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There used to be a "rule" at Marvel that no character could be resurrected if we'd seen the body.

This led to an amusing back-and-forth between Roger Stern and myself. Roger declared one day, decades ago, that he was going to kill off the Ant-Man villain Egghead. And he was going to do it in such a way that the character could never be brought back. To this end Rog had Egghead blasted to death with a ray gun, and his ashes scattered at sea. Dead and dead, right?

WRONG, I declared. Rog had made a fatal -- or non-fatal in this case -- mistake. He used a RAY GUN to kill Egghead. Not a more conventional device like a pistol or dropping a 16 ton weight on him. A RAY GUN.

Obviously, I said, it was all a set-up! Egghead had arranged to "die" in this way, knowing that he was to be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea. The ray gun had actually turned him into "Instant Egghead", and when his ashes hit the water, he reconstituted!

It's called comic books!

Of course, many resurrections occur because some previous writer/artist team has decided a character is "lame" and needs to be killed off. This is precisely why Mark Gruenwald (there he is again!) created Skurge, despite my protest that his definition of "lame" was very different from mine.

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Or the ray gun could have actually transported him to Ganymede!

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Not this time! There was a body!

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Roger and I were just sparring, for funzies. I had no desire to bring back Egghead. Can't really imagine anybody would!