Comic Book Resources

Cripes. What a kick in the head -- Two quality titles canceled in the same week. I'm convinced that if folks only gave either title a chance they'd find they really enjoyed them too. If I find out that Blue Beetle, She-Hulk or Nova are on the chopping block next, I'm going to be really cheesed off.

Have a good day.
John Cage

Really? I tried the series after seeing so many positive reviews on this site. The art is primitive, garish, and over-referenced. The writing isn't so hot either. Reading one issue (#35) made me hate the main character and root for the villians. There's a reason it keeps getting cancelled.

@John Cage

I wouldn't worry about Nova since War of Kings is coming up, which is Marvel's next big space event.

I think it's situations like this where big event crossover are somewhat helpful. I think without Civil War tie-ins, the Initiative banner, Secret Invasion tie-ins and probably Dark Reign banner, books like Ms. Marvel would already be canceled.

I wonder if a three issue Final Crisis tie-in wouldn't have helped Manhunter. Would a three-issue Blackest Night tie-in for Blue Beetle be that bad if it means it will bring a few more readers in the long run?

Nova is also pretty consistent in its sales and is thousands ahead of titles like She-Hulk and Black Panther, for example. Here are the estimates since March.

03/08 Nova #11 - 28,162 ( -4.2%)
04/08 Nova #12 - 28,185 ( +0.1%)
05/08 Nova #13 - 28,144 ( -0.1%)
06/08 Nova #14 - 28,892 ( +2.7%)
07/08 Nova #15 - 28,592 ( -1.0%)
08/08 Nova #16 - 38,338 (+34.1%)

That being said, I'd love to see it do better.

I picked up an issue and it didn't do it for me...lovely art though, adore Gaydos.

It was the second issue it came back with (or the third), I wonder if I just bumped in at a bad time?

I would have tried it if it wasn't tied into the rest of the DCU like All Star Superman or All Star Batman. But the chance that it may tie into one of Didio's events kept me away. I remember it had some Inifnite Crisis tie-ins in the past

She-Hulk at least has a few months' reprieve for the Secret Invasion boost to wear off.

I must disagree with Kwaku. Events tie-ins are a mixed blessing at best. They drive readership away from the books they [i]like[/i] because they dictate instead which books they [i]need[/i] to follow the story.

Since money is finite, that hurts the more artistic books that have their own stories to tell. Books without a soul can acommodate for such events more easily, but end up being more discardable and less engaging.

"But the chance that it may tie into one of Didio’s events kept me away."--Wow, that's remarkably pathetic and stupid. You're no different than the lemmings that buy books BECAUSE they tie in to events. Congratulations on being a conformist.

If She-Hulk gets cancelled, Marvel will end up finding a way to keep her in the spotlight. This was a busy year for her, as we all remember that Summer Blockbuster mini-series, the Last Defenders where she was a member of the New Jersey Initiative team that Tony Stark assembled. And now she's part of the Lady Liberators which is crossing over with Incredible Hercules. Maybe they should come up with an Incredible Hulk Family monthly.

Jeesh, talk about used and abused though . How many different groups has She-Hulk been in the past 25 years? I know she was subbing for the Thing in FF, she was an Avenger, a Defender, a Lady Liberator...

She-Hulk should always be worried; barring some kind of freakish miracle it will never be more than a marginal title and there's very little room in the margins these days at the big publishers.

I have no guilt in admitting that I dropped She-Hulk really quickly when David took over. The whole draw of the book for me, the GLK&H stuff, being tossed out the window, made it really easy to do so. Wouldn't bug me much if it died at this point.

As for Manhunter... well, the character's well-enough established by now that they'll just transfer everything over to BoP, but hopefully an occasional miniseries makes it to the market. It's just a series that'll never have a chance in the direct market as it currently exists.

It’s just a series that’ll never have a chance in the direct market as it currently exists.

How many chances does it deserve?

I mean really, I'm happy for it to die, as after having brought and read the first two trades, it's a pretty woeful series, retreading the 'look mum, I'm mature!' vibe of Denny O'Neill's The Question, but feeling even more dated with the intervening twenty years, but even if you love it - c'mon, they gave it a chance - it's been given ago in several market situations... the book just isn't going to sell.

I don't get blaming 'the market' when the books been given this many pushes/chances.

She-Hulk has been given many chances over the years. I'm not sure how much life is left in her own title, but if there is a creator who can actually add substance to the character and make her more fallible, then I'd be interested.

I think a good overhaul and/or an arc of epic proportions would do the series, and the character well.

If they do end up cancelling the series though, they should take her gamma fueled powers away from her. That would get people interested in her future!

Jono11, I don't get the bombast of your response to someone who doesn't want to read a tie-in comic. I don't blame them. So often they are sloppily done, due to the crossover interfering with the story planned by the writer. Manhunter was one of many of DC's newer books at the time that got really screwed over by the One Year Later jump. See, for instance, Firestorm. They were good before the jump, they had momentum, they had direction, and the jump disrupted that, forcing readers who were still getting to know the characters and situations in the series to have to learn a whole new set of information about those same things.

Historically, issues tied to events haven't been particularly good. On occasion, you will find a writer who is good at working with editorial mandates suddenly being thrown his way and can work around it, but it's a really difficult thing to ask.

“But the chance that it may tie into one of Didio’s events kept me away.”–Wow, that’s remarkably pathetic and stupid. You’re no different than the lemmings that buy books BECAUSE they tie in to events. Congratulations on being a conformist.

What on earth are you talking about? It makes perfectly sense to not buy a book from a company if experience has taught you that that book is likely to be spoiled somewhere down the line by crossovers.

or even "perfect sense"

I have to agree with Stephen. She-Hulk really suffers from the loss of Slott. I completely understand why peter David couldn't continue in the same vein, but that's the problem...

I'm just guessing, but from your post, marvelcomicsgroupy, you haven't actually read any of Dan Slott's She-Hulk, right? Because we had tonnes of fallible, substance-driven Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk stuff in there...

Peter David just took us on a Road Trip With a Skrull...

If they do cancel it, maybe it'll come back with Slott as She-Hulk volume 3...

What's really unfortunate is it seems to be harder and harder for a quality female-centric superhero title to survive on the stands. Alias/The Pulse, Catwoman, Manhunter, Spider-girl...who's next? And, inexplicably, Supergirl still has her book. What about marketing these titles directly to women? I'm not saying put ads in Cosmo, but maybe in some edgier women's magazines ('Bust' and 'Bitch' spring to mind) or even doing outreach at women's music festivals, or women's literature and art gatherings. The biggest problem is that comics are perceived to be a "boys's club," which is true to some degree the industry and community. Maybe more women and girls would read comics if they knew there were titles that may appeal to them, beyond the realm of WW, SG, and T&A.

Really I think it's superhero comics that are the boys' club.

I think you'll find a lot more women and girls reading manga, vertigo and the more indy comics.

Agreed, DanCJ; the two women I know who do read/have read comics are into Sandman, Buffy, and Bone. My point is that MORE women could be reading the big two's titles if they actually put intelligent effort into courting a female audience. If, say, 10% of women between the ages 12 and 25 picked up two DC or Marvel titles a month (especially titles which feature an empowered female character as the lead - the kind of title which historically suffers from low readership), wouldn't that be a significant sales boost to those titles?

TBH I don't think it's worth the effort. If we want women reading comics we should produce the kind of thing they want to read rather than trying to produce woman-friendly versions of things men want to read (and probably getting wrong)