X-Men

How many times have the X-Men died? The outcast team of mutant superheroes, whose stories have been ongoing in Marvel Comics for over fifty-five years, has through time travel created a multiverse of alternate futures in which their deaths are predetermined. In one future, they are hunted by the federal government, wanted posters pasted on dystopian brick walls, their faces marked “Slain” or “Apprehended.” Those captured are neutralized with power-dampening collars and sent to concentration camps, where they unsuccessfully attempt a rebellion that leads to their destruction by the Sentinels, giant robots with weapons in their palms. In another future, the “Age of Apocalypse,” the X-Men simply do not exist. The characters are instead warring factions whose power creates a conundrum: what to do with the humans not born superior, like them? The ensuing civil war leaves few mutants, or humans, standing. And if we forget the future and look at the ways the X-Men die in the continuous timeline we’ve been following all this time, they have been blown up in a high-rise while the world watches on TV; they have been blown up in a school bus; they have been crucified on their own front lawn; they have succumbed to a virus that only they can catch; and they have died of a poison only toxic to them. Across the years, nearly all of the main characters who have made up the X-Men have been killed at least once. Like the oppressed they represent, the X-Men’s death is foretold.