character deaths, s&d

The gratuitious killing off of characters is often mentioned as being one of the main flaws with spandex comics today, and though emotionally I'm totally with that, I sometimes wonder how justified it really is. On one hand, you'll get no argument from me that killing off characters is certainly a technique beloved by current comic hacks, used indiscriminately as a cheap shortcut to impact and pathos (rendered utterly meaningless, of course, due to the fact that they'll all be brought back from the dead sooner or later, anyway.) But on the other hand, I wonder if, with some characters, we would get angry if they're killed no matter how well it was handled from a storytelling pov. I mean, one thing about continuity-based artforms like comics (and tv!) is that you get a much bigger emotional attachment to the characters than you do when experiencing, say, a novel or a movie. Which is not to say that character deaths in those mediums can't be totally devastating, of course, but I think that with self-contained works, you sort of go in with the knowledge that basically anyone could die, and you're ok with that - I mean, they're all "dead" when the thing ends, anyway. But if it's a series (or, even worse, a sprawling UNIVERSE with decades of history), you get used to seeing the same faces, and develop a sort of attachment to them that you wouldn't otherwise get; so when they die you feel genuinley *betrayed*, because you're used to them being around, and now suddenly they're not. The recent slaughtering of JLI characters is perhaps the best example of what I'm talking about here, because that gang was just the epitome of *likeable*, characters that you just fall in love with and never want anything bad to happen to. I've not read "Infinite Identity Slay-A-Thon", but the mere idea of Blue Beetle or Sue Dibny getting axed filled me with instant outrage - and sure, part of it was due to what the Giffen/DeMatheis League symbolised, especially in relation to Grim&Gritty and all that, but part of it was also a very intuitive "wah, they killed my friends!" reaction.

Another way of putting this: no one ever sent hate letters to Peckinpah for killing off the Wild Bunch, but they do to Ron Marz and Joss Whedon. Is this *justified*? Should writers that work in serialized mediums, as a rule, take more care about whom they kill off than novelists or screenwriters do? What "makes" a good, non-exploitational death scene in comics? Is it even possible to acheive, considering the whole they'll-get-ressurected-anyway factor? And what're your "favourite" (most affecting, I guess) deaths in comix?