Quote Originally Posted by Tzigone View Post
Obviously, when they became over used and there were fakeouts and actual resurrections as a consequence of too many deaths of deaths of too-important characters. I know it was 1980s for Jean Grey when she turned out not to be dead, but did she set a trend for non-belief in deaths or did that take longer? I'm not asking why - I'm just looking for a certain year or certain event that changed reader mindset.
fFF
I started reading comics in the late 60's/early 70's (DC for the very most part). At the time, there was only one current-day "hero" who was stated to have died which stayed dead, which was the JSA's Mr. Terrific. Also, there was in the LSH, Ferro Lad and later Matter Eater Lad. None of these characters were "resurrected" until many years later and a least one, if not a few Crisis's, later. Dead really meant dead. Yes, there were some "fake-out" stories, like the mini-series within a series of Batman supposedly "dying" and a "trial" being held to determine which of his main villains did it, only to turn out that Batman was masquerading as Two-Face (the prosecutor) and proving that none of them had done it (sorry, I just remember Ra's al Ghul as the "judge"... Still cracks me up), but the hero was always shown to be alive by the end of the story. Even up until COIE, and for a few years afterwards, dead meant dead... Even when they brought a "name" back, it wasn't the same character (eg. Kara Zor-el Supergirl versus Matrix Supergirl). I would have to say it was sometime in the late 80's/early 90's when things became a bit more of a revolving door.

I do think there was a bit of a creeping feeling of "death not really meaning dead". Yes, there might have been one, then maybe two, characters that came back, and people were like, "okay... There's an explanation... etc.". But it seems to me that as the first or second ones were accepted, then the companies felt more and more that, "oh, okay, we brought that one back, let's bring this one back". And after awhile, it became more acceptable. So I don't know if there's one particular character resurrection that you can point to. I actually think that there are several of the currently accepted trends in comics nowadays that have been overplayed that never would have been really acceptable a few decades ago. (For example, the "everything you know is wrong" trope... It drives me nuts. Yes, it worked in the Anatomy Lesson from Swamp Thing (though that was an extremely well structured and logical one... which is a true example of what retroactive continuity should be, and not what the various "ret-cons" you see currently are).

But I just don't know if there's one particular death/resurrection that you can point to that is indicates a definitive start point to this trend.