What I said was: Marvel and DC used to have creations capable of drawing in an audience outside of comics, but those creations were all made decades upon decades ago. Something I don’t think their corporate owners have quite caught onto yet, but when they do, I see the current comics being dropped and the older characters being mined away with abandon.

But until they do catch on, both publishers are going to try and pretend they’re still capable of creating the next hot character franchise…for as long as the ride lasts.

(The most recent example of a franchise that -almost- made the leap that I can think of is Warren Ellis’ Authority. Like it or loathe it, it was the first new super-hero comic in a long, long time I can recall non-comics fans noticing and showing interest in…and we all know what became of that franchise once the original guiding talent left. Any chance was wizzed away or actively destroyed.)

Don’t kid yourself that it’s ever been about anything other than selling a product.

Some GOOD things happened. We need more good things to balance out the living hell all the characters are going through.

I’m also not sure what the “name a character” game proves. The public kinda/sorta knows about Storm and Cyclops, but really the only member of the All-New X-Men that’s really become an icon is Wolverine. Take him out of the equation, and you could stretch the timeline back to the Silver Age (and even Wolverine took 25 years to really rise through the fog and be recognizable.)

The closest thing to an iconic superhero-type character would come not from comics, but from a successful multimedia stew of comics, cartoons, action figures, and eventually movies: Optimus Prime, maybe Snake-Eyes. And if we’re willing to look somewhere besides superhero comics, I’d wager that Rick, Lori and Shane from “The Walking Dead” are at least as recognizable to the average American citizen as any other comic book character created since “Giant-Sized X-Men #1.”

Though we could get really weird with this idea and say that the Batman that is widely recognized by the public in 1985 is very different from the one we know and love today. “Today’s” Batman was essentially created in the mid/late-80s, thanks to Frank Miller and the first Burton film.

Though, here’s a fact: Name a character created since the All New, All Different X-Men who’s been published continuously -and- the general public know about.

(I don’t think Venom and Deadpool count.)

Both it and GI Joe are leagues above 90% of the comics out there, and yet the entire line was made to sell toys, whereas Spider-Man, Batman et all were created for the purposes of story telling. So why are their comics so much better?