Not that Marvel are alone in their hogwash promises about big changes to their comics. Blackest Night centred on Nekron, a villainous personification of death who attempts to eliminate all life from the universe with the help of zombified versions of deceased DC characters (which seems like a contradiction, but, eh, comics). The crossover gave a creepy spin on comic book death, with beloved heroes and villains resurrected in the worst possible way, and also aimed to mark a big change in the company's approach to the trope of nobody ever really dying in their comics. Editor Dan DiDio, in publicity for the event, explicitly assured fans that following the events of Blackest Night, any characters who died in the DC Universe would stay dead. Permanently. No wiggle room at all. Which was a pretty easy promise to make when no major characters had been killed off recently (apart from Batman, but he wasn't really dead), and the event you were talking up included multiple characters being brought back from the dead as is. DiDio's words turned out to be completely empty when DC's next event, Flashpoint, which altered the Universe in a whole bunch of ways, including the resurrection of various characters. And that all culminated in the New 52 relaunch, where every DC character's continuity was reset and - duh - basically every character who had been killed off in the company's history was now alive and kicking.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
