The first thing that's necessary to discuss is the inherent link between classical literature and comics due to the metatexual consequences of the comic book medium. Comic books are a medium in which the characters are quite literally trapped. The comic book cycle is that of character trapped in panel trapped in issue trapped in volume—et cetera, et cetera for decades and decades. There are no comic characters that, since their inception, have not been either a) killed then revived (often multiple times) or b) not killed at all. this is known as the "Bucky Clause": no characters die and stay dead unless they're Uncle Ben from Spiderman, Bucky Barnes from Captain America/The Invaders, or Jason Todd from Batman. Bucky Barnes and Jason Todd were both revived in 2005—QED. Characters that are almost a century old—for instance, Bruce Wayne (inception c. 1939) or Clark Kent (inception c. 1938)—have spent almost a century trapped in the constant cycle of their vigilante and crimefighting exploits. They face the same villians, they have the same supporting cast, and they deal with the same issues, beat-for-beat. Batman struggles with his no-kill rule. Spiderman struggles with concealing his identity, Captain America struggles to draw the line between representing a nation and a government, over and over and over again. There is no escape for these characters from their struggles and there is no escape from their roles either. for example, think of characters—typically those who were created long before others—who have legacy characters carrying on their mantles. There are several distinct examples of this. One can think of Dick Grayson taking on the role of Batman (R.I.P. Batman, Battle for the Cowl, Batman and Robin), or of Captain America handing the mantle on to Sam Wilson (All-New Captain America, Captain America: Sam Wilson). In both of these cases the attempt at transfering the character to another (Bruce Wayne —> Dick Grayson; Steve Rogers —> Sam Wilson) via a symbol (the cowl; the shield) was unsuccessful—people struggled to conceptualize Sam Wilson as the new Captain America so long as Steve Rogers was alive, well, and still carrying the shield—but Steve Rogers simply will not be able to die. Characters in comics cannot die at all, let alone easily. They may die and be revived; they may die and be dragged kicking and screaming back into the world. They will be revived by loved ones or by the enemy or by the sheer mythology of the universe, but they will not die. They will not die on the job without being revived; they will not die of suicide for obvious reasons; and they will not die of age or natural causes due to the nature of comic book timelines—the floating timeline in Marvel comics and the constant universe revivals in DC. The comic book medium creates a time-loop in which the characters are stuck; they are painfully unnaware of this fact aside from the occasional fourth-wall break, but their knowledge would not save them from their fate regardless.

Greek mythology finds itself confined to the bounds of its own cyclical nature. There is a metatexual element to this, of course—mythology passed down for millenia without an end—but this can also be the undoing of its connection to the comic medium, what with the difference between oral retellings and the physical medium through which comic stories are written and told. It is also written into the stories themselves. We see it in the Oresteia, in the Works and Days, in Prometheus, Sisyphus, et cetera. Well what more can I say. A comic book character is literally Prometheus. You get it.

Steve Rogers is one of the oldest, longest-running characters in Marvel Comics history, and one of the oldest superheroes to date. His tenure as Captain America began in 1940 with the advent of the Second World War and has extended through the generations, changing with the major world events of the time. In the forties he fought the Nazis and after a hiatus in the fifties he was revived in the sixties, a time period where writers struggled to reckon their 'sentinel of liberty' against the changing landscape of American pop culture and its aggresively anti-war sentiments. Captain America did not fight in the US invasions of Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, nor was he involved in operations in Latin America during the Cold War. as American pop culture became increasingly more and more anti-war, Captain America's status as a soldier of American ideals rather than the American military shifted to reflect this fact. There was a drastic turn after 9/11 wherein Captain America outwardly supported American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but still did not join the overseas military invasions of those countries, just as he hadn't with the Gulf War the decade prior.