New Avengers #49: Where's my extra dollar worth of comics goodness?

LUKE CAGE: MALE MODEL?

Stuff that happens in this issue:

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS AHOY!

1. Venom eats a Skrull.
2. Skrull Jarvis gets shot in the head, just like I predicted.
3. Bullseye switches back to the costume he wore in the Daredevil movie.
4. Luke Cage kicks some ass with the crowbar he took off the Wrecker back in New Avengers #7 -8. Wait a second...I just looked at New Avengers Annual #2, which takes place after that, and there's the Wrecker with his crowbar. Maybe it's a fake. No, it's glowing. Does the Wrecker have two crowbars?
5. The New Avengers get mad and decide to kick the Dark Avengers' ass just like a bunch of schoolyard bullies.

I don't care about the crowbar. Let some other blogger rant and rave about it. Someone screwed up, or it's Bendis not sweating the details. Why should he? The details didn't get Bendis to where he is.

What bothers me is that this comic costs $3.99, and it's 23 pages long. So the prices will go up, and the fans will get...nothing. I've been through this before, back when comics went from forty to fifty cents. Marvel and DC did the same thing: added extra pages for a few months, and then took them away.

I'm not going to do something stupid like threatening to quit buying comics. I did that earlier today, and the guy at the comic book store told me I wouldn't because I'd have nothing to read in the bathroom. Yeah, he's right.

What's happening is that Marvel is hurting their second tier titles. People will buy the top tier titles because they want their Wolverine and Spider Man, but they won't buy Captain Britain and MI13, Incredible Hercules and Guardians of the Galaxy. It's a pity, because these titles all have great creative teams. There are a lot of talented people working in comics now; I don't see a qualitative difference between an Incredible Hercules and a New Avengers.

No, I'm not going anywhere. But superhero comics are not exactly a growth industry in this country. And if you push too hard, the audience you have will go away. Remember the 90's?