Why does Marvel keep starting their numbers over

[U.N. Owen]

There are multiple plausible reasons:

• Greed: No seriously. Number 1's tend to sell better because of a number of factors. What Marvel fails to take into account is Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns.
• Easy Access to New Readers: Unless I'm mistaken, none of us on this forum started reading back when Marvel was Timely Comics. People want to read from the beginning, but several hundred issues is a panic attack waiting to happen. The problem of this marketing strategy is that you still need to know the universe

My biggest problem is that Marvel wants to have access to new readers, but the problem is that these books aren't marketed properly. The only time I see comics marketed is within other comics.

[Carabas]

All the variant covers are. A proportion of any hobby has an ocd element to it and variants exploit that obsessive compulsive behaviour in a section of the readership. But what better excuse to launch a load of variants than with a #1.

It's somewhat shady, but not for that reason.

Incentive variant covers are shady because they boost sales without actually selling more copies to readers: the way it works is that retailers order more from the regular issue than they could ever hope to sell so they can also order some of the extra-special deluxe 1/5000 (or whatever) cover they can sell for megabucks on Ebay and still make a profit on the unsellable regular issues.

[skyvolt2000]

There are 6 volumes for the Fantastic Four and 2 for FF (one Fanstatic Four produced by wildstorm)

What is it that they hate about the continuity?

Depends.

If you look at other companies it's done because of writers leaving after an arc or the said arc is based on one title.

Take Titan Comics's Rivers of London-they have 42 issues but they are titled under different arcs.

I think here it's more of you don't need to read one volume to understand the other.

While a new number one is nice-it does say something if you have a book with a large number.

Take Black Panther or Luke Cage-you KNOW Marvel is going to MILK the MESS out of issue 200. Because outside of Spawn and a CASE (not a good one) would be made for Savage Dragon-what other black character can boast that many solo issues.

Miles & Ms Marvel are two years away from 100.

[Digifiend]

No they're not, Kamala only just had her 50th issue a few months ago and the book doesn't double ship, so she's four years away. And Miles's legacy numbering includes the 11 years of Ultimate Spider-Man before his debut. As a result, his book officially has 240 issues already.

[comicscollector]

If people think now with the Internet is difficult to follow new comics because of the renumberings (all though this is a non issue now,because all the marvel comics have the original renumberings now on the cover as well as legacy numbers) dunno how they could keep up with the comics before there was Internet.
When i started Reading comics i did not find it difficult to follow say New Mutants that changed to X-Force with a new number one or Amazing Spider-Man and Spectacular Spider-Man that were renumbered with new numbers one and had a limited series that changed the first classic Spider-Man stories!

[Carabas]

If people think now with the Internet is difficult to follow new comics because of the renumberings (all though this is a non issue now,because all the marvel comics have the original renumberings now on the cover as well as legacy numbers) dunno how they could keep up with the comics before there was Internet.
When i started Reading comics i did not find it difficult to follow say New Mutants that changed to X-Force with a new number one or Amazing Spider-Man and Spectacular Spider-Man that were renumbered with new numbers one and had a limited series that changed the first classic Spider-Man stories!

Look at it from the perspective of a new reader trying to make sense of half a dozen old Punisher runs that do not have those legacy numbers.

And it is even harder with older trades.

[leokearon]

40s? That was still going on in the 60s. Think about Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, and Tales to Astonish. Those four were renamed The Mighty Thor, Doctor Strange, Captain America, and Incredible Hulk. So that Immortal Hulk #2 cover may say #719 on it, but it's not the 719th issue of Hulk. A bunch of the first hundred issues were actually Ant-Man and Sub-Mariner.

True, but at least with some of those they had those characters in them. In the forties, they could have a comic called Super Fun Comics which lasted for 10 issues, but it sells at failing so it gets canned. The next month they release a Brand New Comic called Captain Awesome who has nothing to do with Super Fun Comics, but Captain Awesome gets Super Fun Comics numbering, so Captain Awesome #11 is in reality Captain Awesome #1. And they would keep doing it, if Captain Awesome failed, the comic that replaced his comic would continue where he left off.

[leokearon]

Look at it from the perspective of a new reader trying to make sense of half a dozen old Punisher runs that do not have those legacy numbers.

And it is even harder with older trades.

Yeah, imagine they watched a Spider-man movie and is now interested in Spider-man and asked what comics they should read and someone recommends Amazing Spider-Man # 1-10 for example. Given that Amazing Spider-man has 5 volumes, they could get anything from Stan Lee + Steve Ditko to John Bryne or Dan Slott and Ramos

[mrbrklyn]

If people think now with the Internet is difficult to follow new comics because of the renumberings (all though this is a non issue now,because all the marvel comics have the original renumberings now on the cover as well as legacy numbers) dunno how they could keep up with the comics before there was Internet.
When i started Reading comics i did not find it difficult to follow say New Mutants that changed to X-Force with a new number one or Amazing Spider-Man and Spectacular Spider-Man that were renumbered with new numbers one and had a limited series that changed the first classic Spider-Man stories!

You depended on the Overstreet Price guild and actually, you still need to depend on the Overstreet Price Guild to sort it all out.

[Prof. Warren]

You depended on the Overstreet Price guild and actually, you still need to depend on the Overstreet Price Guild to sort it all out.

No, DC and Marvel's websites or Wikipedia make it very easy.

[mrbrklyn]

Yeah, imagine they watched a Spider-man movie and is now interested in Spider-man and asked what comics they should read and someone recommends Amazing Spider-Man # 1-10 for example. Given that Amazing Spider-man has 5 volumes, they could get anything from Stan Lee + Steve Ditko to John Bryne or Dan Slott and Ramos

Avoid Slott and you will be fine

[Prof. Warren]

Avoid Slott and you will be fine

Like him or not, Slott is one of the definitive Spidey writers.

[CaptCleghorn]

If Marvel had those legacy guides on their website, that would explain an awful lot to people curious about a large numbr. And they may very well have those guides there, in which case, I say, you're all set. MAYBE a note on the first page saying For legacy nnumbering info: Go to marvel dot com.

it's a hell of a lot more detailed than it was back in our day when you just had to remember that iron man & Sub-Mariner ! existed to complete either run. But the information is there for anyone to figure out which runs count in the numbering and which do not.

[mrbrklyn]

If Marvel had those legacy guides on their website, that would explain an awful lot to people curious about a large numbr. And they may very well have those guides there, in which case, I say, you're all set. MAYBE a note on the first page saying For legacy nnumbering info: Go to marvel dot com.

it's a hell of a lot more detailed than it was back in our day when you just had to remember that iron man & Sub-Mariner ! existed to complete either run. But the information is there for anyone to figure out which runs count in the numbering and which do not.

Ironman is one of the hardest characters to keep straight. It starts with Tales of Suspnse 39 (which turned into captian america), Iron Man and Submariner (I always though that to be the strangest combination), and fans out from there to Iron Man, Uncanny tales, Iron Man Vol 2, and volume 3, and Warren Ellis's Iron Man of 2005, and Marvel Now Iron Man... into Supererior Iron Man, and Oron Man Armour wars, and Bad Blood, and Enter the Mandarin, etc... There are 35 entries just under Iron Man, and 3 under the Invicncible Iron Man..

[Digifiend]

That Iron Man and Submariner one-shot was the result of the sudden decision to split up the anthologies into solos. The stories in that issue were drawn for Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, but Cap and Hulk, the characters who inherited those titles, didn't have another half length story drawn. So they paired the spares and launched the new Iron Man and Namor solos a month later. Strange Tales apparently didn't have the same problem, and Journey into Mystery was already full length Thor stories anyway and should've been renamed a bit sooner than it was.

It wasn't the first time something like that happened. Six years earlier, the stories in Amazing Spider-Man #1 and #2 were drawn for Amazing Fantasy #16-19. It must've been a late decision (probably triggered by exceptional Fantastic Four sales) to cancel AF and give Spidey his own book.