Comics Could Go Mass Market with Disney-Marvel

[Max Shrek]

simple enough for a child to understand, but complicated enough for an older person to get.

Douglas Adams once said, while working on Doctor Who, his goal was to make it complicated enough to keep a child interested, but simple enough for adults to understand. And it's so true, and somehow ties into what you were saying in your other paragraph, it's adults who stress over things and want clear and defined explanations; kids can take complex material and work with it, filling in the blanks with their imagination. In exactly the same way, as you said, the MA line isn't letting them.

Similarly, Marvel needs to stop pandering to the fanboy. Period. Stick in a few references and they'll be happy. Morrison said the exact same thing when starting up New X-Men, but it, unfortunately, didn't work because he was the only one (and I don't think he went far enough, much as I love his run, to truly make it newbie accessible). But, while a different medium, the new series of Doctor Who has shown exactly how it's done. Smart, intelligent, contemporary drama; kids love it, adults love it, it breaks rating records in the UK, wins BAFTA nominations and the fanboys are happy because the monsters in an episode are from a 1960s story. Modern storytelling that is worried about telling a good story plain and simple, and then maybe goes "We can use this old villain," instead of first wondering "What can we do to get the fanboys excited/riled up?! Bring back this guy, kill off this guy, retcon this convoluted power explanation!" Kids (and to some extent, but less so, adults) are clever; they can read "part 3 of a face-melting continuity fest" and pick up quickly and get the emotions out of it... if it's written well. The problem is so often it's not, it's written just for the aging male group who sucks up Fantastic Four every month just to see if Sue Storm'll ever become Malice again.