I agree that the classic characterizations are what appeals to me the most (particularly Marvel of the 60's thru the 80's) but I'm also a big fan of exotic locals, far out cosmic concepts and good old, well done, adventure. The actual fighting isn't as interesting to me as it was in my younger days, but a lot of that has to do with the lack of imagination of most artists. John Byrne and George Perez weren't just great artists, they were fantastic at elevating the superhero slug-fest to an art-form. Byrne was particularly skilled at this.

Superheroes demand idealization if they're going to work, not the Watchmen approach. I've detected a lot of anxiety from Marvel and DC ever since the early 2000's in regards to what they want the comics to be. It's no surprise that the DCAU and most of the Marvel films have succeeded in capturing the timeless appeal of the characters far better than most of the modern comics.

The cover price at the time did not make the books profitable for the space they took up on the stands plus the added labor costs of havig to sort and display them each month, then sort through what didn't sell each month, strip it down and send it back for credit. It was labor intensive to carry them at a time when companies were looking to scale back labor costs and the cover price didn't allow enough of a margin for the newsstands and other non-comic shops to carry the product.

It was an ongoing struggle between publishers and vendors. It was in part behind DC experimenting with formats and $1 books through the 70s and 80s trying to find a format and price point that enticed the vendors into carrying the products.

Places like 7-11 were phasing out comics, not because Marvel & DC weren't offering them, but because they could make more money using the space for other products like candy, snacks, sodas etc. that sold more units and had a higher profit margin, and were less labor intensive to stock and carry. Traditional magazines were going for larger formats and higher price points to keep their space on the newsstands at the time, but places like 7-11 were also scaling back on magazines at the time (though bookstores and such still carried a wider line of magazines). The traditional news vendor had all but disappeared int he States except in places like NYC with large metropolitan populations, but in smaller cities with larger commuted work-forces rather than native work-forces, those newsstands disappeared, downsized, and carried far less range of products.

It would have required comics publishers adapting price, format and frequency of publication to adapt to the needs of the newsstand vendors to keep books there, something they were unwilling to do then, and are still unwilling to do now even tough that format is a dinosaur in the marketplace these days.

Newsstands were becoming far more selective in what they carried, going for efficiency to maximize profits, traditional comic formats weren't working for them. Comic publishers gave up trying to work on them because change would have been expensive and cause short term losses, so they decided to focus on the direct market which allowed them to retain their business model and not have to make those expenditures and maintain the status quo for the short term. However, in the long term it has turned out to be a disastrous decision because they lost the feeder sources of new readers. It took a couple of decades for the impact of that to be felt as sales number in the direct market thrived in the short term but then fell off massively beginning in the mod-late 90s until we reach the situation we are at today.

As I see it though, the industry didn't learn their lesson either, because now they are doubling down trying to maintain the status quo with the direct market again (still) rather than looking for ways to adapt/change to regain access tot he new reader pool hoping if they do the same thing this time they will get different results-and we all know how well that works. They are focused on maintaining the short term viability of what they are already doing instead of planning long term on how to grow the industry-largely because they have to answer to suits for quarterly earnings reports and long term planning doesn't sell well there, but also because I am not sure any of them have the publishing (rather than marketing) experience and vision to develop a long term plan for change that could work.

So yes, they gave up on the newsstands but because the newsstands were asking for changes the industry was not willing to make then...or now it seems.

-M