The fact that it's pre-rev material is always important to keep in mind, but I think with a bit of good will, I could see those deaths working under revisionist rules as well.
In Feroz's case, we are probably dealing with an elemental that was noticeably stronger than your average
Fire Elemental due to being charged with Ulgrotha's recovering mana, which is what allowed it to break out of the crystal in the first place. The comic explicitly states that the attack was "too quick to raise a defense" and calls the fire "an inferno". Feroz's body was probably harmed too quickly and too badly to put himself back together.
As for Serra, it's not her who gets taken out by a wooden stick, it's the guy who attacks her. Serra actually dies to the black spell he casts on her, and it's made pretty clear that Serra
wants to die at that point, so she doesn't heal or defend herself.
Now, the guy who attacks Serra claims to be a planeswalker himself, and I think there are ways in which we could make that work as well. For starters, it's not clear from the comic whether he even dies or whether Brother Angus just knocks him out. Then there's the possibility that he might just be boasting or, as Squirle pointed out in his blog, that it's one of those old school wizards who has learned how to travel to other planes by magic. I like to think he'd have fixed his ugly mug if he was actually a transcendental being with a body of pure energy...
I mean, come on guys, Urza almost got killed by a tin bird eating through his entrails in
Time Streams...