Death in the comic book world is a revolving door. Eventually all characters end up stagnating, or if they experience and any significant character development and changes those changes eventually get removed or wiped out. Death in comics has been used often as a way of generating interest in the hopes of increasing sales. In the old days those particular comics would become more valuable and collectors would want them because they chronicled significant events. The problem is that you kill off enough characters and suddenly there aren't any toys left to play with. This was particularly the case with villains. You standard villain would get defeated and often "appear" to die, only to pop back up a year or so later with some whacked out explanation of why they really didn't die.
With the heroes though a death has seemed to carry more weight. Because if a hero dies usually it's involving some heroic sacrifice saving others, and the more lives saved the bigger the sacrifice. So having heroes return after a death typically cheapens the story where the death occurred. As such hero deaths were more permanent. This even allowed the companies to create legacy heroes that would take up the name of the fallen hero, so that way the hero remains active (which means the parent company maintains the trademark) and it honors the fallen hero. These days though more and more of the hero deaths are simply being overturned.
Joss Whedon a couple years ago brought back Colossus (he had sacrificed himself to save all mutants from a deadly virus, although when he came back no real explanation was given of how he had survived). Green Lantern went nuts and killed millions before eventually being killed by Green Arrow. This was done because sales on Lantern's comic were tanking and this was a way to bring in a new guy to be Green Lantern. Recently they brought Lantern back through some crazy explanation of he had been possessed (and to make it fair they had the new guy get possessed and go on a killing spree also, sort of a we can't have the newer guy look better than the original). Green Arrow died and came back. So did Superman. Supergirl died and was erased from the universe back in the 80s only to come back about three or four years ago. Basically these days there's the feeling that no story has any lasting repercussions.
That said, there were some characters that were deemed untouchable when it came to being dead. In Spider-Man's world that was Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacy and the Green Goblin. In Batman's world it was Jason Todd (the replacement Robin that DC had a 900 phone in vote to kill off back in the 80s). For Captain America it was his sidekick Bucky who had been blown up (in the 40s) by saving Cap and preventing the German's from launching a missile destined for America. Of those Green Goblin came back about ten years ago and recently Bucky has come back and so has Jason Todd. So I don't know why I'm surprised to learn that they're now bringing back Barry Allen (he's the Flash in case you didn't know) who died 23 years ago sacrificing himself to save the entire universe (no small feat). At this point I don't think there's any hero dead that hasn't come back. It's impressive that they've managed to created a world in which death has no lasting consequences and is simply something that affects people like the common cold. "Hey Lobsterman, I haven't seen you in a couple years, what you been up to?" "I was dead, but I got better."
The only good thing about this is the fact that the current rumors have my favorite green superhero J'onn J'onzz (a.k.a. Martian Manhunter) getting killed in DC's new mega series Final Crisis. With the way things are currently running this probably means that in another year or two he'll be back in some way shape or form.
So this weekend we were planning on heading down to Richmond. The NASCAR races are in Richmond this weekend and for Quinn's birthday Ginger's parents bought him tickets to the Nationwide series race (formerly the Busch series) on Friday night. We were also planning on having a party for him since they can't travel up here. The problem is Ginger's grandmother has been readmitted to the hospital, so all the plans are up in the air. I'm pretty sure we're still planning on going down, but who takes Quinn to the race is now up in the air. I know it won't be me though since my job that day will be hanging out with Catherine and trying to entertain her. I'm also looking to go see Iron Man before we leave for Richmond, but that means I'll have to see it Thursday, and from what I've read it is opening a day early, but won't start playing until 8 PM. Anyone interested in going to see it Thursday night?
A while back I finally got around to watching Gone Baby Gone. not sure why it took me so long to watch this one. I suspect it's because I felt the movie probably wasn't going to be that good given the poor box office performance (it only made about 20 million). While the story is based off a book the screenplay was written by Ben Affleck. Ben was also the director and a producer. All of which says to me he was heavily involved in this movie. So here's the thing, when I first started watching it I was a bit distracted that the main character sounds a lot like Ben Affleck and even sort of looked like him. Turns out it's his brother Casey Affleck. So at this point I was thinking, "Great, this is just a vehicle for him to get his brother into acting." But here's the thing I realized after watching it. This Casey Affleck has some real acting chops. I mean he's good, or at least seemed to be good playing the moody private detective. The story is simply about Patrick (Casey) and his girlfriend Angie who are private detectives in Boston and how they get hired to try and find a little girl that has gone missing. There's no shortage of acting talent in this movie either since it also has Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman. Overall the movie was leaps and bounds above what I was expecting going in and I was more than pleasantly surprised.
I had planned on putting together some video footage of Catherine riding her bike without the training wheels tonight, but when I went down to my old computer and started trying to work on it once I loaded the video onto the computer I only had about 500 MB of data left on the drive, and movie maker simply can't function on a file that's over a Gig in size in that limited amount of space, so I need to do some work on cleaning up some space on that drive before I can do anything else.
A while back Ginger and I watched Just Friends. It's a romantic comedy that focuses more on the comedy than the romance. It also stars Ryan Reynolds, who I really like as an actor mainly because all of his roles seem to involve a heavy amount of sarcasm. If I had to guess I would think Reynolds is playing his role in this film pretty close to the vest. There won't be a lot of surprises in this movie, but it is funny a lot more often than it isn't. I think Ginger liked it (probably a bit less than me if I had to guess since I suspect after living with me she probably doesn't find sarcasm to be amusing). Probably the one bad thing about the movie is it was made a couple of years ago when it was all the rage to dress up actors in fat suits. Luckily the time in the fat suit is kept to a minimum and only used for plot setup. As for the plot itself, it's pretty simple. The movie starts in high school where Chris (Ryan Reynolds) is crushing on his best friend / cheerleader Jaime (Amy Smart). He gets the "just friends" speech and it devastates him. And then just like that we flash forward to the present day where we see as a result of that rejection Chris has transformed himself into an attractive, successful, suave record producer who is also lady killer who seems to be able to get any girl he wants (and one could say is even more than bit heartless). Through a sequence of circumstances that could only happen in a movie Chris ends up having to return to his hometown where Jaime still lives and hijinks.
I should point out that Reynolds has also signed on to play Deadpool (the Merc with a Mouth that I've mentioned previously) in the forthcoming Wolverine movie, so even if the rest of that movie blows, I suspect at least the Deadpool portion will be good.
In what's getting to be a recurring theme Quinn simply insisted that he be able to go out and ride his bike. I have no idea how long this new found love of bike riding will last, but losing the training wheels has definitely reinvigorated his desire to ride his bike. Since most of the other shots of him biking have seemed a bit bland I tried to do a panning shot while he was whizzing by. I suspect it would have turned out a bit better had there been some distinct objects in the background to blur versus just a bunch of grass.
While Ginger was fixing lunch I told Quinn that we could bike down the street a ways and then come back. And then Catherine decided she wanted to go too. Since I can't very well tell her no, we spent a little time reattaching her training wheels since at this point she's simply not ready for that kind of trip without them. I put them back on higher than they had been before though and this caused a lot of problems and complaining on her part. Since they were higher she actually has to work at balancing the bike now whereas before I don't think she was actively working on doing that (probably one of the reasons she's having some difficulty once the they got removed). Watching her ride I can see her just lean over to one side at times, and now that the training wheels are higher that causes her to tilt pretty far over which causes her to have trouble. I still think everything would have been fine, but as we were riding down a slight incline on the sidewalk Catherine got in front of Quinn, and she was breaking every couple of feet. This cause Quinn to end up wiping out at one point (that's actually the first real wipe out he's had since removing the training wheels). Since we were a ways from the house, I was worried at one point when he said he couldn't move his foot, but luckily he got over it pretty quick and was able to ride back since I didn't know how I would have gotten all three bikes back to the house otherwise. Moral of the lesson was to make sure Quinn's in front. Although this causes Catherine to complain that he's so far ahead, so apparently I just can't win. And no, I haven't gotten a chance to extract the bike riding video from yesterday yet.
This morning Quinn was in Catherine's room using her rocking and chair and went a bit crazy. He ended up swinging back pretty far and cracking his head on her dresser. After some consoling from Mom, Catherine decide to try and help him feel better by letting one of her stuffed animals sit with him. Then she got him another, and another, and another until Quinn was completely surrounded by stuffed animals.
Later I took the kids outside for a bit and after fixing Quinn's brakes to be at the correct angle Quinn practiced riding his bike again with no training wheels. And considering this was really only the second time he's ridden without them I was stunned how good he did. There's no way had I just seen him riding it today that I would have suspected he had only rode across the cul-de-sac a couple times the week before. The improvement was that good. He's even to the point where he doesn't need any help starting up. After that we had to break out the moon bounce for a bit since it's been a while since the kids have played with that. Although now their preferred way to play with it is to turn it off and on constantly.
Once Ginger came out Quinn showed off his bike riding skills for her. Of course Quinn getting all the attention made Catherine want some attention too, and when she didn't get enough riding her bike around she decided she wanted to try and ride without her training wheels also. So we decided to give that a shot. It's not coming quite as naturally to her (the balancing thing is still causing her some problems I think), but she did better than I would have expected. We did get her to the point where she could ride for a bit, but she does her longest rides when going up a slight incline (not sure why that is). Still, considering she's two years younger than Quinn and this was her first time ever I thought she did pretty good (I'll try and get some video of her up soon). She doesn't do as good going on downhill inclines (however slight) and at one point when she stopped herself the pedal ended up hitting and scratching the back of her leg and she about lost it so that was the end of Catherine's bike riding for the day. Sadly I don't have any pictures of this event since I was running along her / behind to try and catch her in case things took a turn for the worse (we do have video, but I didn't have time to process any of that yet).
Quinn went out a couple more times and continued to impress me with how good he's doing. After this I'm thinking I obviously waited too long to take his training wheels off in the first place. And once again being outside was killing my allergies (you know, those allergies that prior to two or three years ago I never had). Luckily in the afternoon it rained, so I should be good for a couple days until things dry out again.
For dinner I drove into old town to meet Matt and a group of his friends for a birthday dinner for him. I think in all the years I've lived up here I've probably only been to old town a handful of times at most. Parking wasn't as bad as it had been on my previous visits, but I think that's because the place we went (a Tokyo Japanese Steak House called TJSH) is outside of what most people might consider old town. The meal was good, but it felt really odd to be going out to dinner somewhere without Ginger and or the kids.
I met Ginger and Catherine at Whole Foods for lunch and while we were there an episode of Emeril's TV show was being filmed. I didn't have a decent camera with me, so I didn't get any pictures (not that most people would care about pictures of guy who hosts a food show anyway). Lots of people were hanging around outside the filming area and people were calling friends on their cell phones to tell them what was going on. I know the guy is somewhat famous, but I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Ginger met him years ago when she was working in advertising for MCI, but strangely enough he didn't recognize her or say hello as we walked past. While I was buying my pulled pork sandwich Emeril was off helping customers pick out items for cooking. They did start filming at one point and we were walking through an area in the background, but I don't know if we were in any of the shots. We didn't stick around to watch the rest of the filming, so I didn't get to hear if he "kicked it up a notch", but I can only assume he did.
The photos are some shots Ginger took of the kids on the school playground.
Since it's been warm recently I figured the plants probably needed watering, so I watered them. Quinn was out there helping. He took the picture up above which through some judicious cropping and manipulation I got the picture you see above. And no, clicking through won't erase the black box since that would ruin the joke.
I got the scoop (again) from Ginger on the plant outside (the picture from yesterday). That's a plant Quinn put together at his old school, so that plant is apparently three plus years old. Ginger had told me that once before, but based on how old the plant is and the fact that I didn't remember ever really seeing it around the house (evidently Ginger thought it had died at one point) I didn't think there was any way the plant was that old so I didn't think that could possibly be the backstory, but it was.
Catherine took a huge tumble this morning when she tripped and hit her head on a window ledge near the kitchen table. She had a huge knot on the side of her head, and it's down to merely a really bad bruise at the moment. It looks terrible though I have to believe it hurts pretty bad. She was using her Hello Kitty icepack on it all day at school today according to Quinn.
And we've now run into a problem where even with two tuners in the TiVo we have too much to record at nine on Thursdays. We've got CSI, The Office and now Grey's Anatomy is back on the air also. Luckily Ginger said the writer's strike caused her to lose a lot of interest in Grey's, so she's decided she'll watch that online if she wants to get back into that show.
The above is another shot from Richmond this past weekend. Quinn's musical interest are all over the map at any given time. Sometimes he wants to learn guitar, sometimes it's drums, other times it's the piano, and when at Grammy and Pop pop's house it's all about the trumpet. Recently he was thinking he wanted to take cello lessons (probably because there's another kid in his school that plays the cello). I think that might have just been a whim though since we haven't heard anything about that recently. Good thing too since it seems like that could end up being pretty expensive.
Above is a flower that has some significant history to it that I don't actually know. It's a flower that Quinn started growing at some point. I don't know whether it was for Ginger specifically or just something he started growing. Not even sure when he first started it. But we've got it outside now (although I think it almost got completely pummeled during the recent downpour we had).
Looking through my photos I have some that were borderline at the time I took them, but are starting to look better and better since I haven't taken pictures recently. Couple that with the fact that Ginger didn't take the camera with her today (even though the kids went to a play date with Perry and Drew over at CeCe's today) and suddenly we have pictures worth posting.
The rain for the past couple of days has done wonders in eliminating a bunch of the pollen that was in the air and making it so my throat isn't constantly sore. Sadly though by the end of today I could see there was a layer of green dust on my car. So it might start up again soon.
Ginger and I watched one of her Netflix movies last night. It was a cute drama / romantic comedy called No Reservations. I loved the fact that they made no pretense about the fact that this is a movie starring beautiful people. Catherine Zeta-Jones (playing top chef Kate) is easy on the eyes in the film, but I think Aaron Eckhart (rival new chef Nick) might actually out hot her. Ginger had recently accused me of having a man crush on George Clooney, but after seeing Eckhart in this film I might have to toss George to the curb. And who knew Jones was actually a good actress, I've only seen her in films prior to this that focused more on her assets other than acting (Entrapment, I'm looking at you). The movie itself is a mishmash of a bunch of different standard plots. There's the female trying to make it in a male dominated profession, there's the emotionally distant woman suddenly has to take care of her sister's precocious too cute for words nine year old daughter and finally we have the age old competition between between rivals turns into budding romance. Seriously, it's like every movie cliche and then some thrown together, but somehow it all works. It's nothing spectacular, and I don't see it winning any awards, but it is a standard Hollywood feel good popcorn movie that just happens to be done very well.
Ginger laughed pretty hard when she saw this shot. So I figured I would share it even though the cost will be any self respect I have left.
Ok, so it's not that exciting. But there are a couple interesting things to notice in this video. Quinn gets pretty excited when Ginger shows up right before he makes the attempt. Quinn bikes across the cul-de-sac without training wheels. I apparently look like an idiot when I run and to top it off I have horrible fashion sense.
Today seemed like a long day. After church we grabbed a bite to eat at Baja Fresh and then headed to Richmond to visit Grandmaw (and Grammy, Pop pop and JJ also). I think we got on the road at about one thirty or so and we got there right around three thirty. Then after four hours (which included dinner) we drove back home. It was worth it though since Grandmaw is doing a bit better now since coming home from the hospital and it let the kids get to see. Now mind you, I think the kids said the obligatory hello and then spent the majority of the time playing other things (Catherine was reading a lot and Quinn was racing / bowling / playing the trumpet). Four hours on the road though does make for a long day. And it was raining pretty hard for most of the day, and it's never fun driving in a lot of traffic in hard rain. The good news about the rain though is it seems to have solved my pollen problem and I wasn't dying from allergies like I felt like I was yesterday.
Catherine had a birthday party to attend today. It was at the bowling alley, so Quinn and I went also and got a lane and bowled while the party Catherine was attending was going on. I didn't do so hot. I only got a 159, although that should have been about 20 pins higher since we had the bumper guards up and that prevented me from picking up the 10 pin a couple times. After leaving the 10 pin three times in a row I made the comment that I thought it was nailed down and Quinn just looked at me not realizing I was joking and told me very straight faced that none of the bowling pins were nailed to the floor.
We walked over to see Catherine a couple times and bowling over there just seemed like it was complete chaos with all the kids. I only bowled one game, partly because I realized the bumpers weren't doing me any favors and halfway through the game they decided to turn out the lights. Quinn did a lot better at actually throwing the ball straight today. At least for the first couple of games until he decided to start trying to throw an eight pound ball instead of the six pound one he was using for the first two games (he wanted to throw a heavier ball because I've told him in the past that he can't have his own bowling ball until he can throw a 12 pound ball).
Quinn and I left before the party was over. The really good part was in the car afterwards when he explained he really wanted Mom to come home too. I explained that I would be there, and then he informed me that he knew that, but he liked Mom better. When we got home we experimented and removed Quinn's training wheels from his bike. We did a couple rides across the cul-de-sac and he did pretty good. He has trouble steering at the moment. He concentrates so hard on keeping his balance and pedaling fast enough to maintain balance that actually turning is problematic. Still, for the first time I thought he did pretty good. And since he's almost seven it really seems like I should have done this a while ago. I'm guessing he'll do better with more practice.
I have no idea what it is that's currently blooming outside, but whatever it is has completely knocked me for a loop. Hard to believe a couple years ago I had never been affected by pollen and now I seem to be showing signs of allergies on a yearly basis. Shortly after Quinn did his no training wheel ride Ginger and Catherine came home and we all went to the playground for a bit where being outside in the pollen bothered me even more.
At one point while Ginger, Quinn and I were at the basketball court we heard Catherine yelling for help. She had started doing the monkey bars and had made it several rungs out and had gotten stuck and was just hanging there. We didn't stay out too long since something in the air was bothering me. After sitting in the grass it was making us itch and it was pretty hot out and kids were starting to sweat after about half an hour or so.
And here's the really sad thing. Even with the new camera I can still screw things up. Before we left bowling I had taken a picture of Quinn's score (he got a 116 his last game) and I had jacked the ISO setting up to 1600 for the shot. And wouldn't you know it I completely forgot to reset it so all the shots we took at the playground had a fair amount of noise in them from being shot at ISO 1600. Although there was less noise that I would have expected from shooting with film speed that high. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely noticeable, but you can judge by checking out the playground pictures yourself that for that speed I would have expected a lot more noise than what showed up.
Catherine was wearing a new dress today. The picture of Catherine is once again by Ginger. I'm pretty sure Grandmaw gave her this dress. It looks like one of those empire waist type dresses. Since it was a gift I'll spare everyone and not go into a rant on my personal feelings about empire waist dresses. I will say it is very colorful.
And here we have some art that Catherine did in school. She's quite the artist. The top picture is of a fair - in the middle is a roller coaster, and on the right is a slide. The bottom picture is of Quinn, Dad and Catherine. She is the one with the hair on the bottom left.
Marvel comic's hot new series is Secret Invasion. Where Skrulls (alien shapeshifters that can take on the form of anyone) have made a preemptive strike on Earth by infiltrating and replacing key people, possibly even some of Earth's heroes. The first issue was a huge hit and sold out. Which sounds impressive until you realize they print comic book runs to the exact number of preorders, so in a sense every issue of every book sells out since all copies are sold to distributors. That aside, Secret Invasion has enough reorders to warrant another printing, and thus gets a new cover for the "Second Printing". Why a new cover? Because that's how they get collection completists out there to buy multiple copies of the same book, slap another cover on it (the first issue had at least three different cover versions already). So above we have the cover for the second printing of issue one and a couple of things stand out. First off check out Captain "Endowed" America. I know the super soldier serum "enhanced" him, but that's just ridiculous. Then there's Ms Marvel (to the right and behind Cap) who has decided to face in the complete opposite direction as everyone else so you can see her semi thong buttock costume, yet she still wants to know what's going on so she's looking over her shoulder.
So after reading Cheryl's review of Once I thought it was something I should look into watching. So it was pretty much a no-brainer to get when my friend Matt at work mentioned he owned it and I could borrow it. I brought it home and got Ginger's buy in on watching it after telling her it was a love story. I'm thinking I might have slightly oversold that aspect of it. Apparently I've gone to that well once too often since I got her watching New Amsterdam by telling her underneath it all it was a love story also. And I'm fairly certain this all started back when we were watching the Matrix and I told her that was a love story (for some reason she hasn't really trusted my judgment on describing movies since).
We started watching it and it quickly became apparent this movie wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I knew there was a musical aspect to it, but had figured there was a storyline that was supplemented my music. In fact it's just the opposite and it's actually a lot of songs supplemented by a story (in retrospect Cheryl practically says this, but I miss interpreted it I guess). The filming is low budget and almost has the look of being a shot using someone's camcorder (there's a hand held camera feel to the film) rather than being shot using real film equipment (which ends up giving it an almost documentary feel). But even though it wasn't what I was expecting going in, and it wasn't filmed in top notch quality it still eventually managed to win me over. Read Cheryl's post about all the things that are good about it. It took me almost the entire film before I finally realized I didn't even know the names of the two main characters. But their names aren't important, it's the fact that they have such an impact on each others lives. I will say it didn't hurt that the music was good and really starts to grow on you even though it's very minimalistic. I think Ginger liked the movie better after we had gotten through it and she realized this was a small independent film based around music versus how I had sold it to her. And like I said, the music is good also (we've already ordered the CD).
No school for the kids today due to their teachers taking the day off to go observe teachers in other schools or something. I came home for lunch and when I got here I think everyone was getting on everyone else's nerves. Quinn was losing it over everything, Catherine was instigating trouble and then acting offended and Ginger was on what appeared to be her last nerve. Luckily after I left it looks like they all went on an outing around the neighborhood with the kids riding their scooters and everyone seemed to get along much better (at least I'm left to believe that's what occurred based on pictures I found on the camera). Based on the picture above I'm going to have to insist Ginger take the camera along more often I think.
Fairly blasé day today. Ginger had toddler duty at church this morning so she had to go even though she got home so late last night. Catherine went with her, but I on the other hand stayed home with Quinn. Ginger didn't think he should go if he might be running a fever. Even though the fever is more than likely due to the ear infection and thus I don't believe it's contagious. I guess after being in there and other people bringing in kids that are sick has made her really sensitive to even thinking about doing it to someone else. Ginger also had a meeting after church for all the people on the nursery rotations ao she didn't get back home until much later in the afternoon. While Ginger and Catherine were away Quinn and I kept busy watch the new animated Spectacular Spider-Man and playing Lego Star Wars (Quinn had to eat dried strawberries to play, I think he liked them since he ended up eating about 10 throughout the day in order to keep playing). Above is what Catherine made in church today.
The kids can be funny. I forget how the subject started (I think it had something to do with Lego structures), but the subject of the wall in China came up. And I told the kids the Great Wall of China was one of the man made structures that could be seen from space. I freely admit not having first hand proof of this though and yes, I know it's not *that* visible, but from low orbit I believe you can make it out. This prompted Catherine to "correct" me and tell me the name is not the Great Wall of China, but the Big Wall of China. We went back and forth a few times with each of us insisting we were right until Catherine decided to compromise and said we could just call it the Great Big Wall of China.
Quinn was still running a fever this morning, so we decided on a quick visit to the pediatrician was in order. And it's a good thing we went since it looks like he's managed to acquire an ear infection. So we've got some medicine that will hopefully clear it up in a bit, and as long as we keep ibuprofen in him his fever doesn't get too bad.
Ginger had to run some last minute errands today for the school auction so Catherine went with her while I stayed home with Quinn. I forced him to nap for a bit. The hardest part was convincing him to just go lay down and close his eyes for a bit, after that it didn't take too long for him to fall asleep. Once he got up he was feeling much better, so we went outside for a bit and played until Ginger and Catherine got home. I really like the idea of the photo up above. I think I botched the implementation though. Expect to see similar attempts in the future since I really like the concept. I can't comment on how the auction went tonight though since I stayed home while Ginger went to it, but she didn't end up getting home until after midnight so I guess it was a popular event.
Death in the comic book world is a revolving door. Eventually all characters end up stagnating, or if they experience and any significant character development and changes those changes eventually get removed or wiped out. Death in comics has been used often as a way of generating interest in the hopes of increasing sales. In the old days those particular comics would become more valuable and collectors would want them because they chronicled significant events. The problem is that you kill off enough characters and suddenly there aren't any toys left to play with. This was particularly the case with villains. You standard villain would get defeated and often "appear" to die, only to pop back up a year or so later with some whacked out explanation of why they really didn't die. 
With the heroes though a death has seemed to carry more weight. Because if a hero dies usually it's involving some heroic sacrifice saving others, and the more lives saved the bigger the sacrifice. So having heroes return after a death typically cheapens the story where the death occurred. As such hero deaths were more permanent. This even allowed the companies to create legacy heroes that would take up the name of the fallen hero, so that way the hero remains active (which means the parent company maintains the trademark) and it honors the fallen hero. These days though more and more of the hero deaths are simply being overturned. 
Joss Whedon a couple years ago brought back Colossus (he had sacrificed himself to save all mutants from a deadly virus, although when he came back no real explanation was given of how he had survived). Green Lantern went nuts and killed millions before eventually being killed by Green Arrow. This was done because sales on Lantern's comic were tanking and this was a way to bring in a new guy to be Green Lantern. Recently they brought Lantern back through some crazy explanation of he had been possessed (and to make it fair they had the new guy get possessed and go on a killing spree also, sort of a we can't have the newer guy look better than the original). Green Arrow died and came back. So did Superman. Supergirl died and was erased from the universe back in the 80s only to come back about three or four years ago. Basically these days there's the feeling that no story has any lasting repercussions. 
That said, there were some characters that were deemed untouchable when it came to being dead. In Spider-Man's world that was Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacy and the Green Goblin. In Batman's world it was Jason Todd (the replacement Robin that DC had a 900 phone in vote to kill off back in the 80s). For Captain America it was his sidekick Bucky who had been blown up (in the 40s) by saving Cap and preventing the German's from launching a missile destined for America. Of those Green Goblin came back about ten years ago and recently Bucky has come back and so has Jason Todd. So I don't know why I'm surprised to learn that they're now bringing back Barry Allen (he's the Flash in case you didn't know) who died 23 years ago sacrificing himself to save the entire universe (no small feat). At this point I don't think there's any hero dead that hasn't come back. It's impressive that they've managed to created a world in which death has no lasting consequences and is simply something that affects people like the common cold. "Hey Lobsterman, I haven't seen you in a couple years, what you been up to?" "I was dead, but I got better."
