They are hard to find at mine, buried on an aisle halfway down one particular checkout lane. You would have to know to look for them, which defeats the purpose of the experiment. Not like the old Archie digests, which were prominent at every checkout lane for easy impulse buying.

@taxidriver1980, I get your frustration and feelings toward Marvel, as I have been there myself.

Is the current Captain America slow? Yup, but that is how Coates writes and paces his books. If you go in expecting the story to move at 100 miles per hour, you will be disappointed. I had to learn to accept that this book, which for a while was the only Marvel book I was buying, is not going to be a thrill ride. He uses the book and the character to say something about America and politics, so it's not non-stop action but rather more quiet moments and philosophical contemplation.

As for making blanket statements about "being done with Marvel", well, you can do that, but you might miss something good. I'm not currently reading Immortal Hulk, but thwhtguardian really likes it and feels it's a high-quality book. Jason Aaron has been doing great work on Thor over the past decade. Some folks have really loved Squirrel-Girl or Devil Dinosaur and Moon Girl. The various "Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel" series have been pretty good, and I've enjoyed them a lot, even though I'm not the target audience for them. Even the current Fantastic Four series, a concept long-since believed dead, has been getting decent reviews.

Heck, I gave up on the X-Men a number of years ago, and this from a guy who owns every issue from #94 up (and everything before that in the two Omnibus editions). I felt they had run their course and were just rehashing old stuff, but then along comes Hickman with his current revamp of the franchise, and all of a sudden, I have two "X" books on my pull list again after not having one there for well over a decade.

I won't get into the economics of the comic industry, why there are constant #1's and revamps and reboots and reimaginings, because you know all of that stuff already. This is an emotional argument, and data won't change your mind, and that's perfectly reasonable. I would just suggest you keep your mind open, because you might find something from Marvel in six months or a year that you really like, but if you don't, that's OK also. It takes a lot of different folks to make this world go round, so you have to do what is best for you.

As others have been saying, I pretty much just pick or choose from Marvel/DC or other publishers which sparks my interest. Following a series or character on a regular basis anymore is not something I do purely from an economical aspect. Sadly, from Marvel those things which I do check out don't seem to be what I want in the long run. DC gets my consistent $$ these days with Flash, Hawkman and Terrifics while IDW gets me for Uncle Scrooge and the Larry Hama G. I. Joe and the occasional Transformers. I do try to note new things of interest from ANY publisher with each new weeks releases and then will either buy a few issues or browse through when at the LCS to help decide if I wish to try it out. The CCF weekly reviews have actually helped me in the decision process a few times to either pick up something or put it aside. Immortal Hulk is on my to try list just because of the reviews here

Being done with any company should mean you won't mindlessly purchase any/everything they put out anymore, instead choosing to support the writers or artists or series you truly enjoy and want more of.

Sadly this "niche" marketing is translating into everything sold anymore. There is no longer a large "variety" of company products to value price against. Walk into a grocery store and try to buy something like Pop-Tarts and you see that where there used to be endless supplies of various flavors and in both 8 or 16 package boxes, you now will find those choices severely limited forcing you to purchase "what" the store wants you to. Many stores are only stocking 8 count boxes of those which sell the most: Chocolate, Frosted Blueberry or Frosted Brown Cinnamon and you can barely find any Un-frosted regular flavors and some stores only carrying the larger 16 package boxes which cost more to increase their revenue. Malt-O-Meal cereals no longer make the regular Colossal Crunch which is imitation Cap'n Crunch and instead push only the Berry Colossal Crunch and you cannot find the Corn Bursts anymore in stores as well. It is almost impossible for finding no salt added corn but you can get 50% less sodium cans off the shelves because of a 30 cent cost difference.

Who would have imagined a day when Hostess, the makers of Ding Dongs/Twinkies as a company would go out of business when everybody ate them but families were instead buying the cheaper rip-off versions? Niche sales will close everything out. Radio Shack THE electronic specialty go to store is gone. Brick and mortar new book stores are all gone except for Barnes and Noble. Used book stores are nearly extinct except for those doing large sales via internet. Soon enough the LCS for comic books will soon be a thing of the past as well with the reader/collector market dwindling. If the comic book publisher's don't change their models soon from the focus upon umpteen standard monthlies which are cost unproductive sales wise, then they will eventually keep losing money until they print only "guaranteed" sellers and we are stuck with just BIG NAME's selling. You will find 10 Batman books but no Hawkman or 10 Spider-Man variation's but no Spider-Woman unless used as guest-stars for copyright purposes. The world of variety is long gone in these current times. 

brutalis, how I wish I could give you more than just one measly like for your post.

The biggest factor in everything you wrote is "risk avoidance" from the corporations. We used to live in a world where companies would innovate, take chances, give the world something new and hope it took off, but if it didn't, they went and created something else.

What changed is that the corporations became beholden to Wall Street and the shareholders, so they can't do anything that might drop that precious stock price a few cents, because then Wall Street will see them as a bad investment and the shareholders will complain that their dividends dropped and they aren't making as much money as they thought they would. New products? No way, but they'll gladly repackage, reshape, resize, and rehash things that are already proven winners, because people by and large don't like to take risks. It's why the multiple CSI shows and NCIS and procedural cop shows are so popular, because they are familiar and predictable and people take comfort in more of the same old, same old.

I had a recent conversation with a guy at my local grocery store that drove this home. He works for the Coca-Cola distributor in our area, and one early Sunday morning, I was in the soda aisle looking for Cinnamon Coke, which was one of their two new holiday offerings. I don't drink a lot of soda, but I had come across this at my local gaming shop and enjoyed it, so I wanted to pick up some while it was on sale (my store was running a "four 12-packs for $12" deal, and I needed to pick up some other varieties for a holiday party my wife and I were hosting anyway). There was only one 12-pack of the Cinnamon Coke on the shelf, so I asked the guy if he would be delivering any more, and he told me that the drivers were under strict orders not to deliver any more of it to stores. It hadn't sold enough, so the company had decided rather than distribute it and have it on the shelves unsold, they would just hold it back and eventually destroy it. Even worse, their other holiday flavor was Spiced Cranberry Sprite, which he told me was pulled off of the shelves after just three weeks, as it sold incredibly poorly and the company was in the process of destroying their entire remaining stock of it; I had never even seen that, either advertised or on the shelves.

Three weeks for a barely-advertised new product and already it was declared a failure? This is the world we live in, where if something doesn't take off immediately, it is viewed as a liability to the bottom line. Firefly? 8 episodes aired, then Fox killed the rest. John Carter movie? Early critics said it sucked, so it must suck and no one went to see it, and while it isn't Godfather II, it's not a bad movie and certainly not the worst way to kill a couple of hours.

I'm anticipating a not-to-distant future where your prediction about comics comes true. We'll get Batman and Spider-Man and Avengers and Deadpool, but that will be about it. No Squirrel Girl, no Hawkman, no books like Sandman or Preacher or the Kamala Khan Ms Marvel, because WHAT IF WE PRINT THEM AND NO ONE BUYS THEM AND WE COST THE SHAREHOLDERS MONEY?

/rant

I just want to respond to the " but the readers from the 50's wouldn't like the comics of the 70's or 80" line. While change can be jarring to a consistent reader, I will ask a question- who has gone on recored to say that they LIKE the current 6 issues to tell a 2 issue story format ? I haven't read of anyone saying that they enjoy a comic that costs 4 bucks that has nothing but people talking.