You heard it here first; Marvel unleashes the fury of the farm this fall with Dynamo-Donkey, Corky-Coichon, Haz-mat Quarter Horse and of course their leader Guile-Eye Goat..........

No shit - this is how I feel about a lot of what Marvel does with X books. I've been through the 7 steps already about how any business stays in business - I get the model. Truly, I do. And I want Marvel to stay in business - again for selfish reasons. I'm even willing to step out on a creative limb as a fellow artist and say it's a good thing to take risks and try new things as it grows and expands your repertoire. All of these caveats over and done with - I'm still frustrated at how the X universe gets managed at the front offices.

Each of us has got at least one if not more X characters we like to follow on with. Having 20 plus characters on one title makes for folks not getting to see their favorite every month as you try to make room for character development. So you come up with launching a second or third title to manage all of these stories. That much I agree and encourage. But - right now, I couldn't tell you who's on what X team other than Uncanny or X-Factor. And even those barely. Hell I can follow Factor better than Uncanny, which is a direct result of David's writing.

Uncanny, Factor, Force - all of these have legitimate goals as an organization. They have defined missions and personalities whom fit their organizations as a result of being well developed characters. I have no clue why it's being called 'Wolverine and the X-Men or X-Men: Legacy'. The former aren't any longer X-Men or if they would have themselves be then I'd like it if Marvel would carve them a unique moniker to identify themselves with. Same with Legacy.

Truth told though; as a reader, fan and collector I'd prefer it to cap at 3 or 4 titles. Not 6 or whatever it is now. Rotating 10 characters within those titles at a time is enough. I get it that there are more than 30 total. Oh well. You saturate the same market that clamors for more of your product and you run a different risk of having too much product without enough demand or worse yet, create a stagnant pool of interest in your creative product. Going to the well again and again in any branch of entertainment industry is a recipe for red numbers in quarterly reports.

The compromise is to have a solid rotation and years worth of story arch planning which implements new characters into the titles and some out as they move on. Define the damn titles; give them purpose within themselves and capable of independent action/stories. Provide fans of each reasons they follow them separately. Ditch any un-necessary titles that flood the market. That's it. Oh, before I go though - bring the original numbering back to Uncanny. Thanks.