Best And Worst Resurrection of a "Dead" DC Character

[caj]

I don't particularly care for bringing characters back from the dead, but sometimes they do a great job when they do.

Of course, they also do terrible jobs as well.

Who are your choices for the best and worst resurrections of dead characters?

[Jim Kelly]

The best / worst resurrection of a dead character was when they brought Alfred back to life. No, not the more recently dead Alfred. This was when Julie Schwartz took over the Batman comics and instituted the "New Look." One of the first things he did was kill off Alfred. Apparently Julie believed Fredric Wertham and thought there wasn't something quite right about three men living together. With Alfred dead, he then had Dick Grayson's Aunt Harriet move into Wayne Manor (she must have thought she'd won the golden ticket, living a life of ease at the mansion).

That was back in early 1964. Two years later when the BATMAN series debuted on T.V., there was Aunt Harriet, but so also was Alfred. Loyal Batman readers must have been aghast. How could this be? Meanwhile, in the comics Alfred continued to be dead. It wasn't until the summer of 1966, that Schwartz and his creative crew exhumed Alfred's corpse that had decayed into a form of tapioca and reanimated the shambling pudding monster, before returning him to his corporeal form of butler.

The full story of how Alfred came to be alive again resembles a lot how they revived Jason Todd. Perhaps the Batman editors, looking through the old recipe book, found this family favourite and adapted it for their use.

In this way the resurrection of Alfred was one of the worst. But maybe bringing back people from the dead is always going to be a messy business. In most polite societies such things are just not done. However, bringing back Alfred would prove to be a stroke of good fortune, when Dick Grayson left Wayner Manor (Aunt Harriet had left some time before this) and Bruce moved into his penthouse apartment at the Wayne Foundation building, with Alfred as his right arm. All through the 1970s, Batman didn't have a kid partner, so the only person he had to serve as his Watson was good ol' Alfred. It proved to be the best thing for the Darknight Detective. And it all would not have been, if Alfred had stayed dead.

[hotroddii]

I hated when DC killed Ice … and I love that she is back … but her resurrection of being found in a Rocket Red armour suit, never made sense.

[Dred]

Story wise I don't think anything compares with Wally's resurrection in DC Universe Rebirth. Few comics make me tear up and that one did.

I would like to, on a personal bias level, say Flash Rebirth was the worst resurrection but Barry actually came back in Final Crisis and it was pretty cool in that particular story. It's just the stories that followed that were bad.

Writing wise, maybe the stupidest was Jason Todd being revived by Superboy Prime punching the universe really hard? Absolutely inane and they had to walk it back/reexplain it with Lazarus Pool stuff.

[HsssH]

I think the worst ressurections are when they happen in a story that the character had nothing to do with. Barry works in Final Crisis because, while not a main character, he did have some important and cool bits in it. So you know, you can recommend Final Crisis to someone who wants to find out how Barry came back. On the other hand there were also some panels with Aquaman being back in Final Crisis as well. And they were very random and pointless and it is not surprising that it was later ignored by other writers.

[j9ac9k]

For personal reasons, the best for me was Hal Jordan. The fact that his heel-turn to villainy was just a horrible cash grab meant to shock fans, made it especially satisfying. Even after Hal died, his story wasn't over and I think that had to do with fans - in and out of the business who kept him relevant enough to warrant a comeback.

And the comeback was also just great comics. He had a whole mini-series to tell that story, which also brought Guy and John back into the GLC and set up a new series that would go on to become the greatest success GL has probably ever had.

[Jim Kelly]

I could almost say that bringing Iris West Allen back to life during the trial of the Flash was the best. I hated her being killed off, but you could argue that, since Cary Bates wrote both the story in which she died and the one where she came back, it may have always been in his long range plans for it to work out that way. Plus, he used all the science and mythology that had been established in the Flash series--he wasn't inventing some new metaphysics just to brute force her back into existence.

However, this is all taken out of Cary Bates' hands when it flips from the happy ending he gives them in THE FLASH 350 (October 1985)--on sale July 11th, 1985-- to the unhappy ending Marv Wolfman forces upon them in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS 8 (November 1985)--on sale August 1st, 1985.

For no good reason. We know that Barry and Iris have their children Don and Dawn Allen in the future and that, by the time those twins are teen-agers, they interact with the Legion of Super-Heroes. We know also that the events in CRISIS tend to happen in specific years--1942 for the All-Star Squadron, 1985 for most of the modern heroes and 2985 for the Legion. So why go out of the way to pluck Barry from a completely different year, when he supposedly never even got to see his kids born, never got to watch them grow up? Wouldn't it make more sense to pluck him from 2985, by which time Don and Dawn would be adults--about the same age as Chuck Taine and Luornu Durgo (married) or Garth Ranzz and Imra Ardeen (married with kids)--and Barry and Iris might have already been grandparents? What did Barry and Iris ever do to Marv Wolfman that he wanted to make them suffer in a time period that was totally random?

So while I liked to see Iris brought back and to see the West Allens settle down in the future--that resurrection was all for nought, since it was immediately countered in the very next month.

[Dred]

I could almost say that bringing Iris West Allen back to life during the trial of the Flash was the best. I hated her being killed off, but you could argue that, since Cary Bates wrote both the story in which she died and the one where she came back, it may have always been in his long range plans for it to work out that way. Plus, he used all the science and mythology that had been established in the Flash series--he wasn't inventing some new metaphysics just to brute force her back into existence.

However, this is all taken out of Cary Bates' hands when it flips from the happy ending he gives them in THE FLASH 350 (October 1985)--on sale July 11th, 1985-- to the unhappy ending Marv Wolfman forces upon them in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS 8 (November 1985)--on sale August 1st, 1985.

For no good reason. We know that Barry and Iris have their children Don and Dawn Allen in the future and that, by the time those twins are teen-agers, they interact with the Legion of Super-Heroes. We know also that the events in CRISIS tend to happen in specific years--1942 for the All-Star Squadron, 1985 for most of the modern heroes and 2985 for the Legion. So why go out of the way to pluck Barry from a completely different year, when he supposedly never even got to see his kids born, never got to watch them grow up? Wouldn't it make more sense to pluck him from 2985, by which time Don and Dawn would be adults--about the same age as Chuck Taine and Luornu Durgo (married) or Garth Ranzz and Imra Ardeen (married with kids)--and Barry and Iris might have already been grandparents? What did Barry and Iris ever do to Marv Wolfman that he wanted to make them suffer in a time period that was totally random?

So while I liked to see Iris brought back and to see the West Allens settle down in the future--that resurrection was all for nought, since it was immediately countered in the very next month.

It was not established that Don and Dawn are Iris and Barry's children until later in a comic by the Bierbaums and Keith Giffen in 1991 (Legion of Superheroes #17), many years after Barry's death. Though it's speculated in Who's Who of the LOSH in 1988, still years after Barry's death, so you can maybe track the first concept of that idea there. In their original debut they state they're distant descendants of The Flash, which makes sense as when they debuted who would've thought Barry would have his kids in the future at a time that would line up around the Legion of Superheroes era? It's the explanation on why they can only access their superspeed for a day.

In LOSH #17 they appear only to die in a grim way, but Waid later took that premise and included it in specific Flash lore with Bart Allen and Jenni Ognats a few years later, and more directly with Race Against Time and the Impulse ongoing.

From Marv's perspective there were no kids to strip Barry away from. They were obscure characters from LOSH, itself a franchise that can never get its timelines straight.

[M@Bowers2014]

Going from memory I liked Ollie aka Green Arrow being brought back by Hal Jordan/Parallax/Spectre.

[caj]

Kal-El/Clark Kent in the Death and Return of Superman as best IMO. Loved that story.

Worst for me was probably Lyle Norg in Legion of Super Heroes. I haven't read it in years but next to the Omen/Prophet storyline, it's my least favorite of Paul Levitz's run in his phenomenal time as writer in the 80s.

[j9ac9k]

Kal-El/Clark Kent in the Death and Return of Superman as best IMO. Loved that story.

Does that qualify since Superman was only mostly dead...? (sorry, just wanted to make that joke )

[Sutekh]

Kal-El/Clark Kent in the Death and Return of Superman as best IMO. Loved that story.

Worst for me was probably Lyle Norg in Legion of Super Heroes. I haven't read it in years but next to the Omen/Prophet storyline, it's my least favorite of Paul Levitz's run in his phenomenal time as writer in the 80s.

Yeah, Lyle just randomly being alive in another universe, and then... nothing? I did not like that at all.

I didn't really care for Jason Todd, so his death didn't mean much to me, other than seeming like a tacky stunt, but the later Lazarus Pit / Red Hood angle was an amazing 'saving throw' by whoever managed to salvage that random-ass resurrection and craft a compelling story out of it!

[K7P5V]

I could almost say that bringing Iris West Allen back to life during the trial of the Flash was the best. I hated her being killed off, but you could argue that, since Cary Bates wrote both the story in which she died and the one where she came back, it may have always been in his long range plans for it to work out that way. Plus, he used all the science and mythology that had been established in the Flash series--he wasn't inventing some new metaphysics just to brute force her back into existence.

I concur. Truly an All-Time Favorite (IMHO):

[Holt]

Worst is probably Barry Allen. Hal Jordan deserved some justice after all the Parallax nonsense, but Barry’s death was perfect and Wally was doing a terrific job as the Flash.

[kcekada]

I don't know if it's the best, but I never expected Terra to return. Initially, she was a Teen Titans from a future timeline.

After Zero Hour, she was part of current continuity but didn't know her origin. Geo-Force, Terra I's half-brother had a DNA test done and told the despairing Terra II that she was not Terra I -- despite the test confirming that she was Terra I. It's a shame they had her murdered by Black Adam (who will always be a villain in my book) a few years later. I guess it doesn't matter, because she was kinda resurrected in new 52 continuity, but I don't know how much of that has stuck or been undone.