The Sorting. The Fucking Sorting.

[jjreason]

Well it should be. It's at least the equivalent, story-wise & creativity-wise, of 100,000 of the fucking pieces of paper towel & toilet paper they've created since then (to go along with the hundreds of gems, don't get me wrong).

[Tom Foolery]

I'm going to shift gears and take a moment to vent my frustration at Marvel's new policy of relaunching books that reach that forbidden hard-to-follow continuity taboo of having a second or third issue. ("If it's not a first issue, it scares people away worse than a Nazi Ghost Pitbull Velociraptor with Herpes!!!" Or the asinine equivalent of regular issue numbers...)

Especially concerning X-Books and Avengers books. I've always filed Avengers books in the 'A' box regardless of its titular modifier. New, Mighty, Secret, etc. It was fine when it was just a couple titles, but now it seems like there's a couple dozen; Avengers, Avengers Assemble, Avengers World, Avengers Arena, Avengers Undercover, Avengers A.I., New, Mighty, Secret, Uncanny. And on top of that, they keep canceling them and relaunching them two weeks later. It's a goddamn nightmare of guesswork deciding where to balance the 'Alpha' and the 'Chrono'.

And the X-Men books are just as frakked. You've got All New, Uncanny, Amazing, Wolverine &, XX-Men, and Legacy. And X-Factor and maybe one or more X-Force books(the turnover rate on those is astounding) with more likely on the way(I can't see them letting the 'Astonishing' moniker lay fallow for too long). And there's no clear discernible difference in the "mandate" for each book. A story arc in any series could just as easily work in a different title.

It makes trying to have a filing system futile, frustrating, annoying, and maddening. Especially when I do finally get around to collating my now THREE very large collections(and working on a fourth) in three different locations down to one. Do I put all the Mighty Avengers runs together, regardless of when hey came out? Do I sort Marvel NOW from All New Marvel Now from whatever next years Totally Zomg Fer Reals Marvel Now? Fuck you Marvel. Bring back the Dual Numbering system. And knock off this decimal shit.

Rant concluded.

[anarky]

Common sense should tell them that in an age where back issues are more easily available than ever, confusing renumbering is more daunting than high numbers. Which Fantastic Four #1 does a newbie start with?

[jjreason]

More reason to file by year. That way you can see how the series ended & started one after the other, month by month, and you're not fucked up trying to figure out if you're supposed to read this Mighty Avengers #1 before that Uncanny Avengers 86 or vice versa.

Ha! As if Uncanny Avengers would ever get to 86!


I slay me.

[Tom Foolery]

I don't think any series will get any higher than issue 50 ever again. And most series will end between issue 12 and 25.

That's not counting "legacy" numbering. Like Guardians of the Galaxy getting issue "100" next month. Which, in the context of Marvel's new policy, makes even less sense and is even more confusing to these "new reader" unicorns Tom Brevoort name drops every week.
What new readers exactly? Your books only sell about 40k or less, except a handful.

[Diabolical]

They should just start labeling them as seasons (or something similar) right on the cover somewhere to make the chronology easier for future readers.

Daredevil, Season 3 - Issue 1
The Punisher, Season 7 - Issue 3
X-Men, Season 4 - Issue 7

[jjreason]

It's all just completely fucked. Why not just eschew the numbering entirely and leave the publication date. There is seriously no fucking point any more.

[Tom Foolery]

It's all just completely fucked. Why not just eschew the numbering entirely and leave the publication date. There is seriously no fucking point any more.

At this point I'd be fine with that.
But retailers wouldn't go for it because they'd no longer have "1st Issues" to jack off on.
I don't think Marvel even has the Date on the cover anymore. And haven't for awhile.

And the 'Season' idea just sounds like a hot steamy mess.

[Diabolical]

It doesn't have to be seasons necessarily but there needs to be something on the cover to make chronology less of a clusterfuck.

[Tom Foolery]

I'd still advocate the return of the dual numbering system Quesada implemented when he took over. They can plaster giant number ONES as big as they want on as many issues as they want.
Just put a small, unobtrusive "real" number somewhere on the cover for longtime readers and for the sake of continuity.
Hell, you could even toss it in the UPC Strip along with the Date.

[anarky]

Just don't go the IDW route. They (mostly) have excellent comics, but the reading order is next to impossible to figure out. There have been three different series called simply G.I.Joe, for example, and that's not even counting the many spin-off series. Add in confusing shit like usually collecting each series individually but occasionally lumping them together for themed trade paperbacks (Cobra Civil War, Dark Cybertron, etc), and there's just no fucking way to figure it out if you come in at any point after the very beginning. Well, without a road map of sorts. Which they could easily put on the last page of each paperback, but don't.

[Tom Foolery]

Pffft. Collectors who buy trades are second class citizens.

You forgot to mention that IDW are variant cover crazy. Which doesn't help when tracking down individual issues.
But at least when their GIJoe series relaunched, they relaunched the supporting series at the same time. That makes it slightly easier to sort in the box for me. I have the 1st series and Origins and the Cobra minis together. Then the 2nd Joe series, the SnakeEyes, and Cobra series together, then the most recent stuff together. And ARAH is in front of all of it, since it's the granddaddy series.

However, when I consolidate, I don't know if ARAH will get filed with the original Marvel series or if I'll go Marvel, then all the DDP stuff, then the IDW stuff. I'm leaning toward the latter.

[Diabolical]

Just a quick mockup.
The legacy number really small under the new number.
Even the date on there for the Canadian weirdos that want to file them chronologically.
And the nostalgia factor of the corner box.

[jjreason]

That would be too convenient. Very nice work. As a result of my first sentence though, we all know it will never come to pass.

[anarky]

If we ever conquer the world, you're in charge of Marvel's graphic design.

Tommy, the only way a newbie would get into comics in 2014 would be via trades. But they're confusing as hell in the ordering.