Joe Kelly enjoys Superman and fully chose the job...and so have many others. Have just as many simply been assigned it? Absolutely, but that distinction doesn't equate to either inherently negative or positive story telling qualities. Does having familiarity give you a certain cushion? Absolutely, but only in the short term as the many down turns in popularity of characters like Batman and Superman illustrate perfectly; these characters are not what I would call consistent best sellers as both have had serious swings in sales through the years and have in fact been in danger of cancellation multiple times. If you continually take for granted that these books will just sell themselves then they stagnate and fail and its only through dedicated, skilled and passionate writers and artists that those turns have been reversed.

Is it still an asset, certainly but again why is that a negative quality? It's been a trusted tool in story telling forever, and one used to create many timeless stories...so why treat it like a bad thing?

And again I say nothing is absolute. You don't HAVE to tell a good story in order to achieve high sales numbers with out a license; as there have been plenty of books that were run away successes despite being of poor quality due either to the names of the creators involved or simply tapping into a particular fad. And again, that isn't unique to comics as you are want to point out Justin Bieber is wildly popular despite being objectively simplistic and this is due more to the current fads than anything else.

Also you'll note that I never said a great story teller couldn't manage without a license so I'm not sure why you have to "maintain" that point. However I don't see evidence that wanting that built in audience is a primary concern, or again why that asset is inherently negative. Also, I don't fully understand the point of your follow up, so someone originally made a character popular which of course goes with out saying, but why does that original greatness make future use a negative, especially in a serialized format as super hero comics? The Holmes argument though doesn't really illustrate that point though it does perhaps explain what the intent of your argument was. Sherlock Holmes seems like an obvious choice to make, he's wildly popular and has origins in a serialized format much like comic superheroes however the similarities largely end there, which provides the answer to your question as to why readers of Holmes seldom accept novels by others. Unlike comics, which have a history of multiple writers and artists traditional literature focuses on primary creators which is a very different tradition and creates a different mindset. Now, this was not always so; if one is familiar with the early adventures of Superman and Batman they'd know that the original creators were credited as creating the stories even after they ceased working on them due to fear of people leaving, but they learned that as long as the stories were entertaining the readers would remain and so shifting creative teams has become an accepted staple of the medium. Now this is only conjecture, but if instead of simply stopping Doyle had instead hired other people to write more Holmes stories at the time of Holmes creation what's to say that wouldn't be just as accepted today as changing creators are in comics? If something is done early enough, and repeated enough it becomes a tradition, and those are hard to break.

Now, you may assume that any writer that would willingly take second billing behind another and work with characters not of their own making would be bad, and you may personally prefer not to read those kinds of books(after all, it's a free country) but that does not make your preferences or assumptions facts, even if those assumptions and preferences are often well founded.


As for the cover band comment, I think their popularity speaks for itself, though they most likely will never surpass the originals their out put can still be extremely entertaining, especially if seeing the originals live is no longer an option. And the same is true of comics, sure you can re-read the originals but you lose that live component that way; the excitement of waiting for the next issue to come out and the fun of discussing it with a group of friends who are also just experiencing it for the first time with both which are, at least for me, just as fun as the books themselves.