Throughout the worst moments of this time I experienced:

1) An overexposure of characters like The Punisher & Wolverine 

2) The Rob Liefeld huge-gunned muscle bound guys and the broke-back gals with their own huge guns. 

3) Stories and characterization with all the depth of a puddle.

4) Constant failed revamps of classic characters.

5) Those stupid 'events' that ran through every annual 

Eventually, that did it for me. I would occasionally pick up the odd TPB but more often than not, I was underwhelmed to say the least.

In 2003 I picked up Image's The Walking Dead (which was great for the first four or five years) and then added one or two other Image titles (Thief of Thieves, Criminal).

When I do weaken and pick up anything new from Marvel, I see nothing that made me fall in love with the characters all those years ago.

And as Mr. Byrne has often said - comics started getting lost when the weather vane switched from "How can I tell the greatest Captain Fonebone stories?" to "How can I use Captain Fonebone to tell MY stories?" Shploinkkk.

I think that's a huge step to fixing books.

Start a line of comics for the most well known characters written for all ages.  Sell these through big stores like Walmart and Target. A lot of books would have to be printed though, and they would have to be  positioned as close to checkout as possible.  Those are the two major hurdles as printing has become so expensive no matter what they use for printing media.

The comic book companies would not balk at starting a number of books off at #1 again and could make this the current "Big Event".  

It also would create the impulse buy experience needed to catch those young readers while their parents wait at checkout.

Just a thought.

Now you don't have to. 

You can watch mind-blowing special effects in multi-million dollar movies, watch flashy cartoons, or play as your favourite hero on any number of games consoles.

Therein lies the problem.

Comics are a medium in their own right and cover a huge amount of genres (in the same way that films and books do). If the quality of the material is right, I don't think that I shouldn't ever feel that it's time for me to quit reading comics; for the same reason that I wouldn't stop watching movies or reading books. 

Yuck! I haven't been able to stand the Joker for a looong time. The desire by DC Comics to continually outdo the one-two punch of The Killing Joke and A Death in the Family has led to 30 years of escalating the Joker's crimes to absolutely ridiculous levels, to the point where he must have gruesomely murdered thousands of people by now, and you sort of just want to never see him again.

I felt the best version of the character in the last three decades was on Batman: The Animated Series. The fact that the show was not allowed to show the Joker killing anyone forced the writers to actually come up with clever and imaginative ways in which to make him dangerous and scary, instead of relying on gruesome violence and gigantic body counts.