QUOTE: So why aren't there more hits coming out independently? Hellboy and Bone came out in the early 90's.

The graying audience mostly sticks with what they know - superheroes - and so indie hits are rarely more than modest hits with that audience. But Mignola and Smith did strike some multimedia gold. HELLBOY has prose novels, toys, lighters, and a reasonably successful movie. BONE has toys, a video game series, and a contract with Scholastic Books to produce colorized BONE volumes. The figure I heard on sales for the first volume of Scholastic's BONE is 100,000+, which, if true, is astounding. I'm sure if Steve Lieber is lurking in this thread, he'll have some more success stories to tout - Harvey Pekar, Steve Niles, Dan Clowes, etc ;)

Working indie is still a crapshoot, but if the dice come up lucky, the multimedia money is almost certainly better than work-for-hire paychecks, even for work on a book like X-MEN I'd warrant. Whatever venue creators choose to tell their comic stories, though, I don't think anyone's really in it for the money - there's just not that much to go around.

QUOTE: Everyone wants to make a splash.  Al ot of 'professionals' in the field want to write a screenplay as opposed to a comic.

What's the evidence for this? That comics are adopting filmic pacing?

I think it's much more likely that the majority of modern readers and writers simply favor long-form stories right now. Writers like the depth they provide, as do readers. It's been the manga approach for decades without the assumption that manga creators are all wannabe screenwriters. Hell, if anything Hollywood writers are transitioning to comics. How often do we see the reverse happening?

QUOTE: Look at the first couple of story arcs in ASTONISHING X-MEN and NEW AVENGERS. There is no way humanly possible for those stories to have taken 6 issues to tell! Stan and anyone could have told it in 1 or 2 issues - tops!

They could, but...so what? The direct market caters to an older audience and that older audience generally prefers long-form stories at the moment. It's clearly a viable approach, and will be unless the distribution/format model changes to invite new readers/young readers.

QUOTE: ...and it just ain't working.

Well, as a niche market the biz is stable and occasionally shows signs of growth, so in that sense it is working. But to really grow, only a change in format and distribution will necessitate a change in content. The pre-existing adult audience is wildly unlikely to suddenly go ga-ga for a return to traditionalism, to done-in-one stories, non-event books. To break out the good ol' junkie analogy, what used to offer them a fix in the old days barely gives them a buzz now, so they need progressively harder drugs.

And kids? They don't know where comic shops are, and there aren't enough comic shops to provide a strong nationwide service anyway. Changing content is utterly irrelevant in garnering their return -- unless it's accompanied by new distribution and, hand-in-hand with that, a new format. And figuring that out is what scares every publisher shitless.

I'm not defending modern superhero excesses - I hate most of 'em - but they're symptoms, not the root problem. Marvel could kick off their most continuity-faithful era tomorrow and it'd maybe gain 'em a few tens of thousands of readers at best. Chump change in the bigger picture of industry health.

It used to be that you could pick up a comic about a superhero fighting some world-threatening menace, defeat it after a close call, and have the story end there. There was no concern for what the other characters were doing. Nowadays any big threat has to involve a company-wide crossover. Shared universes are great, but taking them to their logical extremes just ruins the fun of it.

I think there's a middle ground to be had.

Something on the level of destruction to Manhattan, I'd think, would warrant a passing comment, at least, to some of the Manhattan-based characters.

F'rinstance...Spider-Man, swinging along, a single thought balloon: "They sure have picked up Magneto's mess awfully quick.  Man, I love New York!"

I guess it depends on how much and when one is able to set aside the "shared universe" aspect.  Which reminds me of Mike W. Barr's reply in the Batman and the Outsiders letters page, when asked why the JLA, Titans, Superman, or any other number of characters didn't try to divert Halley's Comet from hurtling towards Earth during the "Truth About Looker" storyline:

"The book is called 'Batman and the Outsiders'--not 'The Entire DC Universe.'"

I think Marvel has been moving toward a more interconnected universe the last couple of years.

Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I know many fans at the time enjoyed that part of Marvel-where it might snow for a couple of panels in Spider-man and he'd say "Weird for it to snow in July" and there'd be an asterisk which would say*

*Check out The Mighty Thor # 396 to see which dastarly villain pulled that off-Sneaky Stan

or something like that.

Sometimes Stan did, sometimes he didn't.  He is the one who started those boxes after all-which would refer to past issues or even other comics/events. Different then the DC approach I think.

It just made it seem  like it was one big Universe.