This is chiefly an issue of the "Big Two", and largely has to do with changing of writers. When assignments like X-Men, Superman, Batman, etc, get passed around from desk to desk in order to get a fresh take, the new writers inevitably have other characters they want to work with who somebody else only saw value in killing.
When you get out of the realms of Marvel and DC, you start to come into more Creator Controlled titles. Then, since the writing stays on a single track, the deaths are able to be permanent. When somebody gets killed in Walking Dead, it's because Kirkman wants them dead. Sure, it could turn out that the Woodbury survivors were able to fend off the zombies after the prison was overrun, and that they patched up Lori and it turned out she hadn't been killed by the back-shot. But Kirkman won't do it. Why? Because if he wanted Lori and Rick to be together, he wouldn't have killed her in the first place.
IDW's run of GIJoe has been sensational, killing off some of the big names that I remember from my youth. Starting at the top, you've got the death of Cobra friggin' Commander. Even with all the science and cloning and weird Serpentor religion stuff, they just say "Stuff it" and leave him dead, with somebody else taking over Cobra after he's gone. But on top of that, we see the death of Chuckles, Breaker, Barbecue, Jinx, and Xamot (half of the Crimson Twins). And none of them are coming back either. In GIJoe, when you're dead you're dead.
It's easy to get frustrated watching how Spiderman, Batman, and Superman have characters in their comics pop back to life whenever some writer feels like, whether or not it makes sense. But not all comics are that way. When Huey kicked A-Train's head off in The Boys, you knew A-Train absolutely was not coming back. It just takes a writer with a clear vision of where they're going in the future.
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