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Remember that time Marvel had a good thing going with one X-MEN title everybody read, then kicked out the guy responsible to chase after faddish hot artist-driven huge sale numbers, then ended up with a damaged franchise once the fad was over?
I was thinking about the "soap opera" aspects of team books like X-MEN (and LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES) and how if you had a favorite character, you had to wait a month between installments to get maybe that page/page and half's worth of content featuring said character...
...if, you know, it wasn't one of the main ones. Probably not such a problem with the smaller cast of X-MEN, but if you were, say, a Star Boy fan over at LEGION you might not get a satisfactory amount of development for him.
But the odd thing is...*adding* titles, thus giving more room to focus on other characters, didn't always help. It splintered the continuity throughline ("which title is the 'main' title?") and fan-favorite characters still got the focus over the secondary ones (sorry Star Boy).
Having just one title gave everyone one place to read the ongoing soap opera, one shared experience for fans to discuss, and less "oh you have to read this other series to get what's happening here."
Here's an extended discussion on my blog on this topic as it relates to LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES: https://www.progressiveruin.com/2016/05/23/in-which-i-basically-dont-define/ (with a link to pal @ThatWeissGuy's site expanding on it)
