Marvel And DC Announce That Every Issue Will Be #1 From Now On

I was not surprised to see that Marvel was rebooting its comics and starting with all-new #1s since DC had done that a few years back with good commercial results, albeit horrible comics.  However, I was surprised to learn that both comic book companies would be publishing nothing but #1 issues from now on. 

Apparently, every month will see the respective comics universes reborn and the same stories from the 1940s and 1960s retold with updated computer-generated art and a few nods to the changing times such as making Superman a fruitarian and The Man-Thing a lesbian.  In a joint announcement, the Chief Funnybook Officers of DC and Marvel stated, "This way, we can add even more editors to a single comic.  We're aiming at about ten editors per writer or artist.  We're pretty sure that most people who buy these things don't even read them and those that do don't seem to care much if it's bad since they keep buying it when it is.  See that continuity stuff was too hard to keep track of, so we figured with all the multiverse stuff we've been doing that makes no narrative sense, why not do the same on the publishing side and put out a #1 for every series every month and sell some more copies to the collectors as well?   Sure, it'll be a little confusing but if fans can keep track of 15 Batman and 15 Spider-Man titles every month, we figure they can handle this.  In any case, we're just intellectual property farms for the cinema now anyway, so, like, who cares?"

When asked for a comment, John Fanboy, owner of the comic shop Hey Kids, It's Graphic Novels!, said, "I was really looking forward to reading issue 9 of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, so this is a disappointment, but I guess they know what they're doing.  I'll have some customers upset that their favorite series are stopping without finishing the current stories, but, in any case, it's not like I can boycott DC and Marvel and just survive selling Archie."

When informed that Archie had also just started over with new number ones, Fanboy said that he hadn't noticed, then whimpered and crawled into a corner, pulling a box of unsold Image Comics from 1993 over him.

I quietly left the store.

It was awkward, but I am looking forward to the #1s of Sam Wilson, Captain America, Ant-Man, Howard The Duck, and The Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl, so I will be back.  I hope he has recovered by then.