Before "killing" Carol (and no, I don't think we're really supposed to think she's dead), there was a flashback issue in which she's tortured brutally, ON PANEL. And not a sanitized "we can't see what's happening to her because the torturer's body is blocking it" sort of thing, either. Torture porn. That's a lot worse than replacing her with Sofen.

To be fair, Marvel replaced one She-Hulk with another book that has frankly more focus by a good writer.

#1: I admit to not being able to pay attention to the final Carol arc.

#2: I would not characterize Savage She-Hulk as good, or focused. There's too much flopping back and forth between here-and-now and there-and-then to be "focused".

Let's not forget Marvel canceling Spider-Girl, which had earned itself a small but very dependable readership.

With those plus non-female-character related cancellations like Captain Britain and MI-13, and I'm pretty sure Marvel doesn't want my business. I'm reading Hercules, a couple Matt Fraction books, X-Factor, and Agents of Atlas, but that's about it. Lowest number of Marvel books on my pull since they hit the depths of their crapiness back in the 90s.

For my money, the single greatest indictment against Marvel's reader retention strategy is that the Spider-Man comic strip just decided to respond to reader criticism by pressing the reset button on the whole Peter and MJU not married anymore thing. Or at least I hope so.

Re: Ms. Marvel

You're ignoring a specific aspect of the Ms. Marvel book: replacing Carol Danvers with Karla Sofen might just make Ms. Marvel interesting.

The comic strip never actually did anything like the Satanic Divorce. It just, after as much hype as a newspaper comic strip can manage these days, did a one-off flashback story taking place back in Peter's bachelor days, and, what with the glacial pace of the strip, it's just recently ended.

As far as BIRDS OF PREY goes, I lost interest in the series before they hit 100; frankly I think a big reason the book stayed around as long as it did was the name recongition of the shortlived TV show.
As for MS MARVEL, I read the 1st few issues but dropped it before HOUSE OF M, which was my first indication something was VERY WRONG with Marvel's treatment of their heroes. As for the idea of Moonstone being the new Ms. Marvel, the idea of a Sociopath posing as a hero CAN be interesting & I found Moonstone one of the most intriging characters in the original THUNDERBOLTS stories, but I just can't bring myself to read main universe Marvel comics right now (And besides, what Dave said about "Torture porn" just horrifies & disgusts me. What's happened to Marvel?)

Birds of Prey seemed to have become a mess post-Simone, with medicore fill-in writers coming back as regular writers after the medicore regular writers quit... Marginal books need top talent like Simone to succeed, not a revolving door. Really, it's Meltzer's fault for stealing Black Canary and Simone's interest being killed as a result.

I'm with Andrew Burton-- a stealth Moonstone on-going is interesting, moreso than Carol Danvers, and I like Carol. The whole "dead in her own title while appearing in Avengers" thing is confusing though. Did that arc take place post-what we've seen in New Avengers so far? Or is Carol Danvers just alive again with no explanation?

Kevin Hawkins-- the current Ms. Marvel series spun out of House of M, so that statement is obviously false.

Wait, wasn't Ms Marvel a spinoff of "House of M"?

I didn't THINK MS. MARVEL was a spinoff of HOUSE OF M; I recall it coming out close to the same time, but in the issues I read I don't remember any reference to HOUSE OF M. But if it was, i'm very sorry for the confusion; chalk it up to a sometimes faulty memory on my part.

Ms. Marvel was spun out of House of M in the same way that Agents of Atlas spun out of Secret Invasion - the series had its origins in it, but then left that idea behind very quickly.

In the House of M, Carol Danvers was Captain Marvel, THE greatest superhero in the world. When she came back to the real world, she went back to her lacklustre life. The first few issues of Ms. Marvel had the continuing story arc of her dream to be the Best of the Best.

As for the most recent Ms. Marvel issue, I really like it. I don't see why it couldn't have been done with Carol in the lead role

Stubbleupdate-- that's not quite right. Danvers's desire to be the best of the best was the driving force for the series until the death storyline, and what made it semi-interesting was how she kept failing to live up that ideal, time and again, from her ill-fated encounter with the Brood early, to her poor record as head of an elite SHIELD unit, to her temporary success against the Skrulls.

Also, Agents of Atlas did not spin at all out of Secret Invasion; the series picks up strands from the mini-series that came out several years ago. It happened to launch during Dark Reign, but the series actually has nothing to do with that at its core.