Good point.

Britain had a very diverse group of comics for a while. Superheroes were the exception rather than the rule. 

I bought the EAGLE in the 80s. It was an anthology title. Within a typical issue (let's go back to, say, '86), there was a war/special forces strip, a football strip, a strip about an alien, a strip about youths out to make money, a strip about a police dog, a strip about a sentient tower block computer, etc. 

Not a superhero in sight at times! 

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How does more competition for your attention make it easier? When I was a kid, there were 10 channels and people were gravitating to the same thing because they had few alternatives. Now there are 500 channels, and my niece and nephew couldn’t give a shit because they are busy watching someone play Minecraft on YouTube. 

Ten channels?!!!

Here in the UK, we had three (BBC One, BBC Two and ITV). In 1982, we got Channel 4. And in 1997, we got Channel 5. Those were terrestrial channels, of course there were more if you had satellite.

10 channels? I'd have been ecstatic. ;-)

I remember at school on the following Monday, everyone could discuss what they had watched at the weekend and we'd have all caught the same thing.

There are still breakout stars though.

Whether you want to have heard of the Kardashians or not, you will have heard of the Kardashians. With little talent spread between seven of them, this is quite the achievement.

To echo slightly what Michael said upthread, I remember my Dad at the Sunday dinner table in the mid-eighties banging on about how the music of my era was crud because no-one had any longevity. He asked me to name someone who was popular who'd been around a while and my cotton-wool child's brain dredged up Billy Ocean. Of course, the correct answer was: nearly every last mother who was big in the 60s and 70s and still alive, because the rotters never went way.

Even my mum knows who Adele is. My Dad does not, but then again, he can probably only name you Elvis from the 50s, which is the era he grew up in.

People like Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry are inescapably famous and they are of the now. To deny otherwise, is to be simply an old curmudgeon.

JB - When you took over Superman, was there any expectation of new characters that you would create?

Gambit and Bishop brushed with the tail-end of my comics collecting. I bought and read comics with them in, but my mind is ill-adjusted to them. In some ways, they still seem like new characters to my fossilised grey matter. I gather they were popular, but I'm kind of a civilian when it comes to comics post-1995.

Here in the UK, we had three (BBC One, BBC Two and ITV). In 1982, we got Channel 4. And in 1997, we got Channel 5. Those were terrestrial channels, of course there were more if you had satellite. 

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I had the local ABC, CBS, NBC, and later, Fox affiliates. PBS. Two independent stations on UHF (which much later on became the UPN and WB affiliates) and three LA stations that the antenna was able to pick up.

Then in the 90s, my family got cable, and we had one of those slider boxes then went up to 43 channels.

Mind you, isn't almost everything derivative? Pulp heroes inspired Batman, Swamp Thing and Man-Thing have a "common ancestor", etc, etc.