Anonymous asked: 2, What about current readers who happened to miss an issue? Again, tracking down that issue isn’t going to be especially easy.3. I agree with an earlier post about certain issues having special importance (ie, Spider-Man 121, Fantastic Four 48, X-Men 137, Daredevil 181, etc). That’s totally lost when each comic series is re-numbered at the drop of a hat. (Of course, it needs to be said that there really aren’t that many special individual issues any more – it’s all about the story arc spread
As in my previous answer, if you miss an issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA today, let’s say #14 the one that just came out, and you went to the shop to look for it, is it really likely that you’d wind up with Ed and Epting’s CAP #14, or Cassaday’s (Trevor Harisine’s, I think)? Or the one that Waid had his name taken off of? Which one is most likely to still be on your retailer’s shelf? Which one looks like the other ones in the set? And is your retailer not going to be able to offer you appropriate guidance? Plus, aren’t there creator credits on the cover as well? Plus, as I mentioned earlier, you can always go to the App and download the issue, if all you want is to read the story.
All of the issues you list there aren’t important because of their numbering, they’re important because of their story content. And if all of them had been released as issue #1 of their respective series, we’d still refer to them the way we most often do today with those numbers: “The Death of Gwen Stacy”, “The Coming of Galactus”, “the Death of Jean Grey”, and “The Death of Elektra.” The numbers are irrelevant to what makes those books special.
