Large all-encompassing story arcs are the cu ​rrent BIG THING in comics, inspired by the mega-series' in the 80's (such as COIE and Secret Wars) and early 90's. They're really going all it on both sides, Marvel have had Civil War, House of M and so on, DC have had the crisis - 52 - Countdown - Crisis, Star Wars comics are now planning to follow suite with a galaxy covering, 4000 year spanning epic "Vector", heck the IDW relaunch of Transformers has been solely written for all the mainline comics to play off in the large story arc (this story has been running since late 2005 now!).
Does this show a maturity in comics? That now they plan in advance to get a solid story done, or are they ignoring the strength of single issues, where single issues of comics are now weak on their own yet play into the story, compared to how they used to be able for nybody to just randomly pick up a comic nomatter what number, and be in the action?

I'm a very dedicated fan, so I am really into long arcs that really reward us readers at the end, but I am aware that one-offs are dying. There have been notable atempts to keep one-offs going with Gotham Knights, G.I. Joe Frontlines, Transformers Spotlight, Star Wars Empire/Rebellion. Where the largest arcs are about three issues. I like one-offs, in that they provide a digestable bite-sized chunk of story, they can be hinting to the bigger story or lead to it, but generally they're just in and out bang pow BATARANG! But then the scale, or changes which can occur in a major arc are really cool, they can revitalise the entire universe, or make it worse, they provide suitable endings (such as G.I. Joe's WW3 series which will finish off the comic line) and can affect the characters greatly (such as Batman's paranoia going overboard during and after Identity Crisis). I really like these payoffs, they're one of the reasons I keep at comics, because there's always something big and attention grabbing going on. But I'm also a fan of one-shots as I'm impatient and hate having to wait to find out if Six-Shot kills Optimus prime, or if Blue Beetle is Robin's real dad.
Discuss.

Does this show a maturity in comics? That now they plan in advance to get a solid story done, or are they ignoring the strength of single issues, where single issues of comics are now weak on their own yet play into the story, compared to how they used to be able for nybody to just randomly pick up a comic nomatter what number, and be in the action?

I don't think story arcs are all that hostile to newcomers... I mean, if you can only get into a book by following every issue carefully from start to finish, then it's just bad writing. Books like Transmetropolitan and 100 Bullets were basically just single extended story arcs, but you could still pick up pretty much any issue independent of the others and still get a damn fine read.

One of the main reasons I prefer arcs to one-shots is that one-shots feel constrained to make sure that anyone missing an issue won't miss out on anything, which is equivalent to saying that nothing really happens during the whole run. As a result, they can get fairly tired and predictable quite quickly...