Killed the most characters

[jack]

Ptc joked that authors kill off an average of three major characters -- most kill none, but one is George Martin :)

Which got me thinking, which author has really killed off the most characters? I want to say "named" rather than "major" so it's more objective. In which case you maybe want two categories: authors who kill off a whole world at the end of a book; and authors who kill off the most named characters -- but still have plot going on afterwards.

Who are the obvious candidates?

ETA: With thanks to Mark for the link and to seekingferrett, the current frontrunner is the Illiad with 254 :)
ETA: Apparently GoT beats it out with 293!

Comments

[sfred]

I'm not counting the names, but CS Lewis kills almost everyone in The Last Battle.

[damerell]

I think it doesn't count if they get better (not least because otherwise GRRM's narrative trick of "killing" the viewpoint character at the end of a chapter might double his score).

I'm going for _Lone Wolf and Cub_; 28 volumes, 8,700 pages, and almost all of it is of the form "Ogami Itto is employed to assassinate some people / some people come to kill him; he shivs them up". Jack, do comics count?