It used to annoy me when they'd relaunch with new #1s all the time, but these days, I don't really care what the number is. I think it's because most books I enjoy rarely make it past two years anyway. You get used to low numbers.

Most periodicals are "numbered" by month and year, not numbered one through whatever. if there is a renumbering, it's every year after 12 issues, or 6, 4, 3 issues, depending on the frequency it's published. Also, most periodicals are not serialized stories. In every serialized story, movie, tv, ect, it's pretty clear which order they go in because they don't get goofy with the numbers. It's only just a number if you never look back. If you've never missed an issue, never plan on tracking down old issues, and never want to revisit what you've read without looking it up on Wikipedia to find out which order it came out in. If Fast And Furious movies weren't numbered 1-7 and instead were numbered 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 7, people would take note of it.

But there's no reason for a non anthology comic to be as difficult.

Pretty easy to tell where you are in Walking Dead. And for three or four decades it was just as easy to tell where you were in Detective comics too.

You're right though. If you can't adapt to unnecessary things that annoy you, stop buying it. I think that's what a lot of people continue to do year after year. Not so great for Marvel and DC.

Poor organization of story-lines and series CAN become a sales detriment if it causes a new reader to throw up his/her hands and give up. It's a similar problem that you have with certain websites where a poor design can lead to loss revenue. The problem is that Marvel and DC are cynically resigned to the fact that they don't actually have many new readers to cater to anymore and realize that the hardcore fans will do the work to put everything in order.

Magazines and comics, while sharing many similarities, are different beasts. For good or ill, comics maintained an unbroken system of sequential numbering for some 70+ years and for this to devolve into the chaos we have now, over a very short period of time, speaks of how poorly organized Marvel and DC are in terms of clearly presenting their products. Comics aren't TV series or games. You're dealing with many more individual units spread out over an enormous line of comics. If any product screamed for attention to organization and clear presentation, it's comics.

But it IS in their best interest to attract new customers, and keep the ones they already have. Their numbering eccentricities aren't the only think working against those two goals, but they aren't helping either. You're right. Marvel and DC don't have to do a damn things comic fans like. What they get from not doing that is a continued loss of marketshare and stagnant sales during steady growth in the industry. Bad things.

I agree to that, but I know for a fact that's never been their sole concern, and I doubt it's even been their primary concern for most of either companies history.

That's because the bulk of readers in the 70s weren't collectors, but readers who never set foot in a comic shop or cared about numbering continuity, or what not, today's sales figures are mostly to "collectors" for whom things like legacy numbering matter. The readers weren't chased away (or kept away) by numbering issues, they were chased away by loss of access outside of comic shops, marketing gimmicks replacing quality storytelling in the 90s, books becoming more self-referential and mired in their own morass of continuity rather than entertaining storytelling, increasing prices that rose at a faster rate than other goods on the market, and the rise of other entertainment options that offered more bang for the buck. But that's part of what is included when I said the market and distribution models have changed. 

Creating comics may be an artform, but comics publishing is a business pure and simple, and they will make whatever decisons they need to to sell as much as they can in the current market. The current market is not the 70s so you cannot sell comics the same way you did then. It's also not the 20 otts either, so tactics from even then have had to evolve to meet the needs of the changing marketplace and changing preferences of the current customer base ad potential customer base. 

The biggest bar to new readers is not numbering issues, or continuity, it is access and price point via-vis value for your dollar. Until those obstacles are overcome, there will not be significant growth in the market. Until then they will just be reslicing the same pie different ways as they sell to the same ole same ole and a smattering of new folks much smaller than it could be. If you ask people who are prime candidates to become new readers why they don't the most common answers are not I don't know where to start or what order to read them in, or there's too much backstory, it's I am not sure where to find them to buy and when I do find them, boy are they expensive compared to what I get and in relation to what I can get in other forms of entertainment for the same buy in cost. One intro volume of an Image trade that sells for $9.99 (which is about the best value you can get in comics) is still as much as an entire month of Netflix, or I can buy 2 maybe 3 floppies for that price, if I know where to go to get them that is. That is the bar to growth, not confusion over numbering, sales gimmicks, or what have you. 

-M