Trimming the fat

Am I the only one who thinks the model of Marvel giving everyone and their mothers books actually hurts the building ofthe Universe? DC too, for that matter. Let me explain, before you crucify me.

See, mos solo characters have a rogues gallery. Some sit at the top, with a huge one, filled with good and mediocre characters alike. Some sit at the middle, with a few good enough and a couple mediocre ones. Some barely have a gallery, and others do not even have one villain to show. Now that, cpupled with almost everyone having a monthly book, means that the same old villains do the same old things, in the same old stories. Characters don't advance or change, because as soon as they have gone through their 3 enemies, they get a crossover, an event, and the cycle begins anew.

Characters like Spider-Man, with tons to choose from, don't suffer from that, but during the "4 monthlies at the same time" era, he was pretty darn near to it happening.

And apart from that, most books and characters are near identical. Leading to same old plots, same old circumstances, just with different costumes. Not to mention that some of them are simply not starring material.

What I propose is a smaller line, with larger rotating supporting casts, with bigger pools of characters, and less interaction, each title representing a corner. For example:

>Daredevil
Street, Pulpy stuff. Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, iron Fist, all of them can be used as supporting characters here. And all of the street villains could be added in this book, instead of Daredevil going through the same Kingpin-Bullseye-Elektra-Gladiator-Hand arc each time.

>Captain America
Falcon, Bucky, SHIELD, Punisher, Secret Warriors, etc go here. He gets HYDRA, Secret Empire, the WW2 foes, his Rogues, etc.

And so on and so forth. If Marvel were to do an Ultimate Reboot,I'd go with:

>Iron Man
Corporate/Tech
>Captain America
Espionage
>Thor
Mythology
>Daredevil
Street/Pulp
>Spider-Man
Slice of life/super-hero
>Guardians of the Galaxy
Cosmic/Space Opera
>Fantastic 4
Cosmic/Exploration
>Ghost Rider
Horror
>Doctor Strange
Supernatural/Fantasy
>X-Men
Mutants
>Wolverine
Mutant Black Ops

I'm just a fan of each book having a certain, and bigger pool to choose from, instead of title being essentially clones of one another, tackling the same stories over and over again.

I preffered the Ultimate Marvel/Current Valiant model, is what I'm trying to say.

Anthology titles are the way to go for the less well known characters.

I always wanted a streamline story about the fall of the Kingpin with Daredevil, Spider-man, Iron Fist, Cage and Moon Knight working together. I really like when they are all together. Maybe add in Shang Chi and Jessica Jones you could do a cool street story.

Or you could just skip all that and realize that, for Marvel at least, since 90% of all their heroes and villains live in the same general area the concept of a unique rogues gallery for its heroes is pretty silly.

If you don't want people to read about them, sure. Anthology titles have pretty terrible sales. The stealth mini format is better for lesser known characters than anthologies; at least with stealth minis they don't have to share page counts.

Dunno, I'm more of a fan of adding them as peripherals to other characters' books. For example, make Strange the magic book that deals with gods, beings and whatnot. Ad Scarlet Witch as a protege, and Quicksilver as her brother. Then you can bring in Agatha, Chthon and High Evolutionary, plus Bova and the Knights of Wundagore. Here, you've expanded the DS pool by a bit. Now bring in Mordered the Mystic and Doctor Druid. And so on and so forth. One the other hand, you can have GR as the Horror book, and throw Blade, Morbius, Diamon and Satana there. The book operates like early Hellblazer, with "monster of the month" issues, whereas Strange deals with Cosmic/Magic Forces/Gods.

If Marvel was going to end Ultimate, they should have given it an actual ending rather than fucking erasing it. Wouldn't it be swell if we had versions of these characters who had their stories told for ten years or so with a definitive beginning, middle and end?

The problem with that is you're running extremely bloated casts featuring characters that run different themes. Your Doctor Strange idea has a non-magical superhero and several that are only indirectly involved in the mystical side of Marvel. Your GR idea is a mix of religious horror, vampire fiction, and mad science.

No, you sound retarded and need to read more comics. Without D and F listers books, you won't have shit like and most of the great books DC has published, and would be stuck with mediocre dreck like Tomasi's Superman and Scott's Spider-Man.

>Tomasi's Superman
>Bad

Strong agree. At the very least, Marvel's insistence on making a new book for every new character without testing the waters first seems like a terrible idea.

They had the right idea with Deadpool and the Mercs for Money, but then they tried to spin all the characters out into their own solos WAY before they were ready.

>Baby's first capeshit
>not bad

>person has different opinion
>better call him retarded

Jonah Hex covers an entirely different niche, and thus can exist alongside Batman or JL or whatever. But do wereally need a Luke Cage book, an Iron Fist book, a Defenders book, a Punisher book (in the 616), etc, etc? Either trim the fat, or create different imprints. Put Frank and Ghost Rider on a MAX line, like DC's Vertigo. Put the X-Men in their own U. Just do something other than having 60 titles running at the same time, using the same villains and plots over and over again.

Yup. Does Miles add anything as a book?Spider-Gwen? Jessica Jones & Luke Cage? Some characters are clearly Supporting Cast material, and that's what they should remain, apart from a mini or two.

>But do wereally need a Luke Cage book, an Iron Fist book, a Defenders book, a Punisher book

You shouldn't have used four examples that differ widely in themes and subgenre. DC has dozens of Western characters with several sharing Hex's exact niche. There is a difference between saying that there shouldn't six Batman or Avengers titles and saying that every street level hero needs to be crammed into a single book.

>Am I the only one who thinks the model of Marvel giving everyone and their mothers books actually hurts the building ofthe Universe?

I agree, but I disagree about what would be the best alternative model. I would reccomend the Valiant model, with a smaller range of titles, but with a plan for the majority of titles to regularly conclude ( not cancelled, but finish stories) and rotate publication. It wopuld greatly cut down on dropped plotlines, would make comics much more accessible and would allow a wide range of characters to be featured without books excessively competing with each other.

Didn't they just kill half of their newly developed characters in one issue?

The books you mentioned are nothing alike. Current Iron Fist is nothing like Punisher. If anything DC and Marvel need to cut out 10 of the Bat books, superbooks, spider books, Avengers and JL. Most of these are just stretching their high selling IPs for more revenue and are the ones recycling the plot. I don't even remember the last time Batman or Spider-Man book was great, or the Superman or JL book was even worth reading. The best books in the last decade were smaller titles like Fury, Dial H, Vision, Omega men, Swamp Thing etc. Creators are allowed more freedom on these titles as opposed to A listers, which are strictly run by the editors.

Most heroes have shit rogues galleries. Only Batman, Superman and Spider-man can rotate them and still be fresh.

>I preffered the Ultimate Marvel/Current Valiant model, is what I'm trying to say.

I think that most of us prefer that, but they don't want to sell 11 series if they can do 50. Now, everything is about reaching the potential targets, and how having more lines open is "better" for the business.

Ultimate line was 99% shit. The quality doesn't depend on the character or rogues gallery, but on the writer, you dumb casual.

In the year 2017+, getting anybody to buy a comic book is pretty much a small miracle.
The industry has little interest in making fewer, better books, they want to maximize production.
Because the ugly truth is that there is a massive dissonance between what comics get critical praise and which are high sellers. Harley Quin outsells most of the DC books.

Bendis really is a nigger.