Yeah, yeah, Captain America is dead. As Agent Brand from Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men said about Jean Gray’s demise, which occurs about twice a year, “Yeah, that’ll last.” The editors at Marvel are already refusing to rule out a resurrection, which is the same as guaranteeing it. Even Aunt-Fucking-May can’t stay in the grave for longer than a few issues in the Marvel Universe; it’s a cheap and irritating gimmick, and the press shouldn’t feed the temptation to resort to it by reporting these storylines unless the editors are willing to swear on a stack of foil-embossed alternate #1 covers it’s for keeps. Normalizing resurrection drains all the narrative impact out of actually killing a major character. Batman’s guilt over the death of Jason Todd, for instance, had become an important and interesting part of the character’s psychology; resurrecting him as a cheesy villain/antihero dilutes that. Comics are fantasy, and that’s fine, but they’re also supposed to be compelling stories. That means major events should feel real even when the world in which they’re set isn’t.