I know some of the comic fans here are relatively young or not in either business or the entertainment industry, but major publishers like Marvel are primarily in the business of maximizing their ability to make money. They are trying to entertain you, yes, but they are doing so not just for love of creation, but because by entertaining you, they convince you to give them your money. It takes some of the sheen of 'fun' away from the stories to think of many of them as cash grabs but that is what they are, and generally, when you can recognize something that will legitimately be good and something that is just going to take as many excuses as possible to make more money, at least you can make an informed decision which products/brands to support.

Business Model Behind Many Major Publishers' Decision Making:

• 1) Their business executives want to make money, and they hire writers and artists to create products that make people want to spend money to purchase their products.
• 2) They are able to generate a lot of money with characters like Spiderman and Wolverine, so those characters are all over the place and are affiliated with all the major events. they headline their own movies, get the most products, etc.
• 3) Marginal or secondary characters, like Storm, Meggan or Captain Britain just aren't popular enough to justify Marvel investing in a series that won't sell enough copies to be profitable after taking into account business expenses. However, if these characters have fan followings that can be easily pleased by including them into a videogame or other merchandise at minimal cost, Marvel will take advantage of it.
• 4) Being in business to make profits doesn't mean you won't occasionally hit upon the golden combination of a great writer, artist and concept that sell like $1 bags of jelly beans - but it does mean that if a series is not likely to make money, Marvel is is not likely to publish it. It's not impossible that they might do so, but businesses tend to avoid risk and their way of doing this is to focus on A List characters that are proven to maximize revenue.
• 5) Businesses need to make decisions that will maximize profit, but minimize expenses. In order to be profitable and stay in business, they can't release any and everything they want - they actually have a limited amount of resources. So if they can only afford to release 2 books in a given month, and they have 3 A list characters whose books will definitely sell and 1 B or C list character that has a much smaller fan following, it makes more sense for them to go with two of the 3 A listers and maybe do something with the B or C lister down the line when they are less constrained by budget.

This is one reason why creator owned independent characters or anime can be counted as successful despite not selling as much merchandise or product as a major publisher - because they are already aimed at a niche market and the business expenses are comparably lower than a major publisher, they don't need to sell as many copies to be considered financial and creative successes without selling out the integrity of the characters.

Anyway, I was just noting that some fans and comic readers have difficulty separating their favorite characters or teams from a companies' big picture and aren't willing to look at themselves as consumers in a business. I think the value of a physical comic book store or comic review site/publication is that you can walk into one or read a blog and have the possibility of being sold on a book or series you never heard of by the packaging or synopsis versus concentrating on only one brand or character.