Captain America #600

Last week saw the release of Captain America issue #600. The previous months issue was issue #50. So what gives? Turns out, Marvel Comics is celebrating 70 years next month, and as part of the celebration, they are releasing Daredevil #500, Amazing Spider-Man #600 and Captain America #600. This should make me really happy, as one of my biggest pet peeves in comics was the trend to restart all popular titles back at issue #1 (in some cases, more than once). Apparently the comic companies thought that comic readers would be too intimidated to start reading a comic with 500+ issues and would be more interested in buying more collectible #1 issues. I myself found comics that had been going long enough to have issue #854 (such as Batman Detective Comics has this month) to be extremely cool. Back in my youth, I read and collected Captain America and Daredevil, but once they reverted back to issue #1 (thereby ignoring the history of all the issues that had come before), it was a big part of why I quit reading comics. It took about 10 years to come back to comics. To Marvel's way of counting, the current issue of Captain America would have been #600 if it had continued with its original numbering. I'm sure they have fudged the numbers a bit to make sure that this summer, their big titles all hit a milestone number such as 500 and 600.
So, I should be happy right!? Unfortunately this just seems like a lame sales stunt. I'm sure if we wait a few months, someone at Marvel will get the brilliant ideal to start back at issue #1 again for these titles.
Happily for me, DC comics has allowed Batman and Detective Comics to continue with their actual numbering reaching 688 and 854 respectively so far!
Nuff Said...