201106211007.jpg
When alt-comix superstar Brian Chippendale reviews mainstream comics, the result illuminates us all this episode he examines the X-Nen, the new UNCANNY #1, and fanboy style, suggests that consecutive numbering didn’t hurt X-MEN #94:

Twitter seems not to be in a position to support my argument for a stabilized numbering system. Organization is a basic thing, in order to not confuse two items in the same category, you number them. TV does it on a season by season basis, season 1 episodes 1-16, some comic books have adopted a similar method such as Criminal, doing story arcs with a name dividing them into issues. “The Sinners, books 1- 6”. Dark Horse’s BPRD’s on this tip, you have “BPRD, The Dead Remembered” issue 3 of 3 but inside the book they make a point to also put “number 79 in a series” so if you want to sit down and read a run of the actual comics as opposed to the collections you have a chronological guideline. Simple. For Criminal you will have to look at publishing dates to figure out which issue one is the earlier issue one. Look, you have to develop some standard on numbering, and the long running 2000AD model(the newest issue being #1736) works pretty damn fine. But I don’t think Marvel is wrestling with experimental numbering solutions, I think they are shopping for dollars.