Your comments about inaccurate numbers is stuff that we (I say this as someone who had spent a lot of time looking at numbers as an interest, not as a judge of quality though) already know. We can account for that stuff and still see trends. The trends actually can help show whether variants have an impact and such. So when someone is going on about how well Black Cat was, or Immortal Hulk, we could look at the numbers and see whether this was all reader interest or other factors.