The stores are apparently doing well enough with the ancillary merchandise and gaming supplies that potential lost sales to kids are not a factor. That's not actual money lost. Until someone proves to them that such sales could exist, it's all cloudstuff and fairy dust. What does sell to the customers who walk in their door is what's on the stands.

There's the added factor that many store owners and employees are the intended audience for these books. The ones I've spoken to on the subject pretty much love the current crop of books. Some are definitely better than others, but what they really want (as readers, as shop owners, same difference in their mind) is material that breaks new ground. Shows them something they haven't seen before. Like Miracleman #15 style violence done even bigger... Or on a playground. Something cynical and edgy, 'cause that sh*t's funny... Or Batman and Catwoman going at it on a rooftop, because hey, you KNOW they did that all the time before, right? Just candy-ass parents groups and other nobodies wouldn't let them talk about it. But they did it. You know they did... Stuff like that. Cool stuff. They want that, because not only can they appreciate it themselves, they can sell it to their customers. The cool ones. The ones who come in and want to talk about the comics. Hang out. Buy Kotobukiya figures of heroines in thongs. 

As far as the store owners I've spoken with are concerned (a very small sample group, I'll admit) the old-style books are being done. They like that old-school stuff too. Waid's Daredevil. Superman usually. That stuff's pretty inoffensive. Some of it even gets fans pretty excited. So, yeah, it's not like it's not out there, for the old-schoolers. 

If you can get them away from talking shop with their friends who are blocking the register, they'll tell you, super-hero books have always been about violence. Comics today just show what that's really like. Not just how it looks, the blood and gore, but what it does to the men and women who practice it on a daily basis. You can't zip back to the WGBS news desk, not a hair out of place if you've just gone hand-to-hand with a Kryptonian serial killer. That was kid stuff. Silly. 

Today? Today, you want to do well in a fight with a guy like that, you have to pretty much be a guy like that. No. It's not pretty. Grow up. Hey, we did. The comics we read did. Don't like it? Showcases and Essentials over there in that corner with the Richie Riches. And don't interrupt me when I'm talking with the other customers again, okay? Wait your turn, infantile reader.

Just like their readership, they mainly want the stories to count, to move forward and take them places, usually through really bad neighborhoods, where only the badass survive. Going backwards, as the undoing of Spider-Man's marriage was seen to do, was offensive to them. How can they sell books to customers if it all just gets erased like that? Don't the publishers want Peter Parker to grow? To change? That's life, man. Respect your readers enough to acknowledge at least that much!

Any attempt to sell mainstream titles to children in this day and age will be branded as backwards, money-driven, censorship-heavy cowardice. A betrayal of the creators who've ushered in this golden age of dismemberment and red-mist coated Adult Fiction and spitting in the eye of the customers who've stood by the companies all these decades, as the fainter of heart all fled when the going got good and rough.

Writing mainstream Thor for all ages would be sales suicide, they'd say. Marvel did the recent Robert Landridge "Mighty Thor" books. They died a thousand deaths on the stands. Turning mainstream Thor into that will simply kill it. There were a few kiddie-friendly Wolverine books too. Where are they now? Cancelled due to sales. The audience you want isn't there. For God's sake, let us service the audience we DO have! (And ourselves as well. Sexy Thor is pretty hot, after all. And the book has Angela in it now, too. Twice the butt shots! It's like Top Cow all over again, but with real characters like Thor. Not ones people had to make up because they couldn't get the real ones.)

Wrapping up, in order to create all ages books again, the companies would have to hire people capable of writing it and writing it well. They don't have many now who could. They'd have to overturn their happily blood-soaked editorial departments who think that if Ares (half-Thor, half-Wolverine) sells big, having someone rip him in half, tossing this part in Asgard and that one in Westchester, will sell even more. 

They'd have to overcome resistance from the store owners who like the world as it is, edgy, violent, and unpleasant, and do not wish to see their stores become default daycare centers. They'd have to somehow get the books into the hands of those kids who want them and provide reliable assurance that next month's issue won't be Superboy punching Pantha's head off. ("Oh, come on! That was, like, ten years ago now! Why bring that up? Certainly there's a more recent decapitation you can use...") 

And they'd have to convince parents the product is safe again for their children to enjoy, a tough position to sell since parents traditionally have never thought comics were any good for their kids.

That's a lot of hurdles to overcome, especially for companies who don't see anything wrong with the way things are now. Marvel is so flippin' rich right now! And the comics line is seen as a vital component of that money-making engine! Magazine sales are down, sure, but they're down for Newsweek and Redbook too. No one's advocating turning them into Newsweek Jr. and Redbook For Kids.

So Marvel TPB's can't be sold at school library book fairs. I think most Marvel editors right now would be happy to bank their probably rather substantial quarterly bonuses and accept that trade-off.

What makes this even sadder is that there are great Marvel and DC kids books- 8x8 reader books and 6x9 ready to read books. There are Golden Books and some nice illustrated storybooks. But after the kids grow out of that around 1st & 2nd grade, it gets much harder to figure out where they can go from there.

I will say that for a while I read him old Fawcett Captain Marvel comics on my ipad. It was great! 

Well...except for all the racism... But I did my best to skip those stories. Still, we had a blast and it was fun to see how many times poor Billy got hit in the head. Wish someone would at least let Captain Marvel still be for kids...

They won't even let Captain Marvel be "Captain Marvel."

kids don't like sitting at the kiddie table 
at Thanksgiving and don't want to read kids comics they want to read 
what Daddy reads.   

I see your point, my older brother wouldn't let me read his Conan comics when I was a kid (regular Marvel not Savage Sword). My LCS is very kid friendly with a good all-ages section. The last two times that my 3 year-old daughter has gone with me, she has picked out a Peanuts comic and a My Little Pony comic. A few years ago, my younger brother-in-law asked the owner about Haunt and was talked out of it before I even had a chance to step in. He was shown some cheaper back issues of the Avengers instead. The owner understands that you need to cater to a wide variety of customers if you want to stay in business.