X-Force/X-Statix was a great book. The only X book I’ve read since Onslaught. It was too bad it ended when it did, but at least they didn’t try to keep it going after Milligan and Allred left.

Nobody mentioned Peter Milligan’s X-Force/X-Statix run? It started out all shock value, but developed into a strong cast of (all-new) characters that I grew really attached to.

yea and he might break his legs…wouldn’t that just be terrible?

It’d sell.

Sinister beat him to it.

I, for one, couldn’t be happier about that.

That seems to be getting less and less true, as while the X-Books still run well on franchise inertia, they aren’t at the top of the charts as often. The Avengers titles seem to have replaced the X-Books as Marvel’s Golden Goose, and are the ones that attract the top talents at Marvel.

Look at the make-up of the titles; the Avengers have two books written by Bendis, and are at the center of all the big events ( Disassembled, House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk, Secret Invasion, etc. ). They contain the big franchise solo heroes like Iron Man, Spider-Man, and even Wolverine himself ( taken whenever required from the X-Books, even if his role in the Avengers has never been satisfying ). They get a lot of spin-offs with the Avengers name attached, like Avengers: the Initiative, Avengers: the Illuminati, Avengers/Invaders, etc. The spin-offs also tend to sell well.

Whereas with the X-Men, we have Ellis/Bianchi on Astonishing X-Men, but that book’s been set up as the ” innocuous art book with very irregular scheduling “. Uncanny X-Men recently received Fraction and Land ( who, despite his complete lack of talent, is still a Top 10 artist ), and is refiguring itself towards prominence, but adjectiveless X-Men became a book of continuity porn solo stories starring Professor X, a book of very selective interest. X-Factor is an awesome book but not a best-selling one, and books like X-Force and Young X-Men are mostly novelties. Not to mention the fact that the spin-off books like ” X-Men: Emperor Vulcan ” or ” X-Men: Die by the Sword ” don’t have nearly the same draw as they used to.

On the bright side, the X-Books are better than they were a few years ago during Reloaded, when it was Whedon/Cassaday ( best-selling but irregularly scheduled and critically underperforming ), Claremont on Uncanny, Austen on X-Men in the midst of the audience realizing he was a terrible writer ( later succeeded by Milligan, whose work was interesting but ultimately unsatisfying ), and the DeciMation thing ruining the entire point of the X-Men concept…

You could easily say the same for the Avengers. Fantastic Four, Hulk, and every super-hero book by Marvel.
And DC.

2nd example would be Batman RIP. Again, Morrison was doing quite well on the title, although sales were certainly dropping. Now RIP has catapulted the title up the sales charts. So while we have a big group of Whorisons and Bat-fans who bought the book initially, but now the title has much more buyers because of the RIP crossover. Even look at the other Bat-titles — Robin, Nightwing, Detective, heck probably even Outsiders — all have gone up in sales because of RIP, and none of those titles have seen any sort of high-profile creator jump on the book (and fan favorite Dixon even left Robin!)

So it’s a little bit of both, but I’d sale the concept or idea is the bigger draw.

You have a valid point. Look at Booster Gold — a C-list character that, from use in 52 and his own series by superstar Geoff Johns — which has solid sales. Geoff Johns was able to work his magic on Flash, Green Lantern, JSA, and … DC hopes … Flash again, although those characters (with the exception of maybe JSA) are much more popular than Booster.

But there is really only so much “star power” to go around. Bendis, Morrison, Johns, Millar, and Ennis (etc.) can’t write every series, nor would they want to. Likewise, most superstar artists can’t do more than one book a month, if that. Even “fan favorite” writers like Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, and Peter David see some of their projects get sunk due to lack of sales — I’d argue those three are pretty big stars, too. So companies have to relay on something else besides star power, because Dan Didio cannot hold off on projects until Geoff Johns says “hey Dan, I’d like to revamp Crimson Fox and Snapper Carr.”

DC and Marvel can’t just sell the dozen or so titles that are written and drawn by their “superstars.” Ultimately, they need to sell the reader on the character and concept — if the reader doesn’t want a sword and sorcery Aquaman, they are not going to buy it. Well, maybe if Alan Moore is writing it and Frank Quitely is drawing it they would, but you get the point.

Jonah Hex, though one of my favorite titles, is barely keeping afloat would not be in the black if it wasn’t for solid TPB sales. DC has injected some star talent on that book – Darwyn Cooke, for one — but it seems many comic book readers do not care for westerns, or at least not westerns featuring Jonah Hex. Would they if Morrison wrote an arc? Possibly, but chances are the sales will slip as soon as he leaves again, and he can’t write everything. So the next best thing is to cancel books with low sales and hope down the line someone out there comes up with a unique concept to draw new readers.

As for all the conspiracies, that’s a sign of running out of ideas. When you can’t come up with good stuff on your own, you go mess with what somebody else has already done… even stuff that did NOT need any updating at all.