Having new people flood your industry and leave is incredibly damaging if you are producing product to meet sales needs. That's what happened. The publishers were
riding a wave they knew would eventually end, and they were trying to maximize profits in the meantime. I would think that they learned some valuable lessons where
they won't get caught like that again, and despite people saying that a crash is inevitable, the print run numbers aren't anywhere near the inflated levels during the boom.
Marvel is commonly going to 2nd & 3rd printings now due to this, and that tells me that they are being conservative with their print runs. Btw, Image and other smaller
publishers have a lot more freedom in the way they run their business than Marvel or DC. They don't have to deal with a corporate environment of a company the size
of Disney, where the primary goal of the company is raising the value of the stock by exceeding established budgets and cutting costs, while having your hands tied by
corporate policies. The smaller companies just go straight to the boss if they want to do something. A corporation will make you justify it first, and approve it whenever
they get around to it. It can take forever for a big company to act on something simple, and that's just not the case for Image. Everything about these other publishers
is small potatoes compared to the big two, so you can't compare them as equals. They are also the beneficiary of the mistakes the companies have made, so they don't
have to experience the same thing themselves.