When I and my cohorts replaced the creatives who’d given the comic book business massive success in the 1960s, folks like Stan Lee and Julie Schwartz, we brought with us our Boomer self-obsession. We didn’t want to create comics for kids. We wanted comics for *us.*

That’s the origin of comic book superheroes’ shift from Middle-Grade readership in the 1960s to Young Adult readership in the 1970s, and Adult readership in the 1990s and beyond— the refusal of Boomer creatives and editors like myself and others to Let It Go.

We redefined the readership comics were aimed at— coinciding with a shift in distribution that allowed that redefinition to stick. The result is a dead end for comic book publishing as a business. How would I change this?

I’d cancel every existing superhero comic book, and publish a limited new line for a Middle-Grade readership, simplify characters and storylines, and eliminate every “event” that requires more than passing familiarity with the basic simplified continuity. Ten-fifteen titles.

For existing readers, I’d offer a separate, higher priced graphic novel line with whatever expanded adult storylines creators and readers want to explore. But this would be separate. Not monthly. Not the mainstream.

And I’d do *everything* possible to get monthly comics into supermarkets and movie theaters and Walmart and Target and Costco and offer subscription services through Amazon. Pursue every alternate distribution Avenue possible.

The present course taken by the major publishers is a dead end. They’re pursuing the wrong readership. There’s a bigger audience out there. We just have to welcome them.