Dead... But Not Dead...

[wolframbane]

There are many occassions in the MU where a character has died, or thought to have died, only to be revealed to never have died. For those time when they were not truly dead, sometimes they turn up in ways in which they should have been dead, like being met in the afterlife, or returning as members of the Legion of the Unliving, or some other factor. Some have been accounted for, such as Mockingbird having been a Skrull impostor, but some are not, like when She-Hulk met Bucky in the afterlife.

I wanted to collect a list of these post-faux death appearances or references. Anyone know of any more?

Deadpool #0
Incredible Hercules #129-131
Hellcat #1-3
Thunderbolts Annual 2000
Sensational She-Hulk #53

[Col_Fury]

Not-actually-dead Moira MacTaggert shows up in X-Statix Presents: Deadgirl #1-5 and Chaos War: X-Men #1-3.

(it could have been the Shi'ar golem she used to fake her death, though)

[StrayLamb]

My favourite: Senator Miles Brickman committed suicide in X51 4, was later killed by Mystique in W3 63, and recently turned up alive again in TS:IM 15.

Doc Samson mysteriously turned up in Civil War II, despite both Doc Green and Deadpool having very recently dug up his grave to make sure he was really dead. 8END!$. Has that been explained yet?

It was recently revealed in M/TU4 4 that Dr Walter Lawson has really been alive ever since his death was apparently faked way back in M/S-H 13. I really enjoyed that story, by the way.

[Midnighter]

My favourite: Senator Miles Brickman committed suicide in X51 4, was later killed by Mystique in W3 63, and recently turned up alive again in TS:IM 15.

They stated that there are two Senator Brickman, unrelated:
Miles https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Miles_Br ... Earth-616)
Ralph https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Ralph_Br ... Earth-616)

That's solve one of the two death...

[StrayLamb]

I'm not sure "they" are correct. There's a Miles Brickman of E-8410 (2020), and Miles Ralph Brickman, our man of many deaths.

[Midnighter]

I'm not sure "they" are correct. There's a Miles Brickman of E-8410 (2020), and Miles Ralph Brickman, our man of many deaths.

I saw that the same distinction is also made on this page:
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/baintronics2020.htm
I don't know what the official sources are, maybe in some handbook?

[Somebody]

Doc Samson mysteriously turned up in Civil War II, despite both Doc Green and Deadpool having very recently dug up his grave to make sure he was really dead. 8END!$. Has that been explained yet?

Ewing's tied it into the whole "Immortal Hulk" thing. He autoresurrected.

[Leoparis]

My personal opinion is that there is not such a thing as a faux-death. They're real deaths, they wind up in the afterlife which is a casino (cf. The Incredible Hercules #129) and if they win the jackpot there, then history changes so that they did not die.

This works better as it does not invalidate the stories where they die. In particular, it does not invalidate their appearances as dead people and therefore we can chronologize those ghostly appearances.

I don't like the rationale that "the afterlife is full of false visions."

Anyway, multiple deaths has been a trend, first with Wolverine, then with Loeb's intelligencia explaining they kept reviving Hulk foes (who did not realize they had been dead) and then with the Hulks themselves in Ewing's run.

[StrayLamb]

Doc Samson mysteriously turned up in Civil War II, despite both Doc Green and Deadpool having very recently dug up his grave to make sure he was really dead. 8END!$. Has that been explained yet?

Ewing's tied it into the whole "Immortal Hulk" thing. He autoresurrected.

Thanks Somebody.. i wonder if i can do that.. Nah, no gamma blood.

[fanlover]

i think i have see this in xmen series

[Clive_Reston]

There are many occassions in the MU where a character has died, or thought to have died, only to be revealed to never have died. For those time when they were not truly dead, sometimes they turn up in ways in which they should have been dead, like being met in the afterlife, or returning as members of the Legion of the Unliving, or some other factor. Some have been accounted for, such as Mockingbird having been a Skrull impostor, but some are not, like when She-Hulk met Bucky in the afterlife.

I mentioned this in the "headcanon" thread a few years ago, but here's my reasoning for why Mockingbird is still a Skrull impostor (and forgive me if I've posted this at length here before):

Astonishing Tales #6: Bobbi makes her first appearance. She implies that she has psychic powers ("I can--can 'feel' people in my mind!"), a point that goes unmentioned for the next 40+ years.

AWC 100: Bobbie dies saving Hawkeye from Mephisto (and does not turn green).

A3 10-11 The Grim Reaper reanimates several dead Avengers, including Mockingbird as well as Hellcat (who'd committed suicide in 1994), the Swordsman, Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell), Dr. Druid and Thunderstrike. Just as Mockingbird's spirit returns to death, she's trying to communicate a message to Hawkeye, but doesn't finish it before she disappears.

Thunderbolts Annual 2000: Daimon Hellstrom/Hellstorm (who now rules one of the regions of hell) claims that that the rest of Mockingbird's message went to him, and that it was that Mephisto was planning to use Patsy Walker's soul in a plot against him. He tricks Hawkeye and the Thunderbolts into going into hell to retrieve Bobbi's soul, but what they come back with turns out to be Patsy instead.

Hellcat 3: Hellcat briefly visits Hell again to retrieve Mockingbird, and encounters her fighting (eternally) in something called the Arena of Tainted Souls. Mockingbird tells her that 1) she's staying because she's there for a reason, and 2) that reason is not that she killed Lincoln Slade, which was "pure justice."

GLA #4: Bobbi is in "the black, empty void of oblivion," playing poker with other dead members of the Great Lakes Avengers. (Hawkeye's not there, having recently been resurrected via House of M.)

In X-Statix Presents: Dead Girl, Bobbi is in heaven, and is in a book club with Gwen Stacy, (the not-actually-dead?!) Moira MacTaggart and Dead Girl.

Secret Invasion #1: Skrull Mockingbird #1 comes out of the ship in the Savage Land, with a bunch of characters who claim they were kidnapped and replaced by Skrulls at some point in the past.

Secret Invasion #2: Skrull Hawkeye dies and turns green. Clint, as Ronin, aims an arrow at Skrull Mockingbird #1 and asks her what October 12 means. She says it was the due date of the pregnancy she miscarried.

Secret Invasion #5: Turns out she's a Skrull after all; Clint kills her.

Secret Invasion #8: The ship with the Skrull abductees, who have been in stasis since they were grabbed, includes (apparently) the real Bobbi, who reunites with Clint. The Skrulls, we're told, needed the originals of the people they were duplicating on hand and alive so they could have access to their memories, etc.

New Avengers: The Reunion #2: Bobbi implies that she was replaced by a Skrull immediately before Ultron abducted her in AWC--which was long, long before Skrulls started replacing anyone else.

Mockingbird #1: Bobbi's being tested for psychic abilities.

So. We know that the Bobbi who died in Avengers West Coast #100 was not a Skrull, because she didn't turn green when she died. We've repeatedly seen that Bobbi is indeed dead, and that her spirit was initially in hell, later in "oblivion," and still later in heaven. So how did Skrull Mockingbird #1 know the significance of October 12?

An explanation that makes sense: the original Bobbi was psychic, per her very first appearance, and her first replacement was a Skrull who could duplicate powers (possibly a Super-Skrull); she read Clint's mind and knew the answer he was looking for. (All of the Skrulls on the Savage Land ship adopted the forms they knew would confuse the Avengers most, having been fed info by the Skrull Jarvis.)

This all leads me to the conclusion that the Bobbi on the ship in Secret Invasion #8, who's been Mockingbird ever since, was another Skrull--probably the one in charge of the stasis ship, actually! She also knew how badly the Avengers wanted Bobbi back, and correctly figured that if everyone else was one of the real abductees, nobody would notice that she was a fake--or question the idea that she'd been abducted long before anybody else. So she's become a very-deep-cover agent ever since. (And since she didn't have the original Bobbi around to duplicate her memories, all she knows is what she's got from research and, if we believe she's psychic or otherwise duplicated Bobbi's powers, from reading the minds of Clint and other people around her--which is why, for instance, her account of the Lincoln Slade stuff in Mockingbird #8 is so radically different from what we saw in West Coast Avengers.)