Swords of the Swashbucklers #12 (1987) pages 20-21: It's been totally blown away

In the most shocking moment of the series, Captain Raader and most of her space pirate crew are killed when a Colonizer device destroys the planet on which they were hiding. Only teen Domino Drake, her talking cat Cap'n Kidd, and the mantis-like Logik were offworld at the time, returning to find an asteroid field where their friends are supposed to be.

American adventure stories don't usually pull this trigger, and I wonder what inspired Bill Mantlo to suddenly go 'scorched earth' in what was, up until this point, a lighthearted tale. Was he killing off the characters so Marvel couldn't later revive the series without him?

SoTS did receive a revival series (including a revived Captain Raader) many years later, though the resurrection did not bother to aim for plausibility. It was just one of those "strange things happen in space" moments.