And yet:
Y'know, I've heard a lot of comics pros complain over the years about Jim Shooter's hard-ass management style when he ran Marvel from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. So I'm sure there's something to it. However! During that period, Marvel produced some of its best comics ever, from Frank Miller's DAREDEVIL to Chris Claremont and John Byrne's X-MEN to Walt Simonson's THOR. So I figure that Shooter had to be doing something right.
I'm certain for those three, there were ten without any merit. We'll have to agree to disagree whether Claremont had any talent--Len Wein's issues were much better.
Shooter's only criteria for whether a book kept running or not was whether it was selling. He loved creators if their work was selling like hotcakes--if it was only moderately successful or average, he'd fuck with the creators relentlessly, and seemed truly 'colorblind' to quality, unless it had a sales figure of 100,000+ next to it. He represents every thing bad about corporate comics, invented or perfected it, even. Nobody takes any chance with new talent anymore, and diversity is reduced to about 5 or 6 different styles on the art, while ex-gamers who wouldn't know literature if it bit them on the ass run the quality of the writing into the ground with lousy editorship, of the most toady, people-pleasing sycophants they hire. Thank God
there are exceptions, but more comics fall under 'Sturgeon's Law' than what is traditional in comics, now. Generally better-drawn, but with no depth, variation, or chances being taken.
Art is diversity, art is following a personal vision--not a 'pork-barrel' commodity. Comics as artform lost in the battle with the bottom line--and the thing is, nobody seems to have noticed.