Marvel's obviously given Millar more creative license than one would normally expect. They cut him the check and he promises to write a book that'll get people back into the comic book shops. Over the course of the nineties, comic book distribution dwindled to a few specialty shops, keeping the medium well out of the reach of the casual, impulse shopper. But all this is the same predictable routine. The modern superhero archetype is so intermingled with the comics medium that few people outside the comics subculture realize that the two are actually innately unrelated.
Comics are a medium and superheroes are a subgenre, the main genre being fantasy.
Imagine how poorly books would sell if publishing houses refused to stock the shelves of the nation's Borders with nothing but westerns. Today, if a person wants to see laser beams shooting from eyes or metal claws springing from knuckles, they'll go see an action movie, preferably one with a fat special effects budget. The superhero genre, at least in comics, is as dead as dead can be, and, unlike the funky dynamics of the comics universe, it will not return from the grave. The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore wrote Watchmen , both of which more celebrated the death of the superhero than rejuvenated it. The only thing that will save the industry, and with it, Marvel, are new comics.