(In a parallel problem, some of these same people also discovered a little legal loophole called "intent to use". Come up with a bunch of character names, file an "intent to use", and no one else can use those names until you release them.)

To boil everything I've been thinking about down to a handy sentence, I'd note the following: In a healthy comics marketplace, quality of product and regularity of publication are far more important than creator-name recognition.

Comics sold incredibly well for decades without anyone knowing much about who produced them. And while we think of the dawn of the Marvel Age as being creator-driven (and it was), it was the product that sold and not the names of the writers and artists. If Kirby as Kirby or Ditko as Ditko was the primary sales draw regardless of characters, then the New Gods, The Question and a host of others would have been massive successes right out of the gate.

I'm not saying creativity isn't important -- it's incredibly important. But the belief that names sold books regardless of content or character didn't firmly take hold until the 1980's, and it didn't become a self-fulfilling prophecy until the market stopped being healthy and started imploding at Warp 11 in the 1990's.

Take Neal Adams, for instance, an artist whose work I really enjoy. As a superstar artist in the early 1970's, he got the X-Men switched to reprints, Deadman cancelled and Green Lantern/Green Arrow cancelled. That's maybe the most important artist to come along since Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko!

Other worthy artists who I think, had they started in the late 1980's or early 1990's, would have been canonized as Talent That Will Drive Sales? P. Craig Russell -- Killraven cancelled. Barry Smith -- sales stay the same or even go up once he leaves Conan. Mike Kaluta -- lauded for a brief run on the Shadow and then a historical curiosity.

And I like all of those artists!

But until comic books implode to the point where Superfans outnumber casual readers, stars do not sell books simply on name and art recognition. Consistent, sustained quality can save a book or make one (the X-Men grow under Claremont/Cockrum and Claremont/Byrne), but once that quality is established, sales can chug along or even increase with a fairly wide range of talent.

But once the marketplace starts collapsing, the talent suddenly gets 'made' by the book and people start thinking that MacFarlane or Silvestri or Lee on their own can sell any book they're on. And the collector bubble fuels that belief as, in reality, casual readers flee the industry in droves.

I think my reasoning needs a bit of work. But I do know that the casual fans/readers I know never really noticed who was doing anything on a comic unless the work was really bad. Instead, they wanted to read an enjoyable issue of Iron Man or JLA or Batman or Avengers.

They didn't follow writers or artists from book to book, they picked up a title because it seemed interesting (say, Semper Fi, to use one example of a casual reader of my acquaintance).

But because comics promised entertainment on a schedule (like, say, TV), they did want those books to be there when they went to the store once a week or twice a month or whatever. To liken it to TV, once a network starts moving a show around a schedule -- or preempting it for weeks -- ratings almost inevitably start to drop. And I think comics worked exactly the same way for a long time without anyone realizing it because they always stayed on schedule.

I guess it was like hiding in plain sight!

Cheers, Jon

At least, not under the system of the time, where sales reports came in almost a year after the issues.* Thus, tho sales went up, that rise (as on X-MEN) did not show until after the book had been axed.


*Take a look at comicbook publishing in the Seventies. Notice how many titles last just eleven issues. That's why.

Todd McFarlane will burn in Hell. Even if I have to become a devout Christian to make sure it happens!

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But a Christian wouldn't want him to go to hell.

I'm mean....it's McFarlane and all, but I'm just sayin'........

I always wondered about the 11-issue thing.

I think my initial verb choice was suspect anyway -- Adams didn't get anything cancelled, but he didn't save them from cancellation, though obviously that was a product of how sales reporting worked as well.

Cheers, Jon