Robert Oren: i saw so many people worry about what cover to buy instead of caring about what's inside that book. it wasn't a matter of what touched your heart it was more of a matter of value and greed!!!!!!!

I managed to avoid this problem entirely, mostly due to the fact that I was only making $5.50 an hour in 1992 and making a $400 a month rent payment on my apartment.  I couldn't afford to be a speculator, even if I had wanted to.  Luckily, I also had the foresight to realize that if everyone was buying that foil-stamped embossed die-cut glow-in-the-dark cover, who was going to want one two years down the road?

Sad thing there is that while Shooter was busy calling me a quisling, his immediate superior, Mike Hobson, wished me luck on SUPERMAN, saying (wisely) that anything that was good for DC could not help but be good for the industry as a whole.

Let's go one further if i may .....and maybe i'm wrong but this only my opinion.

it seems every time someone writes an alright story ...he becomes the comic god for that week and is automatically put on a top book.then when they are not hot anymore the next redhot guy pops in. it seems to me that people never stay long? never create a history with a book ! Now i know kirby or J.B. runs are long dead.but please at least give someone a chance to get a good feel for the book!!

Remember when Marvel and DC were the pathfinders, not the panderers?

Like it or not, the only book lately with that kind of staying power has been Ultimate Spider-man.  About to be 100 issues of the same writer and artist....at least it has that going for it.... 

As far as talking about the hot flavor of the week, Wizard seems to attempt to dictate this every month, which would be a good reason why Mr. Dixon's reason for putting Wizard on there would be logical.  But the sad thing to me is people like Chuck Dixon, for which I own and have read every issue of Nightwing because of him and him alone, which got me reading DC are no longer getting the work they deserve in the comics industry.  The fact that the truly great writers and artists (Roger Stern included) are not mainstays anymore is one of the problems.  For every person reading and writing Wizard that sings Bendis' praise every month, new comic readers reading the magazine as gospel will never know who Chuck Dixon and Roger Stern are.  And of course they will know JB is a jerk, because that is what is preached.

Words of iron.

But what baffles me is that these "hot" talents are given assignments based on hype rather than performance. Creators whose books are selling steady if not spectacularly are removed so that sexy new talent can take over. More often than not the sales fall below that of the former less-sexy team and never again rise to their former numbers no matter how many rounds of musical creative chairs are played. But those replacement guys maintain their gloss and keep getting books until Gareb Shamus no longer wants to party with them.

And if all of this star-chasing (to clean up the term) resulted in higher sales I'd just admit I'm clueless and go away. But each month's figures prove me right. It's a slow downward spiral but its ever downward.

In the end, it shows a lack of any kind of leadership and chases off good talent.

I was told recently that to get more work at a major company I would have to "party with" and "buddy up" to certain people.

That ain't me, babe.