The Fantastic Four to Become the Terrific Three?

One of the members of the Fantastic Four is going to die. WHO IS IT?! Spoiler alert, here.

In the New York Times, there's an article that discusses the life, and death, and life of superheroes.

From the piece...

Comic book stories, like soap operas, are a never-ending series of twists and turns. And fans of super-heroes have learned that seemingly no death is permanent. In the old days, a comic book death meant something special because it was unusual. In 1980, when Jean Grey, the super-powered mutant known as Phoenix, died in X-Men no. 137, it was a cosmic adventure with deadly consequences and a bittersweet love story (her soul mate was Cyclops, the X-Men’s leader) to boot. She returned in 1986 when Marvel wanted to unite the original X-Men members in a spin-off book, X-Factor, and she died again in 2003. To catch up with her varied dealings with death, check out “How Many Times Has Jean Grey Died?”.

Another big death was that of the Flash, a super speedster who died in 1985 thwarting the plans of the Anti-Monitor, a cosmic villain who threatened the entire DC universe, past, present and future. He returned in 2008 and has been a productive member of the super-hero community since. For more information on Flash, check out “Those Who Ride the Lightning”.

One of the biggest deaths in comics was in 1992 when Superman perished in his fight against Doomsday. The final issue of their epic-struggle came sealed in black plastic with only the Superman-emblem, dripping in blood, showing. This was during a boom time in the industry – when many collectors were buying comics as investments. That November, Frank Rich wrote about the frenzy to buy a copy: “The teen-agers who lined up at the nation’s newsstands and comic book stores on Wednesday had dollar signs, not tears, in their eyes. The issue of Superman in which the superhero from Krypton is killed by Doomsday, a villainous escapee from a cosmic insane asylum, was bound to be worth more than its face value of $1.25 someday. Or so its publishers would have young consumers believe.”