Previous Post Quote: Quote: I've been revisiting (and visiting for the first time) Marvel's -1 books which were coverdated for the summer of 1997. Quote: The only ones I picked up related to titles I was already collecting like Generation X, can't remember any others. Same here. The only books I picked up at the time were the Spider-Man books (of course there were like 5 of those). Quote: Quote: First of all, these books had a hand in starting the untraditional numbering of comic books, which I've grown to hate. I know stuff like Tales To Astonish becoming The Incredible Hulk happened but after all the #0's and #-1's, all the reboots and returns to the old numbering have taken the magic out of anniversary issues. But anyway... Zero issues became big. Image had a hand in it when they jumped all their single-digit books forward to #25 and then back again, just a little preview of things to come. DC topped it with issue #1,000,000 of every title. Wizard was to blame for this phenomenon, too, with Zero and 1/2 issues. I was ok with it back then. I just hate what it has become.

I was trying to think of when I started hating it. I think when Team Titans debuted and they did 5 variants of issue #1. Each variant had a different cover (that's another thing I hate, variant covers) and had a "team" story for half the book and a "solo origin" story for the other half. The "team" story was the same in each variant and the "solo" story was different in each one. So you had six half-issues or three issues worth of story spread over five issues.

Just do a double-sized first issue and be done with it. Ridiculous.