The Four Color Media Monitor

This is a little list of things that, IMHO, are responsible for leading to poor quality in comics today:

• Editors who force mandates/edicts and crossovers upon almost an entire line, which leads to a lot of "developments" that are in poor taste, and/or don't suit the characters, and are just plain implausible, adding nothing positive whatsoever.
• Editors who choose the writers - and artists - according to their popularity in a specific genre and with specific audiences, but not according to if they understand what makes the book work. (And if it's artists we're talking about, regardless of whether their artwork is dreadful a la Liefeld.)
• Writers who knee-jerkity go along with the plans of the above, which puts their devotion and dedication in doubt.
• Marvel zombies, and also DC zombies, who buy what they're told to by those doing the promotion, regardless of quality, and regardless of whether the assigned writers are doing a bad job, implying that they don't think for themselves.
• Speculators, aka collectors who don't buy for if there's a fun story in store, but rather, in hopes that the comics they buy will be worth plenty of money someday.
• People who buy a comic book because it touts the death of a protagonist, and are willing to tolerate the marketing of death as something great to check out, among other bad things.
  
• Mainstream press companies and reporters who serve as cheerleaders for those doing all these things no matter how bad they are, and without even asking if there's something wrong with the whole approach.
  

There's probably plenty more examples that I could think of here, but for now, these are but a few of the problems I see as driving the quality of comics into the mud swamp today, and also giving a bad impression to people outside of comic books of what their audience are like. In reference to say, "zombies" I see them as being a source that'll inevitably have to be criticized for destroying the Marvel universe and all chances of good developments. And market speculators will also have to be frowned upon, since they're making a joke out of themselves.