Comic Book Resources

The whole friggin' system is out of order!

I'm saddened but not surprised.

I think it was a little too off kilter for most "team book" fans, who were expecting more bang for their buck.

Personally, I love it.

Or should that be "loved"?

I wonder if that gives them enough time to wrap up the plotlines. the black dahlias, the mysterious gov organizations, etc were all pretty entertaining. and i'm guessing that tony's preoccupation with picking out a headquarters won't amount to squat.

Agh!

My favorite Marvel team book. The only one that didn't have extra skrulls n' angst ladled over everything.

Ugh. At least Iron Fist is safe for now?

Iron Fist sells really consistantly (Of course it does. It's a Brubaker book too).

I'd be surprised if we lost it anytime soon.

The whole friggin’ system is out of order!

I was going to have that be the title of the post, but then I checked, and that's apparently not in the actual quote!

Freaky, huh? Just one of those misremembered lines that everyone (including me) thinks is the real line (like "Play it again, Sam.").

Man, I just bought the back issues and was starting to enjoy it. Aw, well. But, if Iron Fist gets whacked, I'm busting out the palm of forty sorrows.

"The palm of forty sorrows"... that's a euphemism for jerking-off, right? You like Iron-Fist that much?

That's just effing b.s.

Order was 94 on Decembers charts, Immortal was only 71.

Dammit. I'm so upset. It's been a while since they cancelled a book I was LOVING this much without at least first throwing on some new horrible writing/art team and driving the book into the ground first.

Still, this book was very very good and a whole lot of people seem to like it. Its number are improving aren't there? It was probably my favorite hero title on the stands.

Oh man -- this really blindsided me. I wonder if it has less to do with sales and more with a shifting of direction for the whole mainstream MU line post-Skrull invasion? Maybe other titles tethered to the Initiative will be getting canceled or reformulated? In any case, disappointing news -- The Order is the best book Marvel has going now.

Captain, that has to be the Secret Wars II of quips.

This is Marvel's best book, and it is a shame that it couldn't find an audience in the midst of Skrulls and No-More-Mutants.

Why do they always cancel my favourite books?

This is a real shame, I loved how they were trying something a little different with this series. Its a shame new characters always have such a hard time getting off the ground.

Chalk me up to being disappointed also. It was just starting to get really good. :

Can't respond now... too busy busting out... the palm of... forty... sorrows... ahhhhhhhhh... yeeeeeeaaaahhhhh...

Also disappointed, I was hoping it to last a year.

Now Bendis has some characters to kill just to show how edgy the Skrulls are.

I suspect it was probably hurt from the beginning by being known as "SERIES TITLE YET TO BE ANNOUNCED" for a few months. Those first few months can be critical for establishing a reader-base, and not being able to just rattle off a quick title to the person making the pull list (instead having to write down the actual order code oneself, which I seldom see a comic buyer do in my neck of the woods) probably dissuaded more than a few buyers. I realize this may sound like a lot of buyers are lazy, but then again, that's often true. But it still comes down to the basic issue of "If it's hard for people to give you money, they often won't." Not having a title thanks to Marvel's failure to check trademark status on "The Champions" would make it more tedious for people to order, which in turn would lead to fewer pre-orders, and thus a smaller order on the whole from the store. Smaller order leads to smaller sales, especially as people who are just picking it up in the store are less likely to see it and think "Oh, hey, this is that TITLE comic I read about in the solicits a few months back." "The Champions" and "The Order" may not be very strong in terms of brand recognition, but any brand recognition, even that of just being able to associate it with what they saw in the solicits, is helpful, and by not being able to solicit it with the title, Marvel lost that benefit.

Those fans who gave it a try despite the launch problems deserve some praise for taking a chance. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised it turned out this way; I expected it from the moment I first started hearing about the name problems.

Well, thank god. I hated having such a consistently entertaining book to look forward to reading every month.
What a bummer.

Damnitdamnitdamnitdamnitdamnitdamnitdamnit!

Something is truly wrong when a book this interesting and with so much potential gets canceled at the Aztek mark while the generic and godawful New Warriors is still around.

What a shame. Matt Fraction and Barry Kitson created some truly heroic characters here. This shall be missed.

This sucks. I really like this book. I hope they're able to wrap up the plot threads they started up so far.

I'm sorry to hear this. I only read the first issue and decided to pass on the series, but I know it had a lot of fans and was widely well-received.

I can only hope that New Warriors is on the chopping block, too, as after a good start it's been going downhill fast, culminating in a truly atrocious issue last week.

I feel bad for all the fans, but I thought this series suffered from slow pacing and a poorly thought out first issue.

The framing device used to start each book ("characters-being-interviewed-at-some-indeterminate-point") felt done before and made the beginning of every issue exposition-heavy. The government-sponsored super-team also started to feel overplayed, with Avengers: The Initiative, Ultimates v1-2, and every indy team book hitting the same notes in recent memory.

I also thought scrubbing half the team in the first issue (after we bothered to learn their names, powers, and what Greek god they were repping) backfired. Sure, it was ballsy, but the characters already seemed disposable going into it (it's hard to make new characters stick at the Big Two); that move only solidified the thought, so that when the "real" cast appeared, I didn't get invested in any of them. They could just as easily disappear next issue, after all, why bother. That severely dampened the dramatic tension of later issues.

Fraction and Kitson are massively talented, I'm sure we'll be seeing them on another book soon. This title simply wasn't meant to be (not being able to use "The Champions" was probably an early portent ...)

What an enormous disappointment. This was the only mainstream Marvel book I've been reading in monthlies. (Not counting "Astonishing X-Men" since...well, monthly it's not, so much.)

I figured this series would run twelve issues and then disappear, thereby reinforcing the inherent meta-commentary (brand new heroes only last a year, you see).

Ten issues does seem a little slight, but, in his Word Balloon interview, Fraction said he and Kitson got to choose when to call it a day, so I'm guessing the loose ends that need tying will be efficiently wrapped up.

#7 ought to bring the Namor situation to a close, leaving three issues to deal with the Black Dahlias, the MAN from SHADOW, and his horde of monsters and whatnot. Seems feasible.

Shame the book has to end, though. It has its moments.

Should have called it Avengers West Coast.

Should have called it Avengers West Coast.

Seriously.

Maybe trade sales can help it. I wonder if there is even a chance of saving it.

I wonder if the West Coast Avengers title would have saved it or even the Champions title that had originally been planned.

this sucks. This is only reinforcing my opinion that super-hero books are no longer for me. The only ones that I enjoy don't last long.

I thought the premise would doom the book: bunch of superheroes get together for no very good reason. It's been done to death and it's not at all compelling. But Fraction proved the generic premise can work if done right.

Wait, how come that happened? I thought people wanted new characters because they were tired of the same old ones. Isn't it what they always say? *sigh*

So sad since this was the one of the 2 Marvel books I was getting.
RAGE!

Ron Said: "Should have called it Avengers West Coast."

Good god, how did they not think of that? I didn't, but then, I'm not paid to think of good titles that will keep a series in print.

[How do I quote someone here like the cool dudes are doing?]

[How do I quote someone here like the cool dudes are doing?]

If I did it correctly, it should be (blockquote)enter text(/blockquote) except with the pointy parenthesis (shift-, and shift-.)

Somebody asked the other day and I actually wrote it down. Thanks to that somebody!

Now let's see if it works!

It worked!

Hopefully you understood the pointy perenthesis things because I don't know what they are called.

Oh yeah, greater than and less than. DUH!

Marvel's just proving themselves the bastion of good decisions, aren't they?

Since marvel is all 70s again, at least the plots will be wrapped up in Marvel presents.

Damn. I was a bit late to the game. came in around issue 3. Bought the back issues and have been up to date since. I liked this book. Shame. Maybe if i hated this book like i hate the majority of the X-Books it would sell better. here's to hating Iron Fist (wink wink)

The pointy parentheses are called "angle brackets".

"Angle Brackets"? That's a euphemism for jerking-off, right?

Aaaahhhhhh... yeeeeeaaaaahhhhh...