On the topic of the renumberings. Can't you adopt the system you had in place,a little while ago, which was to have the current issue number up front in black and bold, and then the total issue number smaller in grey on the bottom or off to the side? Like Daredevil volume 2 issue 70 for example. It also showed you it was 450 in total. Seems like a best of both worlds. New readers come in on the number one and older readers and newish reader back issue hunting can find what they need easily.
You would think so, except for the fact that we screwed that second number up constantly, something like every third issue had the wrong number on it. It was a hell of a lot of work to even get it wrong, and it didn’t seem to really provide any tangible benefit (especially since it was incorrect so often), so we dispensed with it.