No, i know exactly what you mean Dread. In my humble opinion, i think whats happening is that the publishers are very aware that comics are a dying a breed so the best thing to do in their eyes is to take what they can get and milk the hell out of what they can. If there ever is a decent Daredevil movie down the road, you can bet your ass DD will get 3 books. If the FF4 film franchise ever gets its act together, there will absolutely be four FF4 books. Its all about milking the product for a quick buck.
Marvel keeps insisting that Deadpool's popularity has multiplied ten-fold since Wolverine Origins and thus why we have so many Deadpool books....i call total BS on that. I could totally be wrong but i have a very hard time believing Deadpool's books sell SO well that he warrants 5 ongoings. They're hoping that if they throw enough Deadpool in our face then eventually we'll buy all his books. I'd love for somebody to show me the sales on his books. Oversaturation is never a good thing, even in terms of sales. The more people get of something the less the want it, law of diminishing returns, its Economics 101. Didnt work in the 90's and it wont work now.
My personal favorite book at Marvel is Daredevil and has been for years because its always been ONE book, one direction, one character narrative journey. It always keeps me wanting more because i only get a little bit of it at a time. If DD had 3 books a month with three different story directions, sure it'd be cool at first, but then after a few months i'd be burned out from so many DD, that i'd probably stop buying his books all together. Thats whats happening to alot of franchises as we speak and its killing the industry.
I know that comic publishers are trying to maintain the habits of fans, but the article I linked to actually has some good examples of why what they are doing kind of backfires often in real life. I am aware that movies do dictate what characters get how many books, and it is a mistake.
Imagine a fan walks into a store after seeing IRON MAN 2 and just wants to try the comic. That alone becomes an adventure in choice selection between ongoings, mini's, one shots, and trades. He needs a store clerk to navigate as if he is installing a second hand appliance in Mandarin. This is really not a way to win a fan. It even frustrates long term ones. Which Iron Man books matter, and which are junk? Does the junk really have to be there?
In the message board for that article, a few fans ask the retailer who wrote it why he doesn't simply "not order" small titles from the Big Two that he *knows* will go nowhere and than the fans will eventually abandon. The response was one never really knows what the fans will stick with or abandon short term, and that most fans *expect* a shop to have at least some of everything every week, or they may consider it "too small" and head for a competitor. And frankly Marvel and DC know this, know that retailers will order "some" of EVERYTHING they put out, and so they may be intentionally flooding the market.
Say you want to read about the X-Men. Trying to figure out which of the 3-6 X-Men books (not counting the spin off's) is best for you and your taste alone is a whole conversation, isn't it? And that has become a problem, especially in an era of $4 cover price and less consumer spending power, and more media distractions like video games and Internet that just didn't exist in 2000 even as they do now.
The irony is even Image is getting back into the game. INVINCIBLE is very slowly spawning spin-off's. So far they have been mini's, but so far they won't be.
The thing about on/off weeks in the article Dread linked hit home; when I was any kind of regular reader I was perpetually going "GUARDIANS NOVA DARKHAWK HERCULES DETECTIVE COMICS AUGH **** YES" and then the next week / 2 / 3 "Well um I guess Outsiders is this week, I probably won't actually get cancer from reading that?"
It does get annoying when one week I may only need $10 for comics and then another I need $30-$35. And that buys you less books than it used to with $4 titles, even with my shop's 10% discount on all comics over $15.
On the plus side, the comic shop of mine that offers the 10% discount, a 3 store chain, requires a mass transit ride to get to, so if the 10% discount doesn't make up for the $2.25 fare price, it isn't worth it. Fortunately I live in an area of Brooklyn that does still technically have a comic shop within walking distance. It is about 1-2 miles, but still walking distance (15-20 minutes each way on foot). Many other places are not as fortunate.
There are actually some months where an even amount of comics come out every week, but they usually average maybe 1-3 out of 12.
