I saw news stories leading up to the big wolverine finale. He was finally going to die. Very emotional and dramatic. Turns out that he doesn’t seem to have actually died. The character is still plastered all over various Marvel series and upcoming crossovers. This seems to be the hollowest “death” in comics history.
What gives? What the hell was the point if they were still going to have him showing up everywhere in various costumes?
Wolverine’s dead, huh? For how long?
Don’t you hate when they do that? I blame Arthur Conan Doyle.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John pulled that stunt even earlier.
But at least Conan Doyle meant it when he wrote it. Comic book writers have already plotted out the resurrection story before the death story is published.
Er, which, exactly?
Part of the problem is sometimes that stuff doesn’t line up well (for example, an issue of Uncanny Avengers that had Wolverine alive in it came out after one of the issues of Death of Wolverine, but the UA story was clearly set before Death). But right now, reading the current issues, there’s plenty of references to Wolverine being dead.
This whole story was dumb and the characters reactions were just as dumb.
The only X-writer that has handled comic book death well is Peter David who had Siryn react to her dad’s death by basically saying " I don’t need to mourn. He’ll be back eventually."
And lo now he is.
They are having characters mourning a guy who literally can come back from a single drop of blood. They should be treating it like a long vacation.
Pffft. That’s nothing. Comic book in 2014 are in the middle of a demented arms race of trying to draw as much attention as possible. So the flow of empty, meaningless world-shattering events becomes constant.
Serious question (since I don’t procure-traditional-comic books): has any major character been killed off, and stayed dead?
Let me put it this way; there used to be saying that no-one stayed dead except Uncle Ben*, Bucky**, and Jason Todd***.
Two of those are currently running around alive and well, and the other comes back every so often.
I think the rule of thumb is generally, where death is part of a superheroes’ backstory, you can *usually *assume they’re not going to come back on a long-term basis. So the aforementioned Uncle Ben, Superman’s parents, Daredevil’s father, etc.
*Spider-Man’s uncle, killed by a thief Spider-Man could have stopped but didn’t.
** Captain America’s wartime sidekick.
*** The second of Batman’s Robins, murdered by the Joker and thousands of DC fans.
The return that pissed me off was the resurrection of Jason Todd. I voted that sucker dead and I want him to stay dead.
Joss commented on the “Nobody stays dead” trope when he was writing Astonishing X-Men. Paraphrased, the exchange went:
*Emma Frost: Killer body, rich, smart as a whip, and I still come in second to Jean.
Beast: Jean’s dead, Emma.
Emma: Yeah, like that will last.*
Steophan: He was brought back to life (albeit temporarily) in Brightest Day.
John DiFool: The original Thunderbird (a member of the “All-New, All-Different X-Men” for all of two issues) is the only one I can think of off-hand who never, ever returned to complete life after dying. The various members of the Legion of Super-Heroes who have died, other than Lightning Lad, have pretty much stayed dead, except that there were “time clones” of their younger selves, and then a reboot (or two or three) which revived t he characters, so not sure how you count those.
The original Mister Terrific, Atom, Doctor Mid-Nite, Sandman and Starman never returned to life after being killed off.
One of the best moments in the Avengers/JLA crossover series was when Captain America is in the Batcave and, upon seeing Jason Todd’s uniform in a display case, says, “You lost a partner, too?” And naturally, within five years of that, both of those partners came back from the dead. It really takes something away from the re-read.
Actually Marvel has a second universe with retooled versions of their main characters, the Ultimate Universe, where the rule, up to this point, is that dead is dead, no resurrections.
This lead to an interesting development in their version of Spider-man.
There’s always Gwen Stacy, who has been cloned and had alternative versions of her in non-616, but “proper” Gwen has never been revived. I think.
To the best of my knowledge The Top, an early Flash villain has never been brought back to life. Of course he was a pretty lame villain. 
And even there, I’m pretty sure that Batman’s parents have been brought back.
Only in alternate universes, that I recall. Thomas Wayne becoming Batman in response to his son’s death has happened at least twice, and for me was one of the high points of Flashpoint.
Technically, Jean Grey has still been dead since 2004. The one currently running around in All-New X-Men is 13-year-old Jean Grey pulled out of the past.
Pretty sure time travellin’ Jean Grey is older than thirteen…