Continuity does play some role, but it's the mere fact that there are just too many relaunches and resets-- and side-mini's/one-shots/crossovers that make reading A-Z tough. And companies (via writers) are not trying to get new readers (except for the short-lived bump of a #1 issue). I used to know in what order to read a title because of the issue numbers. And side-stories were usually denoted by an Editor box ("Read ASM #345 for what happened").

There was continuity when I started reading (approx #215 of Iron Man, #250-ish of Avengers, GI Joe #26), but I could pick up what was going on. The old "every issue is someone's first issue" philosophy made it possible to start anywhere and understand 80-90% of the goings-on. The rest came later after reading some more issues.

Same was Soap Opera's operated. There were 30 plus years of story but you could start watching (or come back to watching years later) on any given day and pick things up pretty quickly. There wasn't a new status quo every year.

They're catering to new fans that are not coming. Comic readers like and expect continuity, that's one of the main reasons we're attracted to the medium.

Norman Osborn showing up alive was another retcon that Stan Lee would not have approved of. He was very definitively dead, and his being dead was a major part of the title for years.

Like I said before, when you make major changes like that - changes that invalidate and undo major storylines from the past - that means that stories from the present and the future have no stakes since readers then expect a writer in the future to undo it.

Jeez. I just saw in the other topic tht Marvel is restarting ASM at number 1 again..
Such a bunch of nonsense.