Andrew Farago wrote: Marvel's recent first issues have been pretty good about being fresh(ish) starts, haven't they?

Most of them, yeah, but they were also completely new creative teams going in fairly new directions.  (Daredevil is a decent example of that.)  Tom's comment (and mine) referred to the situations where a new #1 kept directions and creative teams in place.  Gillen's Uncanny X-Men, Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four, stuff like that.  It remains to be seen where Waid's Daredevil v.2 falls. 

Andrew Farago wrote: Is word-of-mouth on a long-running, high-numbered title viable these days?

Sure.  When people like what's going on in Batman, sales go up.  #1s will get you sales spikes, but the difference in sales between a v.4 #5 and a v.1 #630 is likely pretty negligible.  It's true that when Astonishing X-Men was the Lead X-Men book it sold the best out of all of them, but it's also true that Uncanny takes the top spot when it's considered to be the lead X-Men book.   

The books that suffer the most from high issue numbers tend to be the midlist titles.  People come and go to and from the big guns (Spider-Man, X-Men, etc.) all the time.  Characters like Hawkman, Firestorm, Luke Cage, She-Hulk, etc. tend to need a rest once in awhile.

Marc Woolman wrote: I hate the renumbering scheme, but Brevoort's response echoes what even JB has stated about other topics, such as unfaithful comic book-to-film adaptations, the only vote that counts, the only opinion that matters is the one made with your wallet.

The problem is that voting with your wallet isn't very nuanced.  It's not like they can tell the difference between someone buying a new #1 to try the book and an annoyed fan who is one relaunch away from ditching the book.  And that doesn't even get into creative, direction, etc.  And there's also the question of sales spikes vs. long term attrition.  People who get tired of the stunts and leave tend to be hidden by the spikes, or it's blamed on other factors. 

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I can't!! If we are going to apply significance to the numbering -- and, seriously, is there really a good reason to do so? -- a change in the creative team is among the worse reasons to renumber. When I started as writer/artist on FF, with 232, issue 300 hung before me as a goal, a target. I didn't get there, as it turned out -- for reasons I could not have imagined when I first put pencil to paper for 232 -- but it was fun thinking I might.

There is a strong negative psychology in renumbering. By putting so much emphasis on first issues, we automatically brand everything else as inferior. Especially given that we are targeting the speculators -- still!! -- and many retailers over-order "first issues" the cut orders for subsequent issues. The market is being arbitrarily, and artificially shrunk!

I’m in the same boat Sam. I haven’t actually seriously collected comics since the early 90’s. I went for a period of time without them and then followed Byrne’s Spider Man reboot briefly. I think I also picked up a few Iron Man stories that Byrne wrote. After that I dropped off completely. Now I mostly read about what’s happening in comics via many internet resources. It’s been that way for me for well over a decade now.

The two reboots that I actually enjoyed were both from Byrne – the Super Man and Spider Man reboots. Besides that I have generally not enjoyed reboots.

I was really puzzled when I heard about The New 52. I thought it was cool that the characters from Wildstorm and Vertigo comics were being merged. But I remembered the confusion with Infinity Crisis and felt this would tend make things even more convoluted. I was never a big DC fan except for Byrne’s Super man and George Perez’ Teen Titans.  

I have to be honest and admit that I know very little about the Marvel NOW! relaunch. But I am guessing the same dangers could apply. Just a general loss of continuity. And it seems to me to be more about sales than anything else.