Well, Gwen Stacy's death isn't an example of the bad guy winning, since the Goblin meets his fate soonafter.

A better argument would be the death of the Doom Patrol, where the bad guys really won. The DP was dead for half a decade, and Wolfman/Perez had to write a revenge story to bring the bad guys to justice a good decade after the original DP perished.

Gwen Stacy returned like eight issues later or something, can't recall.

The Elektra thing, within the context of the grim world of human slime, degradation, drugs, and intense violence Frank Miller instituted, changed the whole audience for comics by changing the language of comic book storytelling. I saw Elektra skewered when I was about 12 years old, only a year or more removed from Phoenix's disintegration in X-MEN. Which could also be the Beginning of Grim/Gritty, but Phoenix's death didn't invite a new visual language to be formed around it.

Elektra, and the style of Miller's work (with no small amount of help from the great Klaus Jansen, whom no one credits for that unique visual look), concretized the grit so well that you had to wash your hands after reading the mag. Elektra's death, so lovingly supported by Miller's visuals and story, simply broke the mold. Comic books were never, ever the same after that.

Then couldn't we say it really began with the death of Gwen Stacy?

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It goes back further than that. "Grim and Gritty" (which Dave Gibbons has aptly dubbed "Glum") began with the "relevant" comics of the early Seventies. GREEN LANTERN & GREEN ARROW led the way -- and suddenly everyone wanted to pile onto that particular bandwagon. Of course, there were two things they seemed to overlook. Very few of them were anywhere near as good as Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, so what we got was a mere surface-skimming of what they were doing --- and, of course, GL/GA was CANCELED! The majority of the audience didn't WANT their comics "relevant" or "grim and gritty".

Yoooooooo, here is our boy Frank Robbins! House of Mystery 241, page 3, panel 3. Check the beauty of that brush work! Yeehah!

The GA/GL stories and relevancy is only the seeding wherein Glumness began, certainly.

But when looking for the No Turning Back point, it starts and ends with Frank Miller.

One of the best of the Heap variations, I think.

Frankly, this is the best "WW" design I've ever seen.

My intro to a very cool character.