Ultimately we did get both.
But sometimes you put the primary character on the shelf in order to give a legacy character a bit of room to grow. We've seen that a lot with Tony/Rhodney, T'CHalla/Shuri, Steve/Bucky and Sam, etc.
THe originals almost always return, with the end result being we get both.
I mean back in avengers forever it was basically a plot point of how notorious the earth heroes really get.
It was true though. I hated Sam. To me he was the pet character of high up in Marvel and that is why he got the hard push. Just as them bringing Rich back drove you away them getting rid of Rich to put the spotlight on Sam drove me away. The thing is though after the bad taste the whole thing left in my mouth I never bothered to come back when they did finally bring Rich back, because by that point I had stopped caring.
To say that a lot of fans were not turned off by Rich getting killed off to make room for Sam is just flat out not true.
The thing that gets me is that Rich was actually gaining in public profile. He had, relatively speaking, only recently come into his own (the DnA stuff), had just recently joined an Avengers squad....the dude's star was on the rise. And yeah his solo had seen a drop in sales but that's how this industry works; you throw a new creative team on the book not kill the character!
I gave Sam a fair shot, and found him to be okay but he never grabbed me the way Rich did as Nova Prime. I have nothing against Sam though. But the Nova mythos is far better off with Richard in it than with him gone.
"We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one single tribe."
~ Black Panther.
I didn't even know Rich as gone and Sam was here, because none of the stores around my city sold Sam's book until the 2016 run.
We don't know that. There is no evidence to support that.Because both wouldn't sell at the same time (pretty much proven by the short run) and Rich probably wouldn't have sold either.
Marvel can't force a store to sell either book or even order it. Or OVER Order it like certain books (Green Lantern).
Marvel can hear those cries but who is it that does the greatest gymnastic routine to NOT support it?
Or those who buy it to DESTROY it or post pics of unsold books for Marvel, POC, LGBT & women bashing for youtube hits.
Not to mention the noncomic book store market like Ebay & Half Price books.
So unless Marvel is going to do a kickstarter for a 12 issue Nova series that fans invest in-no one can ever figure it out.
And folks have to remember comic book sales don't define success alone.
Blade say hi. Marvel is not going to wish away those 3 movies and 2 shows for a long running solo. Not with him, Jessica Jones, Cage, Shuri or whoever.
Well they got sucked into another civil war! And they failed to stop the multiverse from collapsing. And they screwed with Galactus' cosmic role and then failed to keep him in that new role. Oh, and they let the world be taken over by Hydra for a little bit. And apparently Wakanda conquered a whole space empire when no one was looking, enslaving a number of races.
I think a couple of them made deals with the devil recently too?
Yeah, no one really has much right to say a damn thing to Rider at all.
"We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one single tribe."
~ Black Panther.