I read MI-13. Hell, I blogged about it. I just don't understand why people stop reading comics that are good. I blame Marvel's "only the event books are worth reading" tactic of marketing.
It isn't just Marvel; DC has been having those problems with their "mid-card" titles too. Many of the comics at the head of the Top 300 are selling well, and even some of the comics at the bottom of the Top 300 are selling well compared to prior years (the #300 book the last few months has averaged over 4k sales, which is more than the #300 from previous months or years). But it is maintaining those books from the Top 45-100 that is proving a struggle for both of the big two beyond 2 years.
Both Marvel and DC over the past 3-4 years have trained retailers and fans that a book that isn't fully engrained into what the entire line is doing is not worth bothering with for long, and it's impact on the line will be minimal. Marvel and DC of course will outright lie in adverts, claiming "every" book is special and wonderful and just as important as Bendis' NEW AVENGERS or Morrison's BATMAN for the respective universes, but neither retailers and readers are that gullible, especially in a weakening economy. But this was a problem before Dec. 2007 when the recession "officially" started. This has been a problem since, I would say, about 2004-2005. That was, at Marvel at least, the end of the Jemas era and when Joe Q restarted the summer event thing again with HOUSE OF M and so forth. While Marvel was right that neither WORLD WAR HULK or SECRET INVASION were as large as CIVIL WAR was, they still were bigger than, say, DISASSEMBLED or HOUSE OF M were.
In some ways serial TV shows face this same problem. If an episode doesn't matter to the overall arc of the season, is it usually dismissed as "filler", even if it happens to be entertaining unto itself. Most of them, though, don't ask for $3-$5 for story installments that last about 5-15 minutes per week, though.
Joe Quesada at the NYCC once dismissed a fan questioning him about the events by claiming, in so many words, "did you like it when NOTHING happened in comics?" Of course, that was him being a little sarcastic because he was EIC of Marvel for 3-4 years without relying on such huge events, so he knows how to do it to some degree (or at least, again, Jemas did). The irony is that events are a double edged sword. They edge up sales for the big titles, or the titles that "matter", and even occasionally even boost little books or at least lesson their decline for a month or two (even NEW WARRIORS saw a spike from their two SI issues). But those events never sustain sales for said non-big books. It's like Reaganomics; it allows the big boys to get bigger, but does virtually nothing for the smaller boys. If Marvel and DC had a year or two without big events, where books had to stand and fall on their own quality, where a book was hyped as being genuinely good rather than "we have a TV guy writing it!" or "a key rape sequence in the big event mini won't make sense without this vital installment!", maybe those mid-card titles would improve.
I don't see that happening right now, though. I believe Marvel & DC will stick to what they know or believe works and milk less fans for more money. And more Wolverine.
The problem with good but not "universe essential" books fading in sales is because the retailers and buyers are acting just as the Big Two have trained them to do for the last 2-3 years, and then when they see the downside, they can't imagine why. But, the notion of people doing something that seems brilliant now but never imagining any near future side effects is one of the Top 10 Human Causes of Worldwide Misery, and one cannot expect a small niche industry to be that different from wider society. Alas.
Still, CB&MI13 has editorial and critical support, so even if canceled, a relaunch is possible. I mean, look at AGENTS OF ATLAS. I cynically never expected that again, and I was wrong. Even WAR OF KINGS, to a small degree, was used to print another half-LONERS story because that had editorial support, too. So it happens.
