X-men titles are overcrowded with mutants, so you can off them quite easy without consequences. Although i miss that fuzzy bastard.. Cosmic Marvel on the other side. (From Annihilation and so.) handled quite well deaths and returns creating quite an epic saga. It depends on the story if a death is meaningful.

Edit: Heroes are owned by the companies , not their creators. And just read Death of Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin or Silver Surfer:Reqviem to see how death can forward good stories.

In the case of X-men, it does feel like they kill for the sake of the story not because it matters. In exchange for some of the best characters X-men has ever received (some worthy of actually being called heroes) we get a reject character by Whedon, a Wolverine ripoff without male reproductive organs (aka Murder Girl) and countless other useless 'kids'.

In Cosmic, I'm not just disappointed by the choice of deaths they have done but the number is so vast, it's starting to get silly. Moondragon died only to come back to life to see her girlfriend die too, I mean come on. 

Stories around death can be great and if written well and their sacrifice just then I'm all for it but the current climate of deaths is not something I approve of.

I don't know, I liked the Moondragon/Martyr storyline. It did flex their character a besided the "obligatory lesbian superheroines" that every comic company owns. And the whole point of Guardians of the Galaxy was that when c-list superheroes tackle Cosmic threats, death is on the table every moment. Otherwise those characters would have remained forgotten in obscurity.

Moondragon was always a popular extra character to include in books and Silver Surfer, while not big enough to hold his own book nowadays, is still huge and a true Marvel powerhouse. Many of those characters were once A List, yet I feel they've been relegated to one off yearly specials away from their usual connections with it's own disconnection to Marvel Earth. As though the earth based characters care little for their friends out in the cosmos. Xavier being a very obvious one.

You do seem to know more about the cosmic events then me, I only having read Annihilation (not conquest) but I heard about goings on in the books. The lastest one being very odd in my mind, not knowing what occured obviously.

There was a scene in Nova (the series) where he returns to Earth after the Annihlation War and Tony Stark tries to make him a registered hero. They talk, and Tony says he heard vaguely something about the event, because he had Civil War (the fight between superheroes) to deal with. Nova rips him a new one that millions have died and he only "heard" about it? No wonder everybody wants to invade Earth, humans are Jackasses.

he was presumed dead at the end of the original series and ultimatum but was revealed alive in another series.

Optimus Prime's death made me sad.

Then angry that the GI Joe movie didn't come out first.

Duke dieng made WAY more story sense then Optimus Prime... had they reversed in order, chances are Prime would of lived since Duke survived only thanks to the death of Prime.

Also, the occasional Anime death makes me sad.  Like the Dad in Deathnote, and there was another Anime I was real angry at that right at the end seemed to kill off a bunch of people I liked for no reason.  Cripes I can't quite remember the name of it though because a lot of anime's blur together.  Hughes from Full Metal Alchemist.

American Cartoons, not so much because they rarely kill people, and with comics... people ALWAYS come back.

With the exception of like.. Lian Harper... who I half feel was killed off simply because it was starting to get inconvient when she eventually had to grow up, and it screws with the timelines.

It's why i'm sad the Ultimate universe stalled, as much as I wasn't really a fan.

It was great when DC brought back the "Golden Age" characters during the "Silver Age" because they had Silver age characters... which meant anything could happen to the Golden age characters... and it'd stick!

Bruce Wayne died... and that was it.  Dick took over...  and that was it.  There was Silver age Batman, so Golden Age Batman was fine.

I feel that's how comic books should work honestly... you develop your characters... the results are real, and then 10-20 years down the line, create a second "reboot" universe.   Then 10-20 years later create another reboot universe and retire the  classic universe... since all the collectors of that universe will be like... 70 anyway.

As it is, when I do spend money to read comics, I almost always get What-Ifs, Alternate Universe stories and "Small" books like the Deadshot book and Secret Six... because it's less likely stuff will get retconned and they're more willing to make real changes cause the editors don't give a damn.

I don't think Duke's death would have made that much of a difference. He was in no way popular as Prime. GODAMMIT HOTROD!

Im not too in to comics...but yeah, whenever I see a superhero, or super villain die, its pretty sad.