Mo' money, mo' problems

Avi Green, the Four-Color Media Monitor, has put together an interesting list of problems he feels are responsible for the overall poor quality of comics lately.

I strongly agree with some items on that list - the "zombie" portion of the fanbase is most certainly to blame for enabling, via blind purchasing, the sort of stunts and gimmicks that would make any other rational business cringe in embarrassment - but I stop short of accepting his claim that these people will be responsible for destroying the Marvel Universe someday. It's true that their presence allows the publication of some pretty horrific comics, but I don't think that they're actively blocking good comics at the same time, nor do I feel that zombies should shoulder all the blame - these people exist, and they buy what the companies tell them to buy, and if "Crossing Midnight" gets cancelled due to low sales it'll mostly be because no one at DC thought to divert zombie attention from books that will sell well regardless to books that could use the extra cash to stay alive.