Currently, alas, we are deep into a period of pandering worse than any I have ever known, or any I have read or heard about from before my time in the Business. Pandering to the "collectors". Pandering to the aging demographic. Thus ^^***** produces books no 12 year old would ever want to read, and DC churns out rehashes of 20 year old "event" comics. This is the future? Sure, if the future is going to be very, very short.

The marketplace -- the fans -- have increasingly turned their backs on other genres, however. And, as many of those fans have become retailers who will not even consider ordering books that are not "hot" or in some other way fitting their narrow perception of what comics should be, the door has swung even more toward the "closed" position. When a paying customer can be told "We don't order So-and-so -- his stuff doesn't sell," you know the industry is in trouble.

JB reminded to me some of the saddest ideas from the '70s. Sigh.

I was thinking to them in these days, while re-reading MARVEL TEAM UP Vol. I... In the 1970s Marvel tried to hook new readers with kung fu heroes (Sons of tiger, Daughters of Dragon, Shang Chi and my loved Iron Fist), horror characters (Dracula, Blade...), disco characters (Dazzler and that Hypno Hustler jerk... My favorite "trash villain"), a guy with a flying skateboard, too (Rocket Racer). But I suppose we have been lucky: there wasn't a sensational fresbee man.

It seemed that everything was considered popular in movies or tv should appear in comics, too. And sometimes the results were really ridicolous, in my opinion!
Dazzler was a good character (and later in UNCANNT X-MEN she had good exploits), but she had rollers and a ball-necklace... Maybe in a disco room she could be cool, but in a superhero comic she seemed so out of her place.
JB, If I recall correctly Dazzler first appeared during the Dark Phoenix saga, so you first drawn her. Did you create her look?*

*The answer could be "Yes, I created that ridicolous look" and this would be one of my worst gaffes ever...!

Still plenty of the greats alive and kicking somewhere. Just saw Sal Buscema at the convention in NOVA. He strolled in looking like Kirk Douglas in sunglasses, healthy enough to kick the arse of every fanboy in the room. This guy's not doing anything in the industry? Even if he doesn't want to, somebody should be begging.

If the big companies are about pandering, there seems to be a real interest among comics readers in their 30s for comics as they remember them. Why not just hire the aging guys to produce some stand-alone or mini-series type works that don't fall into continuity? Just dig them all out, Colan, Ditko, Buscema, Steranko, Golden, Rogers and hook them up with Thomas, Wolfman, Gerber, Byrne (if he doesn't draw it himself), Stern, even Miller and the inkers like Sinnott and Austin and produce the comics as they understand them to be? How does this not work? Who would have a problem with this? I find it impossible to believe there isn't interest in these creators and their particular style of comics. With all the homage stuff going on around comics and how enthused the online reviewers get when something "reminds" them of when they first started reading comics, I'd think this would not cause the companies to hemmorhage any more money than they already do on useless event crap.