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  • My only insight is that it's pure speculation. The author says Marvel tends to cancel books when they hit 20,000 in sales, and look at all these books under 20K. (Which belies his point, actually -- Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur must have spent a lot of time under 20K to be selling 8,000 now at issue 18. 20,000 obviously ISN'T a cut-off point.

    That said, if Legends is shaping up to be Marvel's Rebirth, I'd expect a pretty severe trimming of the line, and the sales of these books make them prime targets.

    But remember: Marvel loves a cancel/relaunch. For any and all reasons, and for no reason at all. So even if some of these books are canceled, that doesn't mean they're going away.

  • Rob's analysis makes goof sense.

    If it happens, I'd be sorry to see the two on that list that I read (Silver Surfer and Sam Wilson) go.

  • If they are heading toward a universal reboot after this event wouldn't it be natural to re-launch everything with an issue 1?



  • Jeff of Earth-J said:

    Rob's analysis makes goof sense.

    If it happens, I'd be sorry to see the two on that list that I read (Silver Surfer and Sam Wilson) go.'

    "Goof sense"?  ;)

  • Sorry, Rob.

  • No need to apologize. Goof sense is pretty much my apex of sensibility. 

    Of the books on the list, I'm only reading/buying Silver Surfer right now, but I'm looking forward to catching up with Moon Girl, Squirrel Girl, and Sam Wilson on Marvel Unlimited.

    Mark, you'd totally think that, wouldn't you? But reports are that Marvel will be going in the opposite direction, restoring "legacy" numbering while including the interim volumes in the gap. So a book like Daredevil, which has had several volumes since the original run ended, would have the accumulated issues of all those volumes added to the original count, and move on from there. (Sort of like what DC did with Action Comics and Detective Comics during Rebirth, adding the issues of the New 52 series into the count.)  

    I spoke with my retailer about this, and he explained Marvel's new thought process on the matter: Low numbers actually help keep people away more than they draw them in. If I see Spider-Man #8 on the shelf, I think "Oh, I need to get issues 1-7 first." Now, 1-5 are available in a trade paperback, but what if my retailer sold out of issue 6 or 7? That could keep me from picking up issue 8. Whereas if Daredevil 426 is on the shelf, I won't feel the need to pick up the first 425 issues before reading it. Because that's just not doable. And my retailer can direct me, saying, "This story actually starts in 425; here it is." And that's it -- it's a bigger number, but a smaller barrier to entry. 

  • Also, restoring the original number plays better with collectors. I was among those whose completist mentality was squelched by all the re-numberings. Being able to get all issues of Daredevil -- and know that I had them all by simply counting issues, instead of researching the title online -- is appealing. Not enough to get me back into Marvel right now, but if I ever do, the back issues will be easier to collect.

  • I totally agree. I picked up a couple issues of Squirrel Girl from a back issue bin a while ago. (Still haven't read 'em -- need to get on that). They were random issues -- maybe issue 2, issue 6 and issue 7 -- but I think issue 2 came out in a new volume, after issues 6 & 7. Squirrel Girl strikes me as a series that's fun to read in random singles, so I didn't worry about it. But a more arc-driven story -- pretty much any other Marvel book -- would keep me from buying any of those issues. I just wouldn't know where to start. 

  • It makes sense that they would do something like this. There's been a lot of talk about how DC has taken most of the top sales slots since Rebirth.  It's kind of a sea change and I think Marvel is well aware that they a big turnaround to regain their market dominance.

    I love that Marvel has been so committed to gaining new readers and increasing diversity among their characters, but I think they may have done too much, too quickly and ended up alienating a lot of long time readers.

    So I imagine we'll see a return of a lot of the "old-school" characters and concepts to start off a reboot and then maybe the newer characters will be spun off a bit more organically this time.

    btw: There are rumors floating around that we may see the return of Mar-Vell spinning out of Secret Empire.

  • Bleeding Cool weighs in, also saying the list is bogus.

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