"I think, besides the content of the comics being inappropriate for kids to read, the price of them isn't kid friendly. What kid can pay $3.99 for a single comicbook?? "

I know that seems high to those of us who remember paying $1.50 or less for a comic. But it's not a huge amount when you compare it to most of the other forms of entertainment kids enjoy these days.

Seeing a movie in the theater will usually cost at least $7.00 (even the matinee price is going to be around $4.00). The average cost of a movie or video game rental is usually anywhere from $3.00 to $5.00.  Even combo meals at most of the fast food spots are going to be more than $3.99.

Pound for pound, I think comics are still a fairly cheap form of entertainment. 

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In terms of actual STORY content, per issue, most modern comics are not as "dense" as those six or eight page stories that were the industry standard thru much of the Golden and SIlver Ages. As I have said many time, when I was gearing up to do MAN OF STEEL, and later in preparation for doing the first GENERATIONS, I reread a bunch of those old stories, and was amazed by how much was crammed into six pages -- without seeming crammed at all!

By the time I got into the Biz, there were very few such stories (WHEELIE AND THE CHOPPER BUNCH was the only book I worked regularly on where each issue contained more than one story) but even so we tried to fill the 22 pages each month with as much STORY as we could, even if it was only a "chapter" of a larger story.

I thought the nadir had been reached when ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN took six issues to reach the point Stan and Steve had reach in about as many pages, but it seems the bottom keeps dropping.

I think the 2.99 or 3.99 price point really hurts when it comes to the fact that each of those prices doesn't get you a full story anymore - just part one of six. 

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That's one of the key problems. Kids don't neccesarily have the money to follow every title they want to every month. That wasn't a problem back when comics contained a full story every issue. When I was a kid, the deal was that I'd go with my father to get the Sunday papers at the convenience store and he'd buy me 2 comics each week. Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America were my favorties and the two I made sure to get each issue of. On weeks when one of both of those didn't come out, I'd get something else, and I'd choose the other one based on the cover. That's how I sampled the X-Men, Avengers, Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Superman, Batman, the Hulk, and others. Many of those are titles I did try to follow steadily once I was a little older and had more money from taking care of the pool for my parents. The point is, I was willing to sample new titles because I was sure I'd get a full, entertaining story no matter what book I picked and that I'd become familiar with the characters from that one issue. I was never worried that I'd get a small fragment of a story or feel that I'd missed something because I hadn't read the previous year's worth of issues. Had comics been what they are now, with so little story in every issue, I would probably not have stayed with them and eventually started to follow more and more titles.

When I started doing NEXT MEN, I decided to treat it as a novel, which mean each issue would be a chapter, and expository "catch-up" copy was kept to a minimum. I wasn't "writing for the trade", as the idea of automatically collecting story arcs as trade paperbacks had not found its way fully into industry thinking yet. But I WAS writing with the idea that readers would, at some point, gather all the issues together and read them "all in one go". For this reason, I included a small "THE STORY SO FAR…" blurb on the inside front cover. There, I took my cue from the DAN DARE serials I loved as a kid, and kept my recap to a few pithy sentences. Something that would take less than a minute for a new reader to absorb before diving into the story.

But elsewhere, in the "regular" comics, I applied my usual rules. All the characters demonstrated some aspect of their powers (if they had any) and were called by several variants of their names (civilian and superhero) before the end of the issue. I took my cue there from the issues of FANTASTIC FOUR that had brought me into Marvel as a kid. There Jack always drew the characters using their powers -- even if this meant Johnny just standing around ablaze -- and Stan had everyone calling each other by a short list of names and nicknames that told us not only who they were, but their relationship to each other (a "little brother" from Sue to Johnny, an "old friend" from Reed to Ben, etc).

Comics were meant to be accessible to the widest possible range of readership. It is impossible to imagine Stan Lee saying, as a "current" writer has been quoted as saying, "If you don't already know this, why are you reading it?"

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That is precisely the attitude that used to dominate the fringes of fandom.

Unfortunately, as we drove aware the core, the fringes shrank inwards, and became the core!

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As indeed it did. Surveying the rules for writing a story for the Electric Company book, Roger Stern observed that it was all part of the dumbing down of America. While the EC book could have no long words, and often no more than five words per balloon, when Rog (and I) were kids of the target age, we were reading Superman comics, with words like "invulnerable" being tossed about merrily.

After seeing what we considered a rather pathetic appearance by Storm in the EC book, Chris Claremont and I, still on MARVEL TEAM-UP at the time, talked about doing the "real" story in our book.

Comics were meant to be accessible to the widest possible range of readership. It is impossible to imagine Stan Lee saying, as a "current" writer has been quoted as saying, "If you don't already know this, why are you reading it?"

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This seems to be an almost universal point with creators that were active before NuMarvel--every issue being a jumping on point.  The arrogance of the "current" fans turned pro is unbelievable, some of the readers as well.  I'm an experienced comic book reader and I found it daunting when trying to get back into the hobby after being out for 20 years.  I can imagine how an 8 year old would feel. 

I've heard current hipster readers say they don't want their panels cluttered with reference captions. Really?  You can't sacrifice a tiny portion of the panel for the benefit of a new reader?  And editorial caters to these douchebags?  A guy like Joe Quesada doesn't know better?  I don't know much about him, but a lot of the worst acts against comics (imo) happened on his watch.  Say what you will about Jim Shooter, I'm sure he was a handful to deal with, but the hipster-fanboys-turned-pro wouldn't be running the show under his watch.