Erm, what with War Games, Identity Crisis, Countdown, some of the Prelude miniseries, and Infinite Crisis #1, I'd say DC should let the comics company without "cheap shock value" be the first to throw stones.

Wait, no, my mistake. Those were all ingenious, well-crafted stories that showed a deep understanding, love, and respect for all the characters involved...

I realise you're just trying to beef up your point, but for a lot of us, right now really isn't a good time for you to be poking at Marvel (in a book written by Millar, of all people) for doing mean things to its characters, with the implication that DC would never do something like that. I'm a fan of your blog and of quite a few DC comics (though not as many recently) and I'm not criticising you, but I just felt I had to say something. ... Or rather, I wanted to say something.
 

What silla said. The DCU isn't hurting for lack of gratuitously-whacked supporting characters these days. Brain of Beetle, anyone?

Besides, you can't even count the Ultimates. Fretting over what happens to Ultimate Jarvis is like being shocked that they bumped off Spider-man in a What If? book, or complaining about how they tortured Evil Chekov in the mirror universe.
 

Ultimates #9 was awesome. Mockage will not be tolerated. That is all, Sword of Big Monkey.