Marvel’s Fallen Son and Making the Ordinary Sacred

Abstract

This essay analyses Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America (2007), a five-issue limited series from Marvel Comics. The series is designed as an exploration of grief and bereavement, looking in on the moments unfolding in the wake of Captain America’s death and tracing out the reactions of Marvel’s most central characters to the loss of their friend and comrade as they work through the stages model of grief famously articulated by Kübler-Ross. But rather than analyze Fallen Son as a demonstration of that model, this essay suggests that it is more useful to read the series for the ways that it undermines Kübler-Ross’ framework, navigating the complex affective territory of grief in loss by challenging the very diagrammatic structure of staged emotional categories it purports to employ as narrative chapters.