Marvel committing suicide? Are you kidding, they just re-wrote their book policies so Austen would leave. He's signing over as an exclusive for DC now. Who's going to prosper from this? Oh yeah. lol
Fiscally, Marvel is doing the best it has been in a long time. As far as all of these character deaths, I think most of it is a kind of Marvel Heroes ReLoad. Like they did with the X-Books. Their vision of what sells and what should sell is a little eskew. An ongoing Rogue book is retarded. A Rogue mini-series is okay. Everyone gets a mini-series at some point. Remember the 80's? Mini-series' galore! After Busiek's run, they let the Avengers slowly decay, as their (would-be) flagship title, that was a huge mistake. Now, with big name Bendis on it, and a promise of a massive reboot, I would hazard a guess to say it's selling a lot better now.
And I'm glad to see them give less big-name but great writers awesome chances. Priest, Cap and Falcon for life! It's a great title, but then again, it raises questions, is Cap becoming a superfluous character? I think they should end his current series just to prevent an overexposure and create less continuity problems. That's my 2 cents for now.