For the life of me, when O'Neill and Adams first introduced the Lazarus Pit waaay back in 1969 or so I think they established that it only worked on the recently dead..before rigor, etc., set in.
Which made "sense." After all, how can the pit revive someone after their organs were removed for an autopsy, they've been pumped with formaldehyde and left to rot for several years?
Later, however, someone...I think Waid...decided to retcon the Pit so that someone could be rotting in the ground for decades and the pit would still work.
I never liked that. It made the Pit into a deus ex machina that could bring any one back at any time.
And this proves that.
