Seriously...why can't we have a proper Titan comic?
Probably the same reason we don't have DS9 or VGR or ENT comics -- they wouldn't sell well enough to be profitable. Only TOS and TNG seem to have large enough comics-reading audiences these days to be worth the investment.
The more basic reason we don't have
DS9,
Voyager, and
Enterprise comics is that IDW hasn't licensed those series. (They did have a
DS9 license, but it has reportedly lapsed without renewal.)
I suspect it's the lack of the
Voyager license that's a barrier to
Titan comics. There's a difference between "Can we use this character we don't have the license for as a cameo in this one-off story" and "Can we use this character we don't have the license for as a regular character in an ongoing series?"
After all, comics have gotten more expensive these days, so it's not as easy to attract casual readers.
But
Star Trek comics haven't, not in the time that IDW has held the license. They launched
The Space Between five years ago at $3.99, and
Hive #3 this week was also $3.99. Compared to what
Star Trek comics sold for ten or fifteen years ago they're more expensive, true, but that's true of Pocket's output as well. Today's
Star Trek comics (and novels, too) are priced in line with the rest of the market.
(Ironically, it's not true that five years ago
Star Trek comics were priced in line with the rest of the market. $3.99 was a high price for comics in 2007. Over five years, price creep from the Big Two has moved the average closer to where IDW prices their output. Today, $3.99 is a normal price when it wasn't then.)
That said, I agree with your final point, that four dollars an issue makes consumers choosier when it comes to their four-color reading material. Price is why I don't read as many Marvel titles as I should;
Superior Spider-Man will be on a shorter leash for me at $3.99 an issue than it would be at $2.99 an issue.
That guy on the right looks like a fat version of Brent Spiner with a goatee.
