You answered an ask on the topic of legacy characters saying: "But for many reasons, they have become inaccessible to newer or returning readers. It’s just a fact." In my own experience as someone who started reading superhero comic books barely 2 years ag

Yep, and I know that there are others like you. I myself became interested in comics because of a comic that was not just part of a continued story, but was a big crossover title with a ton of legacy and multiple Earth teams (it was JLA/JSA). But the reality is that many legacy books, maybe even most legacy books, have two problems:

1) They marginalize, to some degree, the original characters that the new heroes are spun off from, and

2) They themselves rarely find an audience big enough and loyal enough to keep going.

I always feel like the Grinch pointing this stuff out. But there is the reality we WISH was the truth, and then there is the one that actually exists, and in the latter, all these books just off the top of my head were canceled for low sales; Steph Batgirl, Wolverine’s Son (name escapes me), All-New Atom, X-23,  on and on and on. It’s harder to think of recent books of this type that survived than those that failed.

If you go by word of mouth on message boards and Tumblr, it would look like these books are more popular than they are. But what we see time and again is that the message board audience is kind of a gourmand audience,  it doesn’t really represent what actually sells. The opposite seems to be true, for the most part.

I hate discussing popularity of comics, or any art, really. It’s not my favorite topic at the best of times. Sales clearly do not equal quality and vice versa. But even in the gravy days of comics, a book that didn’t sell would eventually face cancellation.

Everyone comes in for a different reason and for different books. I have no doubt people have been alienated by the new initiatives at Marvel and DC both, but we also get people all day long telling us they are new DC readers or returning readers who have jumped back on.

It’s all commercial stuff, I kind of wish it wasn’t part of the conversation but realistically, it has to be, you know?