Originally Posted by
kjn
Neither of your assertions there are necessarily correct.
First off, given the market has become to be structured, for a long while both DC and Marvel has been focused in practice on their "safe" market of regular returning buyers. The focus on variant covers, longer story arcs, and crossovers all point in that direction. Due to the way the US mass market distribution system has collapsed, they also lost a lot of access to the casual market, and it's probably only now with the rise of digital comics distribution that that market might be returning.
Also, given the way that discussion has been going among sf and fantasy authors, comics writers and even more editors are going to be real careful about reading here, because of the threat of lawsuits over plagiarisation; even more of creating evidence that they read here. Even if such suits are likely to be unfounded (as many pro authors I know say, ideas are cheap and plentiful, execution is hard and what makes a good story) and then will go nowhere, they are likely to cost money, cause a huge hassle, and be a PR headache. Film creation is really bad here, due to the amount of money involved: just see what happened to Shape of Water after it was released.