I bought 18 monthly comics in January. Of those 18:
8 were limited series;
4 were new ongoing series;
6 were older ongoing series.
I arbitrarily defined "new" as "on issue 6 or less"; if you set that number at, say, 12, then the numbers for the older series would be even lower. And one of those new monthlies was JLA Classified, which I'll probably treat as a series of miniseries, only buying certain arcs.
Some of the older ongoing series are, to be frank, a pretty tired bunch, with a good series facing cancellation (Human Target) and a couple of underperformers (Y the Last Man and JLA, which I just started buying again for this arc, apparently because I am fascinated by Qwardian politics and I don't actually like reading about the JLA).
JLA has reached issue #110; Y is at #30; nothing else has cracked the two-year mark.
What's most interesting, though, is that the best work is coming out of the limited series - Adam Strange, Deadshot, The Question, and of course We3. The final issue of Mark Millar's Wanted does its damnedest to lower the curve, but still. Most of the mainstream work that catches my interest right now is either conceived as a standalone story or, perhaps, is deemed unable to support an ongoing series. And most of the monthly series I do enjoy have been launched within the last two years (and some won't live to see the two-year mark).
It looks like DC and Marvel either can't keep their long-running franchises going without frequent restarts, or they can't interest me in their current creative approaches on them at all.
What do your current buying habits tell you about your relationship to the comics industry? (And if your current buying habits are "I stopped buying comics the day they turned Hank Hall into Extant but I'm still bitching about them," please spare us...)
Posted by Marc at February 11, 2005 6:04 PM