They kill off most comic book heroes now and again - I'm slightly out of touch, but Superman has been "killed" at least twice (in the Death of Superman arc it turned out he was in a healing coma indistinguishable from death), I'm pretty sure that Batman is currently dead, Captain America was dead for several months recently, etc. etc.
Well, the death of Superman was still groundbreaking when it happened. To my knowledge, no major comic book hero had been killed and resurrected at the time when Superman was killed and resurrected in the 1990s. The huge success of that story arc may be the reason why so many comic book heroes are killed and resurrected nowadays.
(The first major fictional hero who was killed and then resurrected may have been Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle grew tired of his creation and offed him in a huge waterfall in Switzerland, I think. Fans protested vociferously, Conan Doyle was not so successful with his non-Sherlock-genre writing, and well, there you have it.)
Ann
