Here's what I'd do:
1) Fire Joe Q and his posse, but keep a few of his good ideas. And there have been some. Attracting talent is a big one, so I'd keep that going. But that leads me into #2...
2) Bring books out on-time. Establish a company policy centered around reader respect. Guarantee that books come out on time. Do this by requiring that all "pet projects" of "name" creators are either pretty much or all the way in the can before they're solicited. Take Kevin Smith's word for nothing.
3) Do away with variant covers for every book that's even slightly notable. If the fans want variants, do them for "big" books, and that's it. Even then, show some restraint.
4) Stop multi-book crossovers unless they're company-wide events, and then only go to that well once a year, tops. Preferably every 2-3 years. Let excitement really build for those events. Don't make them so common that people get bored. Boredom in comics is death.
5) Encourage guest-stars in books to offset the above rule. Used to be that when Spidey guest-starred in Daredevil, it wasn't a two-part story ending in Spectacular Spidey (or whatever the low-selling Spidey book might be at that point). Let fans look forward to a guest-star again without having to mourn the fact that they'll need to buy one issue of a series they don't collect to get the whole thing.
6) And along the same lines, slash the number of books centered on one character/team to...one. This is extreme, I know, but I think it would actually encourage sales again. There would be an income loss for a short time, but I think it would climb again when it became clear that this one book was, simply put, awesome. Multiple books on one character water down that character, and add to the crossover-problem in #4 above. One book per character or team would force the best creative teams to work on a single book, and make those books that much better. The higher quality will draw in both new and former readers. The books will become ROAR books across the board. Collecting will be easier again (which I think is a huge issue for a lot of collectors--I know at least seven people who have stopped collecting altogether because it was just getting out-of-hand storage-wise, and a big part of that was the proliferation of extraneous series). And just
reading will be easier, too. Want to read about Spider-Man? Here's his book. Easy as pie. (My only exception to this would be other-universe books of the same character, which don't coun't, I don't think. But there should be one 616 Spidey-book, one Ultimate Spidey-book, etc.)
How could all this work, though? I'll tell you how, and prove what I'm proposing can be feasible: Daredevil.
Daredevil is a great example of how the above principles can work,
will work. It's been a must-read for years now because his title is unsullied for the most part by all the crap that Marvel tends to do. It's independent from most crossover tie-ins, because it's been operating out there on its own. It's still part of the larger MU, but not to the degree that it's been part of ongoing tie-ins or multi-part crossovers. It's had scads of great guest-stars, but those only added to the book, because it made sense that they were there, and their stories weren't continued in their own home book. Or if they were, as in The Pulse, it wasn't necessary--and definitely not set-up to be mandatory--to read both. Each made sense inside it's own book, and didn't rely on the other. Very reminiscent of classic Marvel, when only a text box saying "as told in the fantabulous Fantastic Four #48!--Ed." appeared to cross-promote. And lastly, there's been one DD book--barring the mostly forgettable mini-series--so there's no overkill. The book is very popular, and very profitable. It's become one of the class acts, the cream of the crop, at Marvel. And there's a reason for it, aside from the great creative teams--it's been handled well, which sadly is rare for Marvel.
That's what I'd do. Oh, and the mutant thing sounds good, too.
