TAROT by Jim Balent is unashamedly a T&A book, with no real pretense of a plot beyond that. It's in the same category as PENTHOUSE COMIX, or Wiched Wanda or Honey Hooker. I can't imagine anyone reading that book to follow the storyline or characters.
The nudity I think vastly narrows the market for that book.
Add to that the Satanic/Wiccan pentagrams and ocult themes, that probably further narrows the audience.
Even Budd Root's CAVEWOMAN, beyond its good-girl art, has a plot and themes near and dear to the writer/artist's heart (mostly pop-culture horror as seen in FAMOUS MONSTERS, Classic Hollywood horror movies, E.C. and Warren magazine horror, 60's pop culture, the Beatles, and silver-age Marvel comics.
I'm sympathetic to your point about completely changing the personality of a character, either for sales/marketing reasons, or just on the whim of the creators involved.
One character that stands out for me is THE QUESTION. Created by Steve Ditko with a very conservative Ayn Rand philosophy, I cn't imagine Ditko is pleased at all with the left-wing Zen-Bhuddist direction O'Neil took the chacter in with the 1987-1991 series.
Although I've praised the series on these boards, he's definitely not the same character Ditko created.
For that matter, neither is the Batman character that O'Neil wrote in the 1970's, the sophisticated, in-control, but relentless detective, the same character that O'Neil himself edited in the late80's and 90's, who became an intimidating out-of-control jerk who doesn't play well with others.
My only guess is that either O'Neil wanted to do this stuff in the 70's but was restrained by editorial control, or O'Neil himself changed considerably in the intervening years. Or --along the lines of the discussion here-- O'Neil just made an editorial decision to completely change and re-invent the character for the new market of that late 1980's era.
