On one comics messageboard I used to hang out at someone had a sig that went "Nobody stays dead except Bucky and Uncle Ben".
It's now got to the stage where you would be very hard put to find any character you could be reasonably sure would be pushing up daisies on a permanent basis. Hell, I would have considered Cir-El a safe bet and then she got a cameo in one of Jeph Loeb's guest star fests, which means that she's still alive somewhere.
I can't honestly think of any character too iconically dead or generally disliked that there isn't a real possibility they won't pop up again. I'm expecting Alex DeWitt to climb out of that refrigerator any time now.
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I have to admit, for me half the fun of a collective narrative is seeing how newer writers try to undo changes that the previous writers have made. You'll have one writer who thinks, "this guy was killed in a way that's completely ireeversible," and then another writer will come along and say, "Oh yeah?" Love it.
Okay, I admit I always loved the bit at the beginning of those Christopher Lee Fu Manchu movies where we find out how he escaped from the terrible fate that had apparently killed him at the end of the previous outing, but so many comic book resurrections are so, so badly done.
I was just thinking this morning that I was amazed that Ice (Tora) has stayed dead, what with Fire's recent appearance in Checkmate, and Guy's continued appearances in the GL titles. (And the disturbing number of JLI-tribute stories and threads that we keep seeing.)
Wait...if what you're saying is true, then wouldn't that mean that pre-crisis Kara has to be alive out there somewhere too? Because she was there in the same apperance.
I think Cir-El was brought back because she was technically still a Supergirl...and Matrix was not needed because Linda represented her anyway. And people, Loeb included, will always considered Pre-Crisis Kara to be a seperate entity from the new on.
Yeah, Pre-Crisis Kara ate food.
Anyway, Ma and Pa Kent were dead before page 1 of Action Comics #1, but along came Byrne...
Under the rubric that everybody is somebody's favorite, anybody COULD come back...
but I'm guessing Orca isn't going to get up again.
*desperately hopes this means Pantha has a shot of coming back soon* :P
I think the frequency of reversing deaths now and in the forseeable future is due slightly more to lousy or faulty decisions to kill in the first place. Which is why I cut writers some slack on it, because there are people who complain about the revolving door and want death to "mean something," yet they don't apply it equally; they count their luck Ollie, Donna Troy, Superman, Hal made it while the window was open, or whine about their favorites to come back. Frankly, death in comics isn't going to be ruined if people who died cheap deaths like Lilith or Pantha get resurrected. Jason Todd, however would.
It's just a matter of creator turnover and their preferences and memory. If writers and editors were more thoughtful of death and who (and how) they killed, I don't think there'd be so much of a problem...
Isn't Bucky alive?
Perhaps Alex DeWitt could return with refrigerator-inspired powers? She could be Amana, Frigidaire, or the Kelvinator and dispense icewater along with justice. Like Bucky, "The Winter Soldier" perhaps she's just been on ice all this time... Tora could be involved, and if kitchen-related Green Lantern deaths are being undone, Katma Tui could return as well. I want Gail Simone to write this so much...
I want Iron Man's morality to come back to life. (Oh, snap!)
"Perhaps Alex DeWitt could return with refrigerator-inspired powers? She could be Amana, Frigidaire, or the Kelvinator and dispense icewater along with justice."
Or maybe she could be a Swamp-Thing-like fungal creature of moldy vengeance, fighting for freshness.
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