I stopped reading for a while shortly before the mess, because I go through phases with my long-term fandoms, where I'm sometimes more, sometimes less interested in them, but tend to come back. And I even got my regular series still for later reading, but when I was in the mood for comics again it was completely daunting because I couldn't just strat reading again or anything but it was all Crisis this, infinite that. I'm not opposed to complex backstory per se, I'm more than willing to read a comic with two reference websites and wikipedia open, but there are limits to the hoops I still have fun coping with.

They whine and whine that not more people are interested in their comics, but then they make it almost impossible to follow them even for fairly dedicated fans. On the Marvel side I can at least simply buy Daredevil without hving to deal with the thousandth variation of their most recent epic mutant woe. (I can never quite keep track whether at any moment the mutants are tragically wiped out or everybody turned into one.)