Behind the scenes before that, I think.)

That being said, you're still correct in not listing Illyana's death, as the Illyana who died was an alternate timeline version, not "our" Magik who became an X-Man. She's still MIA.
:)

-D

[LoneWolf21]

Three bullets to the chest and he didn't get up...enough to give the reader the implication that the character's dead if you ask me. Heck, many of the "deaths" in this thread were never confirmed...

Actually, he didn't die. At the time, someone asked Frank Tieri about it and he said that Sunfire was alive.

That being said, you're still correct in not listing Illyana's death, as the Illyana who died was an alternate timeline version, not "our" Magik who became an X-Man. She's still MIA.
:)

-D

Actually, until it's proven otherwise, that's just a fan theory.

[mattbib]

Actually, he didn't die. At the time, someone asked Frank Tieri about it and he said that Sunfire was alive.Fair enough, but to the majority of us who probably didn't read that interview (assuming Tieri said it in an interview) he was very dead. :)

[Rachel Grey]

FATALITY!



Heh, sorry. :o

[The Lucky One]

Actually, until it's proven otherwise, that's just a fan theory.

It was "proven" otherwise by the fact that everyone still remembers her time as Magik. If the New Mutants had retrieved "our" Illyana Rasputin from Limbo before she ever became Magik, it would have created a time paradox, or at the very least everyone would have forgotten her existence as Magik. Since neither of those things happened, there are only two explanations- either "our" Illyana wasn't the one who became Magik, or "our" Illyana didn't die of the Legacy Virus. Louise Simonson has said as much in interviews.

-D

[LoneWolf21]

It was "proven" otherwise by the fact that everyone still remembers her time as Magik. If the New Mutants had retrieved "our" Illyana Rasputin from Limbo before she ever became Magik, it would have created a time paradox, or at the very least everyone would have forgotten her existence as Magik. Since neither of those things happened, there are only two explanations- either "our" Illyana wasn't the one who became Magik, or "our" Illyana didn't die of the Legacy Virus. Louise Simonson has said as much in interviews.

-D

Yeah, I know that, but until all this shows up in the comics-proper, all it is a fan theory.

FATALITY!



Heh, sorry. :o


FLAWLESS VICTORY!

[streator]

It was "proven" otherwise by the fact that everyone still remembers her time as Magik. If the New Mutants had retrieved "our" Illyana Rasputin from Limbo before she ever became Magik, it would have created a time paradox, or at the very least everyone would have forgotten her existence as Magik. Since neither of those things happened, there are only two explanations- either "our" Illyana wasn't the one who became Magik, or "our" Illyana didn't die of the Legacy Virus. Louise Simonson has said as much in interviews.

-D
but you can't deny the fact that lobdell/following x-book writers have treated the illyana that died in uxm #303 as piotr's younger sister that's dead and not some alternate version or whatever.

[Twigglet]

So then, anyone want to write down Dead Girls deaths.

:p

[Chiasm]

2007: Jean Grey is alive again. (timed with X-men revamp)

2010: Jean Grey is dead again.

2011: Jean Grey is not dead. Its Emma who died in her place.

2012: Emma is alive. So is Jean.

2014: Jean Grey is dead for real this time.

2015: Just kidding. Jean Grey didn't die. It was Emma's clone disguised as Jean. And we find out that Emma is a clone of Jean raised by Sinister. And because of an energy transference during an attack by Apocolypse Jean absorbs all the memories of clone Emma and remarries Scott.


The scary thing is that I could actually see something like this happening since if it can convolute things with Jean, you know it will happen.

[steve2275]

COLOSSUS first : died: by acid in sum uncanny

[Lorendiac]

It was "proven" otherwise by the fact that everyone still remembers her time as Magik. If the New Mutants had retrieved "our" Illyana Rasputin from Limbo before she ever became Magik, it would have created a time paradox, or at the very least everyone would have forgotten her existence as Magik. Since neither of those things happened, there are only two explanations- either "our" Illyana wasn't the one who became Magik, or "our" Illyana didn't die of the Legacy Virus. Louise Simonson has said as much in interviews.

-D

This reminds me of what I've heard about Xorneto (or whoever). Someone, somewhere, in a thread I was participating in, months ago, said something along these lines (paraphrased in my own words):

"Grant Morrison has said in an interview that the villain who died in New X-Men #150 really was Magneto, who'd been posing as Xorn for many issues until that story arc. Of course Morrison knew he'd come back from the dead sooner or later, because that's what Magneto does! So as far as I'm concerned, Magneto really died in #150!"

I think I responded that as far as "continuity" was concerned, if Marvel publishes a follow-up story that says it wasn't really Magneto, then it wasn't really Magneto no matter what the writer of that death scene thought. (After all, Morrison doesn't own Magneto and doesn't have the final word on all Magneto-related matters.)

The other guy responded: "Continuity, schmontinuity." And oddly enough, I think I understood exactly what he meant, and even sympathized to a considerable degree! :)

After all, any longtime fan ends up reading some stories about his "favorite" characters that he hates and prefers to ignore as "never really happened." A lot of Spider-fans react that way to "revelations" in "Sins Past," for instance, even if no one at Marvel has gotten around to retconning it yet.

[G.O.K.I.]

At least now I know I wasn't crazy when I remember Chris Claremont killing off the X-Men 50 million times. I knew I wasn't wrong. u_u;

[Uncle Nobs]

Awesome work, Lorendiac!

I haven't read the entire thread yet, but I have to question your exclusion of Illyana, Doug, Warlock, Dani, X'ian, Amara, Roberto, & Rahne. In Uncanny Annual #10, they became X-Men because the previous team was completely twisted by Mojo. Very solemn scene. By the end of the issue, they had saved the previous team and reverted back to being the New Mutants.

But still, they were X-Men for a few pages. (Sam, of course, is already included because he became a full-time X-Man in later years.)

[k-dub]

since it would seemingly be a short thread
whom hasn't died

[mattbib]

But still, they were X-Men for a few pages. (Sam, of course, is already included because he became a full-time X-Man in later years.)Duh, Nobs, they were never officially X-Men.

[Uncle Nobs]

But what does it take to be an "official" X-Man? They proclaimed themselves X-Men, as did the Muir Islanders. Does each X-Men team have to get Xavier's approval? Certainly there have been members who have joined without Chuck's knowledge.

So where do we draw the line?

I always felt that the scene in UXM Annual #10 was enough to take seriously:




Illyana: ...What do we do about it?

Rahne: We must save them, Illyana--if we can.

Doug: Big "if," Rahne.

Dani: We have to try, Doug. But NOT as the New Mutants. Stakes are too high, we can't afford screw-ups. If we're to take the X-Men's place, we can't act like kids anymore... These are our graduation costumes. for tonight--and maybe the rest of our lives--(((oh, Great Spirit, I hope not, I pray not)))--WE are the X-MEN!

*Everyone looks lost and sad. This is wrong.*

Dani: It wasn't supposed to be like this. This moment's happening too fast, too soon. We're not ready. But then, I guess no one ever is. We'll start our search in Central Park...

[Lorendiac]

When I hammered out the First Draft of this Timeline, I shared mattbib's school of thought. I felt the New Mutants had been a separate team that was also headquartered at the X-Mansion and also regarded Xavier as their mentor (until he left).

However, someone on another forum informs me that an edition of "The Handbook" (he didn't say which edition, although I asked) lists Cypher and Warlock as former X-Men, apparently on the strength of their participation in UXM Annual #10, which I haven't read. But if he's right that Marvel "officially" endorses the idea that this story means all New Mutants who participated earned the right to call themselves X-Men or former X-Men thereafter, then subsequent drafts of my Timeline will have to take into account any deaths and/or returns of the relevant characters.