The Death of Captain Marvel, formally known as Marvel Graphic Novel: The Death of Captain Marvel, is a Marvel Comics one-shot created by Jim Starlin in 1982.
Captain Mar-Vell, a Kree warrior who became a hero for the cosmos and of Earth, is dying. One of his early adventures had given him cancer and now he only has months to live. As the universe comes to learn of Mar-Vell's fate and do what they can to help, Mar-Vell begins to put his affairs in order. By the end of the book, the universe will lose one of its greatest heroes...
The book would be the first of the Marvel Graphic Novel series, which would include a number of iconic stories such as Avengers: Emperor Doom, Spider-Man: Parallel Lives and more.
The Death of Captain Marvel provides examples of:
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Mar-Vell's final fight with Thanos is portrayed as something like this, the Mad Titan trying to force Mar-Vell to accept the fact that he is dying and he should succumb to it. However, Mar-Vell, being a Kree, would rather have A Good Way to Die.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The galactic community has different terms for the same illness:It's a terrible disease. We on Titan, call it the "inner decay". You Kree have named it the "blackend". Earthmen call it "cancer".
- Cerebus Retcon: Back in Captain Marvel #34, Mar-Vell seemingly destroys Nitro, then clamps shut Compound-13, a nerve gas. In this book, it's revealed that the gas was carcinogenic to him.
- Cure for Cancer: All the genius scientist superheroes work together to find a cure for the dying captain's cancer. Which does bring up the question of why they didn't do that years before instead of spending their time beating up bank robbers. More annoyingly, because Reed Richards Is Useless, the cures they did find, but wouldn't work on Mar-Vell because of his powers, are never released to the general public (as seen by the Marvel writers never mentioning them again).
- Another storyline, The Thanos Imperative, involves "The Cancerverse" — an Alternate Universe where Captain Marvel's life was saved... by killing Death. It turned all life in the universe into immortal, cancerous beings. The cure was worse than the disease indeed...
- A What If? where they cure Captain Marvel results in him becoming the cancer-spreading equivalent of Typhoid Mary, which spreads cancer throughout the galactic community, ends up killing the Thing, and results in him and his love interest being sent to a timeless empty dimension for eternity as they apparently can't find a way to cure the cure.
- Deader than Dead: The comic did this to Captain Mar-Vell. The fact that he died of cancer in a story specifically meant to raise awareness of cancer means that any attempt to bring him back permanently would come across as incredibly disrespectful, and it has been claimed at a few points that he isn't coming back until a reliable cancer cure is created. A few stories dealing with what would happen if he survived have claimed it would lead to much worse things happening, and while there have been occasional fakeouts, they're invariably revealed as imposters, zombies, or cases of mistaken identity. In fact in the Realms of Kings one-shot prelude to The Thanos Imperative, we see the consequences of Mar-Vell being "cured": The Cancerverse.
- Due to the Dead: Not only did the whole super-hero community come to mourn Captain Mar-Vell, even the Skrulls, his Arch Enemies, sent dignitaries to pay their respects.
- Exact Words: In a case of a cover doing this, Captain Marvel #34 boasted that Nitro was "the man who killed Captain Marvel". While Mar-Vell didn't die in that issue, the events of it, namely being exposed to a Deadly Gas that Nitro tried to steal, was indeed what led to the Death of Captain Marvel. So, indeed, Nitro is the man who killed Mar-Vell.
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Harsher in Hindsight: Captain Marvel #34 marked the debut of Nitro and boasted that he'd be "the man who killed Captain Marvel". While Mar-Vell didn't die in that exact issue, he was exposed to a deadly gas as the result of fighting Nitro, thus starting the chain of events that would lead to the Death of Captain Marvel, meaning the cover was right about Nitro, but didn't specify when Mar-Vell would die. - Heroic BSoD: While so many people are shaken by Mar-Vell's impending death, it's Spider-Man that really shows it, walking out of a story the Thing is telling Mar-Vell.Beast: Spidey, are you alright?
Spider-Man: Yeah, sure... just a little shaken. It's all just a bit too much. I mean, this just can't be happening! Captain Marvel is one of us. He's a full-blow, card-carrying super hero. We die from bullets and bombs... ...not from something like cancer. It just can't be. - The Hero Dies: One of Marvel's most iconic and long-lasting deaths, one that has actually stuck compared to many others.
- Hero Killer: Made of Explodium hitman Nitro is notable because he's a low-level C-lister who doesn't even have a nemesis. Yet he is the man who causes the Death of Captain Marvel, in his debut, no less, though Mar-Vell's death was only a side-effect as the tank containing the gas that ultimately caused Mar-Vell's death sprung a leak as a result of Nitro trying to escape using his explosive powers and it took time for the gas's effects to kill Mar-Vell.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Mar-Vell dies because his own powers worked against other heroes' efforts to cure the cancer that eventually killed him. The energies of the nega-bands that gave him most of his powers included a healing factor that kept the cancer in check for several years, but the cancer eventually mutated to the point where the nega bands could no longer stop it, and made Mar-Vell reliant on them to the point he would die in a matter of hours without them. Worse, the mutated cancer was now linked to the nega bands, meaning that a cure would not only have to overcome the cancer itself but the bands as well, making it basically impossible for the heroes to do more than delay the spread of the disease.
- Pietà Plagiarism: The cover is very explicitly based on the Michelangelo work.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Probably one of the most heartbreaking uses of this trope. Rick Jones gathers seven iconic members of the Avengers with scientific or medical backgrounds - Thor, Black Panther, Beast, Vision, Yellowjacket, Vision, Iron Man and Wonder Man - in the hopes of conquering his cancer. When they try to get Rick to tamper hopes, he accuses them of not wanting to if it damages their egos. Later, we see that not only is the Trope Namer helping, but other heroes are trying their damnedest to save Mar-Vell, but the best they can do is develop a tunic that slows the cancer's growth by 20%. The reason why they can't do anymore is because of how the cancer mutated and the Nega Bands preventing them from saving him.
- The comic hung a lampshade on this by claiming that every (mortal) sentient race has a disease similar to cancer, and many of the races had already found a cure for their race's version of the disease. Furthermore, when Rick Jones appeals to the superheroes who are scientists and doctors to find a cure for Mar-Vell's cancer, they find themselves uncomfortably realizing they could have made this kind of effort beforehand for others.
- Super-Power Meltdown: Captain Mar-Vell dies of cancer caused by Nitro blasting a toxic storage and leaving Mar-Vell to suffer catastrophic radiation poisoning, but by the time his own powers let it be detected, they were all that was keeping him alive, AND prevented anyone trying to operate or magic-spell out the carcinoma. That death remains the best Permanent Exit in comics history.
- The Topic of Cancer: Possibly the classic Marvel Comics example. It starts in Captain Marvel #34 when Mar-Vell stops the villain Nitro from stealing a container of Deadly Gas, which leaks during the fight. Mar-Vell manages to reseal it and eventually is given an antidote in time while unconscious, but the gas' carcinogenic effects later give him fatal cancer, albeit suppressed for years by his Nega-Bands until it mutates past their resistance and making it impossible to treat without assistance from the Kree medical community — which, needless to say, is a non-starter for a traitor like himself. There are also alternate universes where Mar-Vell's cancer is actually cured with disastrous results. A What If? universe turned his cancer into a contagious plague that took the life of the Thing and numerous Kree and Skrull. The Thanos Imperative showed another had the Eldritch Abomination group known as the Many-Angled Ones turn Mar-Vell's cancer into a way to transform Earth's heroes into their soldiers, creating the Cancerverse.
- Undignified Death: Played With, as few would have called Captain Marvel's death undignified; he died with every important hero in the Marvel Universe, and even his hated enemies the Skrulls at his side, mourning and paying their respects. However, when his spirit was met in the afterlife years later, he was rather upset to have died of cancer and not having fallen in battle, being a Proud Warrior Race Guy.
- Your Days Are Numbered: The book deals with the last three months of Mar-Vell's life. The heroes warn that trying to remove his Nega Bands mean those days turn to hours.
