How superhero deaths and resurrections are echoes of the greatest story of all time

In superhero comics, the resurrection of major characters after a dramatic death has become such a recurring trope that when a superhero dies, fans openly wonder how and when the character will be brought back. In the DC and Marvel lines, significant characters who have died and been resurrected include Captain America, Superman, Oliver Queen (Green Arrow), Hal Jordan (Green Lantern), Wolverine, Spiderman, Aquaman, Thor, Jane Foster, and Jason Todd (Robin and later Red Hood). In addition, Barry Allen (The Flash) and Batman have experienced functionally similar events where they were thrown into another plane of reality, presumed dead, and replaced by a former sidekick for a time.

Occasionally, both critics and fans of the genre dismiss these resurrections as gimmicks. After all, the death of major characters results in headlines and other publicity; I still remember the mainstream media covering the 1992 death of Superman. Resurrecting these characters is then necessary to keep the fans of those characters as customers. While there is certainly some truth to this explanation, the idea of resurrection is embedded more deeply in certain kinds of stories.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” he argues that escape is a legitimate purpose of the fantasy genre. After all, he argues, escaping from the mundane, the unhealthy, or the limiting is a good action. It is natural, he argues, to “desire to escape, not indeed from life, but from our present time and self-made misery,” so there is first the simple escape of living for a few pages or hours in an alternative world. The good storyteller creates a Secondary World, a “sub-creation,” that is separate and which we “believe in,” in a sense, while we were there. For that to work, it has to have its own context, rules, and internal consistency, but within that, the magical and the fantastic can then occur, and we can participate in it. The DC and Marvel multiverses have been built up into this type of Secondary World over many years and with contributions from many authors. There is some underlying logic and a shared history, and while that history gets rebooted a little from time to time, for the most part there is enough in-story explanation of those changes that we can enter into all of it with what Tolkien calls “literary belief,” and escape into it.

For a second level, Tolkien also argues “there are ancient limitations from which fairy-stories offer a sort of escape.” Tolkien here lists the desire to the swim in the depths of the sea, or fly through the sky, or communicate with other living creatures. This type of escape, imagining transcending these normal human limits, is precisely what superpowers are about. Tolkien’s examples themselves explain characters as diverse as Superman, Hawkman, Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Aquaman, and Captain Marvel.

Finally, though, Tolkien says “there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death.” Just as he says that fairy stories provide many modes of this, so do superhero stories. The desire to transcend death, to undo its power, is the most natural of human longings. Whenever humans make and tell myths, then, there will be stories of resurrection.

In superhero stories, many resurrections followed a death of heroic self-sacrifice: from Superman fighting Doomsday, to Barry Allen racing to save the last universes in Crisis on Infinite Earths, to Oliver Queen’s airplane explosion, or even the recent Death of the Mighty Thor storyline, the hero died saving others. Their return provides an example of what, in that same essay, Tolkien called eucatastrophe, the sudden turn for the good that brings joy, the unexpected twist that saves.

As we approach Easter, we will celebrate the greatest such storyline: Jesus died in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice, and then the Resurrection. What Tolkien called the oldest and deepest desire, conquering death, happened in our world. But there again, Tolkien explains that God saved us by means of a story, but “this story has entered History and the primary world.” As the Creator, God tells His story in the primary world, so that “Legend and History have met and fused,” and the Incarnation and the Resurrection of Christ are the “Great Eucatastrophe.” Jesus stands victorious, saying, “I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”

Tolkien closes with the thought that in the Kingdom, the greater does not end the lesser, and while the myth and the ancient longing have come true in Christ, “story, fantasy, still go on and should go on.” And so later this month, we look forward to a storyline which perhaps will have a similar eucatastrophe. Avengers: Infinity War ended with defeat and death, Avengers: Endgame may include resurrection and new life. In it, we can and should see echoes of the True Myth, the Good News, the Great Eucatastrophe.