Once, in a podcast, Sal Buscema said that he left the comics industry because he couldn't do anything else to attract the attention of a reader by bringing something good. Today, seeing how Cloak and Dagger are more expressionless than they ever were after creator Bill Mantlo, Sal's words couldn't be more true.

I'm not sure it's the readers not being able to recognize quality. Cloak and Dagger would probably have done great at a small, independent publisher, but Marvel expected bigger sales for a book to have a long run back in the day. Today they all have short runs, so maybe that's the reason for them to give C&D another try.

The mistake IMHO is to link C&D with the X-titles. Although they had a great crossover with the New Mutants about a hundred years ago and were regarded as mutants themselves for a short while, Tandy and Ty have always worked best on a street level, fighting drug lords and helping lost souls in need. Although I'm not Christian, I always thought that they vibed perfectly with Christian themes such as sin, redemption, grace and hope.

I've always seen Cloak and Dagger as urban characters, very different from other superheroes. That's why I always wanted to know what was going on in those stories; it was, in a way, dark, outside the comfort zone. If they were at an independent publisher, it would certainly be the best thing. I'll always use Conan as an example of success when he left Marvel and went to Titan. I even like The New Mutants; it was dark back then too, but today I would never know what's going on, because is bad.

Moving Conan to another publisher is different though. Although there have been crossovers with the Marvel universe (I think?), he's really not a part of it, unlike C&D.

In fact, Conan's interactions in Titan with other characters are precisely with Robert E. Howard's characters, in a more adult setting, the opposite of what Marvel did in their last attempt at a revival, placing him alongside the Avengers. Shuma-Gorath appears in the Titan Conan, but in a much more grounded way.