Here's an end on't:
1) A proper, published graphic novel can be any length it likes and tell the story at any density it likes. You look at how thick it is, look at the price, pays your money and makes your choice.
2) A story in a 22-page monthly, or 6-pages or whatever in a weekly, can clip along and play with the pace and density to quite a wide extent, so long as over that month it's a generally satisfying read. A six-page segment that's All About the Cliffhanger, for example, is perfectly okay, given that the resolution is gonna be coming along quite soon.
3) A monthly publication, selling at like six quid a pop, requires that the material be compressed and encapsulatory, even if it's part of a series. More bang per buck, effectively. It must aspire, at the very least, to have enough density, nuance and ambiguity to be be re-read and reinterpreted over the month until the next one comes out.
4) Twelve pages moving the plot from C to D in a monthly might be permissible is there were any factors that might make the trip a bit more interesting. Yet another sodding frontispiece, then an entire double-page spread of effectively nothing is (almost) literally pissing on the reader with such contempt that one assumes they think it's beer.
These people have pocketed page-rate money with a cynical exercise that cheats the reader who was expecting something good, the publisher who probably thought they were gonna get something good, and the publication that relies on people thinking it might be good. This is my opinion of American Reaper. But then you probably know that anyway.
