Yup. Some of these tactics became the topic of internal mockery that made it onto the page:

Well, the creators mocked the bureaucrats above them who mandated the renumbering, anyway.

They know there's a little money to be made by letting themselves be mocked, so it's fine with them.

Nobody cared about retaining readers, they care about having the quarterly sales reports look good enough to keep their jobs. And since retailers (and readers) have been trained like Pavlov's dogs to order and buy #1s in higher numbers, they offset the sales attrition of higher numbers (the best selling books lose 3-5% of orders per issue on average, the worse much higher, that's after 20-60% drops between issues #1 and #3 most titles experience), so as long as quarterly sales are what publishers measure success by and #1 continue to provide reliable sales bumps, you will continue to see #1s put out by publishers on a regular basis. Retaining readers isn't even a consideration for the suits who decide what to do and who gets to keep their jobs. It's all about the short term, not the long term, same with just about every business in the 21st century. If a move pays off 4-5 years down the road, the people who made the move won't be at that job anymore to see the benefits if the short term doesn't pay off as well. That's the reality of the publishing world, and any expectation that doesn't start with understanding that at its basis, is essentially wishful thinking without any basis in reality.

-M

That’s pretty much every industry.

I honestly cannot name how many Marvel trades I've passed up (even at $5 a pop), because I have not idea where they fit in continuity or what order they should be read in.

this most frequently happens with X-Men family books, that I'd be happy to pick up trades of, but can never tell what is what, and there is so much re-numbering from #1 and relaunching, that I just gave up in disgust.

also has happened with Avengers.

Bean counters have always ruled comics. If Martin Goodman (bean counter supreme) hadn't seen JLofA was selling and wanted something like that, there would be no Fantastic Four and no Marvel Comics. He didn't say wow what a great idea Jack and Stan, let's publish it and see if we can build long time readers, he said, hey let's cash in on what people are already buying and have shown to buy by doing something like that. Publishers in the Golden Age didn't say, wow we could build longtime readership and produce great content by doing stories of guys in capes and tights. They said, hey that Action book with Superman is doing gangbusters, let's do shit like that. If you take off your nostalgia glasses and look at what's really there, comics publishing has always been run by the bean counters. The fact you got long runs and some good content is despite bean counters running it not because they weren't running it.

-M