September was a pretty exciting month for comic book fans everywhere. In addition to regular comics being released, DC released and retooled their entire line of comic books both from a publishing and story telling stnadpoint. DC made a smart move by releasing all new 1st issues throughout September. It gave skeptical reader like me, who had previously only read Batman and Green Lantern titles plus a few events here and there a lot to be exited about. I myself picked out 21 titles from the new 52.
Now though, September has come and gone and with it, DC's watershed moment has come and past. They released all of their new 1st issues, and now it is time for those 52 series to prove their worth, and release the rest of their issues. What DC did was undoubtedly a great choice. Instead of picking up a 500th issue of comic and then having to backtrack through trades and back issues, new readers were able to get a fresh jumping on point. Now it is up to DC to keep these books feeling fresh. And it's not only DC that I'm talking about here. Marvel would also probably benefit from this approach too.
What I would like to see happen is for comic books to put a cap on how many issues a series can put out in a year. Instead of publishing a series until the point that it has reached 500 plus issues, I think a wiser tactic would be to release ongoing series in volumes. Look at comic books like The Ultimates and Deadpool MAX. Each series is an going series, but the creative teams set up the books to run for 12 issues, and then reset to number 1 for a new volume. This insures that every year, new opportunities arise to bring in new readers. This is a good tactic because a new number 1 is much more reader friendly than a 500.
Whereas DC has striven to give readers new jumping o points though, Marvel seems to be more focused on legacy. After only 33 issue The Invincible Iron Man was renumbered to issue 500, because supposedly, that was roughly how many issues he had at that point altogether. Now while that big 500 may give the book a legacy look to it, there is really no logic in doing such a thing. Trust me. Pulling crap like that will only push a way new readers. I mean how is someone new to comic books supposed to figure out that from issues 33, 500 is the next chapter. They don't cruise theses sights like you and I. When they see a big 500 on a book's cover, it will likely drive them away, because they will automatically think that they now need to backtrack and find trades and back issues collecting 499 older issues. And other than that, the only people picking up a big 500th issue will be collectors looking for something to put on Ebay.