So, this isn’t a Spider-Man comic, but it happens right about now-ish, and Spidey has a famous scene in it. I’m not gonna cover the whole thing, just the Spider-Man part. This one’s a big deal prestige book by CM’s most important writer & artist, Jim Starlin. So, then, Captain Marvel, aka Mar-vell of the Kree. We saw him in an early issue of Team-Up (I think? Maybe I haven’t posted that yet). An alien who came to Earth to conquer it and instead came to love it. He’s done all kinds of heroic things, fought in the famous Kree/Skrull War, foiled various schemes of Thanos, saved Earth and the universe itself, big time hero stuff. But now he finds himself up against a foe even he can’t beat: cancer. As he lies in bed on Titan, the moon of Jupiter that he semi-retired on (Where Thanos is from), all the scientific geniuses of the Marvel Universe have gathered to try to save him, and all the superheroes who’ve fought beside him have gathered to pay respects. As the geniuses fail again and again to quickly find a cure for cancer…
Famous though it may be, I’ve never been totally sold on this scene. All superheroes have had to deal with death, but Spider-Man’s got quite a pile of bodies behind him. He’s already lost his parents, Uncle Ben, George & Gwen Stacy. He thinks Black Cat is dead right now and is taking it hard. All regular people, and while none of them died of natural causes, I would think living with their loss would gird Spider-Man against the idea of death a little better than this. It makes for a nice beat in the story, but maybe with the wrong character. In the end, no one can stop the inevitable, and Spidey is there with the assembled heroes as Mar-Vell shuffles off this mortal coil.
Mar-Vell joins the extremely exclusive club of important characters in superhero comics who’ve died and actually stayed that way. Through the years, despite some fake outs, no one’s had the guts to resurrect Mar-Vell. And with Carol Danvers now fully inhabiting the role of Captain Marvel, it seems unlikely anyone will. So this remains a powerful moment in superhero history, and Spider-Man was there. Come back tomorrow for regular programming.