Is Marvel Comics killing itself?

[mindstalk]

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/527127/ argues it is, with excess titles and crossovers, frequent relaunches (for the ephemeral junkie hit of boosted #1 sales), and rotating artists. I follow very little DC/Marvel, but I did get into Runaways... which exhibited the latter two phenomena: rebooted numbering, making it hard to tell what volumes to get, and changing artists.

I hadn't thought too much of the latter, though grumbled; Sandman got a different artist every volume. But that might have been deliberate choice on Gaiman's part; I'm sure some history of Sandman would tell us. I think other Vertigo comics like Books of Magic or Lucifer had much more stable art (though how Lucifer was drawn within his comic varied quite a lot. Blond? Redhead? Who can say. But then, he is a cosmic entity.)

I'm disappointed to learn that even Ms. Marvel (the Muslim heroine) got a reboot treatment.

Comments

[conuly]

I don't know a lot about comics, but I do know that when Marvel first tried claiming "diversity doesn't work", both The Mary Sue and MetaFilter rapidly filled their comments sections with "no, really, it's the crossovers and the relaunches", with a sidebar of "and the comics culture, and the tired storylines that never go anywhere because they relaunch and every issue is full of tedious cameos because of the crossovers".

So I believe The Atlantic's assessment is on to something, here :)