Profile: Courtney Ross

Courtney Ross
First appearance: Captain Britain Weekly #3, 1976. She was a college girlfriend of Brian Braddock who later became a banking official.

Current status: dead

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: she was kidnapped by Arcade and taken to “Murderworld” where she was forced to perform comedy in order to survive before being rescued by Excalibur. But in what’s surely got to be the most insane thing I’ve ever heard of: a counterpart from an alternate universe named Opal Lun Sat-Yr9 (and there was even another one from still another alternate world who was simply called Saturnyne) wiped her out and took up use of her identity, and since may still be going by the real Courtney’s identity.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Ugh, the second example I gave there has got to be the most mind-numbingly awful thing ever to take place in comics. And it only furthers my fears that the X-Men may have had more deaths of worthy supporting characters that I might’ve thought too. What's dismaying is how Claremont makes her very likable, then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he has her terminated. This is an early example of a story that deep-sixed the potential of a well-written supporting character by doing something unexpected, yet that adds little to later stories.

The otherworldly counterpart may have turned up during House of M, but the real Courtney apparently remains dead. Killing off characters rather than to just let them drop out of sight is simply a terrible idea by now.