That's something I can relate to, because it has happened to my favourite comic series. This is gonna be a long post because it's discussing a comic series that has been goin on since 1959 and so naturally has seen some changes.
For my entire life I've been a huge fan of the French comic Asterix. I've been reading and collecting the comics for over forty years. Asterix was written by a man named Rene Goscinny and drawn by a man named Albert Uderzo. It was translated into English by Anthea Bell and Derrick Hockeridge - I only mention the translators because Rene Goscinny himself had said that he preferred their translations to his own writing, and also because we Canadians got the British English translations while Americans got their own American English translations. A lot of the humour was dumbed down for the American versions because the importers felt that the comic should be aimed at a younger audience and that more complicated wordplay would go over their heads.
The art was exquisite, and the humour was deep on many levels, including gratuitous puns and wordplay. They even made fun of themselves for their wordplay (in one comic, Getifix the druid has created a magic potion that smells really bad in order to drive the Roman invaders out of their village. He remarks, "You know I never resort to wordplay, Asterix, but if I did I'd say this was the pollution to all of our problems").
In 1977 the writer died suddenly of a heart attack. It was very nearly the end of the series - Uderzo was so upset that he didn't have the heart to continue. His publisher had other ideas though, and sued him to finish one last volume - Asterix in Belgium, the last one that Goscinny had ever written. Uderzo complied, though in later years he would say that he was unhappy with the art because he was being forced to draw. It actually shows in the book. It's not that the art was sabotaged or done poorly, but the setting and weather (consistently grey skies, rain, etc) were a departure from other books, and clearly show Uderzo's mood while doing the work.
After "Belgium" was published and his obligation to the publisher was complete, Uderzo had planned to cease production entirely. A letter writing campaign by fans of the comic eventually convinced him to continue though, and so he did. He would never bring in a replacement for his dearly departed friend, so he wrote the next volume, Asterix and the Great Divide, himself. And it was good. It leaned a little too much on classic literature, borrowing a sub-plot from Romeo and Juliet, but it worked. He had obviously spent years collaborating with Goscinny, and it showed. It certainly wasn't the best Asterix story, but it wasn't the worst, either.
Then came Asterix and the Black Gold and Asterix and Son. These two were also quite good, helped along by the fact that Uderzo's art was evolving and becoming even better. The humour was back in full form as well.
After those two, however, things started going downhill. Uderzo started taking Asterix in a new direction, relying more on magic powers (the village bard causing it to rain whenever he sings, people turning to stone, etc), mythical items and places (magic carpets, the lost city of Atlantis, etc). It hit a low with the final Uderzo volume, Asterix and the Falling Sky, which involved space aliens drawn to look like Mickey Mouse (named Toon from the planet Tadsilweny, an anagram of "Walt Disney"), and some random Manga-looking bad guy (from the planet "Nagma", an anagram of Magna, whose name was Akoaotaki, an anagram of Takao Oaki), and space drones looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger dressed like Superman. It was a mess and it simply didn't work for Asterix.
The real changes happened after this: Uderzo, well into his eighties now and somewhat stung by the poor reception of "Falling Sky", handed the torch over to a new writer/artist pair. The results were OK. The art was great, thou not quite up to Uderzo's standards - the eyes on the characters always look off to me, but I can get by that. The writing for the first new volume, Asterix and the Picts, was passable. It lacked the clever wordplay of the older books, but the story was good.
It got worse from there, though. In addition to a new writer and artist, new translators were brought in. More importantly, Canadians would now get the American translations. All of the clever side jokes are gone, and several characters and locations suddenly and without explanation had new names (the druid Getafix is now called Panoramix, the names of all the Roman camps have changed, the stories rely way too much on older, classic stories (often recycling characters just for the sake of trying to give readers some sort of link to the golden ages). The art is still good, but another change is that the books are now much smaller (less than half the size) and so the art is hard to see. The writing is flat, the humour is sparse, and the magic is gone.
Will I continue to buy and read the Asterix stories? Absolutely. But unlike the earlier ones, these newer ones will be read once, maybe twice, and then placed on the bookshelf never to be read again.
