Marvel Releases Legacy Teaser

Marvel Legacy

Veteran comic books fans will well know that the industry has changed over the years. Where comic books used to run indefinitely with the same numbering, reaching 500 issues and beyond, the industry has since taken to a "seasons" model more in line with how television works. A series will run for a couple of years, maybe 25 issues, and then be canceled and relaunched with a new #1.

The reasons for doing this have to do largely with sales. A fresh number one issue sells significantly better than the 20th issue of almost any given series. It also make for a clean break when a new creative team onto a title, so there's never a question of which issue it was exactly that your favorite writer started telling stories about your favorite character.

However, there have been some signs of this model slowing down. For instance, Old Man Logan, Doctor Strange, and Uncanny Avengers are each over 20 issues long and are receiving new creative teams this summer, yet they will simply be continuing where their predecessors left off rather than launching a new series for those characters.

No matter how many times Marvel Comics relaunches its titles with new numbering, someone in the Marvel offices is keeping track of how many issues overall each volume of those series makes up, and occasionally that legacy numbering will return, usually for a milestone story. For example, the "Death of Deadpool" took place in Deadpool #200, and a major Venom story involving the return of Eddie Brock will take place in Venom #150.

Marvel almost always makes a major publishing push in the fall, but no plans for that push have been announced so far.. Could Marvel Legacy be the follow-up to last fall's Marvel NOW!? Does it signify the return of legacy numbering to Marvel Comics? Nothing is for certain at this point, but these are questions we'll be asking as we await more information.