"Your Vampirella analogy is less Bendis padding or subtext padding than lets throw in some repro work and some cheap Filipino art back-up stories to save some money... You have more of an anthology title problem. And Vampirella was an anthology title most of the time."
VAMPIRELLA started out as an anthology. Her own series didn't REALLY start until 8 issues in. they had sub-plots running from issue to issue when they started, but each issue tended to have a "complete" story. Later on, though, the page lengths got shorter, and "to be continued" began to crop up with unnecessary regularity.
The sad thing is, there were a large number of ASTONISHINGLY good artists working for Warren from time to time-- and every so often, you'd wonder why the "lead strip" wasn't getting the BEST artists-- OR writers-- working on it. For example, Bruce Jones, Nicola Cuti & Don McGregor never wrote her series-- Steve Englehart only did 3 episodes-- Archie Goodwin (considered by many to have done the best run) only did 8! I loved it when they'd do "book-length" stories, like the one with Gonzalo Mayo art that ran for 69 pages in a single issue-- but that happened very rarely.
The SUPERMAN storylines that came in the wake of the excellent "Death of Superman" and "Reign of the Supermen" only proved that "success breeds excess. NONE of them DESERVED to go on more than 6 weeks, maybe-- instead of being dragged out over 6 months or aeven a year. (Worse, in the case of the "electric" superman storyline, it was NEVER EXPLAINED how his powers changed-- or changed back, either!! Can you say "SLOPPY writing"??)
