It could be argued - and, yes, I'm arguing it, but I'm not sure what my view might be tomorrow - that the point at which a character is "right" is the point at which that character's commercial success peaks. That would mean current Wolverine (which I find distasteful, but is more successful commercially than at any other time), and perhaps ''70s Spider-Man. Of course you never know whether the character's commercial peak might be next year, and you're going in the right direction. However, I think when you have your character as successful as Spidey was in, say, 1974, you need to recognise that that's about as big as the character's going to get in terms of development, and you tell stories about THAT character, for as long as you can. It's not accidental that the movie Spider-Man is closer to the '60s or '70s versions than the current: it's because that's when the character was most commercially appropriate.

I don't think society itself needs a lot of character development in superheroes: we can still read and enjoy the Essentials, and the animated series is more ''70s than anything. Ageing readers who require development are irrelevant, because the readership has to revolve. The original superhero comics readers are all dead now.

IMP.

CrossGen is an interesting question. I never bought a CrossGen comic while the company existed, put off by the generic covers (a problem with the whole industry, but where I might buy a Spider-Man issue with a generic cover because I know who Spider-Man is, the same doesn't apply to Sojourn) and, frankly, some Godawful titles. Recently I've discovered and bought loads, because behind those generic covers and Godawful titles are some beautiful and often well-written comics.

So for me, story structure and series length weren't the issues: I never got inside to find that out.

IMP.

If I'm reading you correctly Ian, I'm not sure I'd agree with that. With any serialised media, the impulse consumers who only catch an episode every once in a while are crucially important. I think a lot of comics publishers would do well with focusing more on that audience rather than just the regular readers.

Exactly -- because they have the potential of becoming repeat customers.

So after the first five years, you turn Coke into Beer Coke, then after five years Whisky Coke, then after another five Coffee Coke, then Orange Vitamin Coke, then your consumer dies.

OR you offer the occasional taste of those other flavours just for the niche, but you never, ever stop making Coke, for this generation of young people, then this one, then this one...

IMP.

"Sales were fine until the 90's gimmicks started. And now it seems to be Deja Vú all over again. The product is perfectly fine, their managers, not so much. "

I think again this is an oversimplification.  Agreeing or disagreeing with Joe Q et. al. and their merits as managers, there are larger issues.  And sales before those 90's gimmicks were NOT fine.  Unless you consider sales now to be "fine" then I guess they were fine.  But face it, a lot of money was made during that speculative rush, and one can only argue that they killed the goose, but you can;t argue there weren't a lot of golden eggs.

"Dark Horse is still selling finite series comic books and they've been around for 20 years now.  Now maybe you can attribute some of that to Hellboy and Sin City, but in the early days they grabbed Star Wars, Aliens, Predator, etc...   and they still branch out with interesting new series like the recent Samurai and Conan. "

Only proving my point that one or another specific approach is not going to always work. 

"by that time the company was headed down the proverbial shitter and I didn't want to climb aboard a sinking ship, to mix my metaphors."

Don't blame you, and you're talking to a guy that almost worked for them just before Bart Sears exited.  It's hard to invest in a universe of characters when you feel they might be gone in 6 months.

"Not customers, then. The requirements of the consumer who checks back in every so often, when you're producing a monthly periodical, are, functionally, irrelevant."

Not when you think thos people checking could POTENTIALLY be customers, depending on what they find when they "check in".

"All well and good for current buyers/readers, but what about new readers?  "

Like any product, it's up to good marketing to steer consumers to the product that will most likely fulfill their need. 

" that the point at which a character is "right" is the point at which that character's commercial success peaks. "

I know where you're coming from but I would dare to say that it is this type of thinking that is almost the primary source of all problem with all media everywhere: the idea that once you have a hit, you repeat the surface characteristics of it over and over again.  Lookit how they constantly tried to repeat the formula of Star Trek II to no avail.  Instead of saying, hey let's have an angry villain and a space battle, they should have said, let's frame a conflict with some interesting context with the characters.  In other words, Wrath of Khan didn't work because of it's surface elements, but because of the underlying layer of gripping storytelling.

You know, now when I think about it, the real problem with art in commerce is that is a business imperitive to make sure that every product put out meets a predictable level of success.  But any succesful artist worth his salt knows that great art almost invariably requires risk, and that means that unless you're trying something that may f*ck up, you're not really trying.  But this thinking is antithetical to business marketing.

"So after the first five years, you turn Coke into Beer Coke, then after five years Whisky Coke, then after another five Coffee Coke, then Orange Vitamin Coke, then your consumer dies."

I don't think that's what he's saying Ian.  If I read him right, what he's saying is that...let's say you have an audience of 100 people, 80 of which like a certain thing, so you do that thing, and now you have 80 people.  Now 60 of that 80 like something else, so instead of trying to BROADEN your audience, you concentrate on only those 60.  Why not?  Theyr're the majority, no?  No now you have 60 instead of 100.  And now 40 like something, 20 don't...etc.

And hey, if Coke made Whiskey Coke or Beer Coke, and people BOUGHT them all, what's wrong with that?

In fact, everyone here seems to think that New Coke is a perfect example of how experimenting with formula doesn't work and fail to recognize the succes of Diet Coke and Cherry Coke.  ALTERNATIVES that fill the needs of different customers. 

From the link:

QUOTE: So who are comics written for today?  And if our characters can't age with us, and the stories often aren't appropriate for readers younger than us, what does that leave?  It seems to me that both audiences are dissatisfied.

This seems pretty important. Instead of discussing what's been done in the past, I wonder what the companies should do about it? Pandering to old readers isn't good for the future. Trying to please both the older and younger crowd could mean that both groups will find stuff they don't like. And is there enough interested people out there to completely disregard most of todays older readers?

"They were better than they are now... "

They were still crappy.