Marvel's Express Cancellations

Imagine this hypothetical situation: you are a hot new creator in the comic industry, your previous work has been getting lots of positive buzz and critical acclaim in the past, and you have just been asked to be part of the creative team for the launching of a new ongoing series. This is a pretty big opportunity, so you draft a year long plan of what you want to do with the series, you write the first couple of issues planting seeds along the ways, foreboding and hinting at the great and new things to come in your series. And then, before the third issue of the series is out, before the first arc is finished, you find out that it has been canceled. What happened? It's one of the latest trends coming form Marvel comics, an express cancellation of ongoing series that are doing poorly in sales. Hit the jump to read more about the latest string of cancellations from Marvel.

The Cancellations

Three different ongoing series that started in 2009 received cancellation notices before the fourth issue was out.

The first one was a relaunch Exiles, by Jeff Parker and Salva Espin (who was later replaced by Casey Jones). The title had previously been under the helm of legendary creator Chris Claremont, having been relaunched only a couple of years prior, and was struggling under sagging sales. The first issue came out in April of 2009, and the final one (issue six) was in September of 2009, but people knew about the cancellation before issue four came out. I personally bought that series, and you can see how Jeff Parker laid out a plan that was set to play out over a year, possibly two, with mysteries and character development. It was all quickly explained and revealed in the final (over-sized) issue, but you could see how it could have taken months or years to all come out in the open. What's surprising is that despite a tremendous drop on sales in the second issue (from ~32,000 to ~22,000), sales remained consistent throughout the rest of the series, and were not that much lower when compared to earlier incarnations of the series. Interviews at the time seemed to hint that Jeff Parker was given the decision to choose between continuing this title or Agents of Atlas (Parker obviously chose AoA, which he co-created, although that series would also ultimately get canceled).

The second one, and also very recent, was Doctor Voodoo: Avenger of the Supernatural, a New Avengers/Doctor Strange spin-off series by Rick Remender and Jefte Palo. Doctor Strange has always been a hard sell, and hasn't maintained an ongoing series in a long time, and the series did not apparently appeal to fans of New Avengers enough to carry over some of it's audience (even with the addition of "Avenger of the Supernatural" added to the series' title). The story here is very similar to what happened in Exiles, not long after the third issue was out (December 2009), the series which had started just two months earlier, got the cancellation notice. Doctor Voodoo's sales, however, were lower than Exile's: first issue sold at ~23,000 and the second went all the way down to ~16,000. Issue five is going to be the last one of this series.

And the last one, which was just announced days ago and was part of the inspiration for this post, is that of S.W.O.R.D. by Kieron Gillen and Steven Sanders, which launched in November of 2009. The ongoing series admittedly came out too late to capitalize on the popularity of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men (which itself had lost lots of steam thanks to heavy delays, but that's a whole other article), which is where the main characters and concepts of S.W.O.R.D. were introduced. Sales for the first issues were considered terrible for a Marvel book: at ~21,000, it barely cracked the Top 100 comics in Diamond's sale charts, and the second one went down a couple thousand units more. Shortly after the third issue was out, rumors started coming out that the series was canceled and the confirmation came shortly thereafter. Fans have taken notice and have started a mail-in campaign (which has been sponsored by Death's Head) but S.W.O.R.D. would need a significant spike in sales to compensate for a lackluster start and avoid the cancellation, with the series set to end on March with issue #5.

The Demotions

The above mentioned series, cut down much shorter than expected, were retroactively denominated limited mini series. Of course, these are not the only series to have ended before they were originally planned to, but some of them already knew before the first issue that they were going to be shortened. These series were originally planned as ongoing series, but probably due to lack of interest and orders, they were downgraded and demoted to limited series before they got out of the gate.

This is not a new thing, but the earliest one I can recollect being downgraded to a limited series was Omega Flight, which spin out of the aftermath of Civil War, under the banner of The Initiative. Omega Flight featured a rag tag team of characters, mostly with ties to the old Alpha Flight team (a.k.a. Canada's Avengers). The characters have always been a hard sell, and with no popular creators behind it (Michael Oeming was writing, but he doesn't sell a book on his name alone), but it still did some very nice numbers. The first issue sold a mighty ~71,000 units, and going down all the way to the ~48,000 by it's final issue. In today's market, this would be a winning book (and selling more than many other titles), but 2007 was an incredible year for comic sales, and I guess the drop in pre-orders from the first issue to the second one (almost ~15,000 issues) were seen as too much.

A more recent example of a series being demoted was Fantastic Force, a spin-off from Fantastic Four. The characters in the Fantastic Force series had previously appeared in Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's run on Fantastic Four, but were for the most part new characters. Millar and Hitch's run on the Fantastic Four title, however, was not doing very well in the sales chart. The Fantastic Force title was probably plotted based on the popularity of the creative team, but it ended up under-performing, which is the most probable reason why it was downsized to a limited series. The series ended up starting at ~21,000 units, and by it's fourth and final issue (after two months of delay), it ended up in the ~12,000 range.

The Expectations

One of the most tragic aspects of these express cancellations is that it all lies in speculations and expectations from the part of the retailers, and what they think a series is going to sell. True, some books have a small audience and are doomed no matter what is done, but the orders for the first two issues, and thus the fate of the book, are decided before anyone reads a single page of the series. Once a series is canceled, people are obviously unwilling to jump into a sinking ship, especially nowadays where everything is collected into a trade eventually, and so the series' sale either remain steady and gain no new followers, or continue to hemorrhage sales.

It is also worth noting that all of these series, with the exception of Omega Flight, had first issues priced at $3.99 (some had extra content, although they varied from one book to the other). I guess the logic is that because the first issue of the series is the one that sells the most, Marvel recoups it's loses by upping the price. It probably is a huge deterrent to both retailers and readers, making the first issue of a book a harder sell. Retailers know that at the higher price, more readers are likely to not pick it up, and readers may think (unless they read Previews religiously) that all of the issues will be priced that way.

On the other hand, Vertigo does the exact opposite and prices all of it's first issues at $1, probably hooking more readers than they would have done at a normal price. It's a smart and time-old strategy used by drug dealers: the first hit is cheap, but the ones after it aren't. Image, Marvel and DC have begun toying with the idea, although not with first issues of new series, but rather with old #1 issues of old series.  Such promotions are almost guaranteed loses for the company, but books like The Unwritten have gotten a higher profile because of it ("You have to lose money to make money" is an very common business motto).

Not all series are winners and big sellers, but you never know when you have a brand new popular franchise until it explodes in your face. For example, the first collection of Asterix (Asterix The Gaul) had a first print run of only 6000 units, and the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic had a limited run of only 3000 comics. I can't find any exact numbers, but I remember reading that the first Scott Pilgrim book also had a very small run, and yet all franchises eventually became much larger because the perseverance of their creators.

DC also seems to be more lenient when it comes to letting series attempt to gain a readership. In the past couple of years, they have released some series with terrible, terrible sales numbers, such as Vigilante, The Mighty, and the recent Red Circle ongoing books, but they all made it's first year mark (or seem to be, in the case of the Red Circle series). A series like The Web is selling around ~7000 units, but Dan Didio expressed his commitment to keep the book going despite the low sales.

Perhaps having a larger company behind their financing allows DC to absorb more loses when it comes to series. And certain books in Marvel have gotten equal time, such as Nextwave, The Order and Agents of Atlas before getting canceled. I think that is a fair number of issues for any series to have to try attain a readership, and perhaps with the new Disney deal in place, Marvel will also allow more series to last a bit longer.

On the other hand, I also understand that working for a bigger company like Marvel means that certain expectations must be met. Even though these Marvel series met an untimely end, they still sold better than, for example, Chew from Image Comics. Yet Chew is lauded as a runaway hit, even though it's only selling around ~13,000 units right now, and it's first issue sold ~6,000. The increase is what makes this series a hit, but in pure absolute numbers, it's doing much worse than any of the series I mentioned above.  Like I said, it's all about expectations, from the publishing company and from retailers. It's also worth noting that the first trade paperback collection of Chew, priced at an accessible $9,99, sold incredibly well.

Conclusion

In case you can't tell, some of these cancellations have hit pretty close to home for me, but personal feelings aside, I think it is a very bad move to cancel a title at such an early stage. Some series have unrealized potential to become more popular, and no chance to ever achieve it. However, what I think is the most important aspect that Marvel needs to change if they want to avoid any more express cancellations is to lower the price of the first issues, at least to their normal price. It is my opinion that this is what has been leading to an increase in cancellations and a decrease in sales this past year. How have these express cancellations affected you, dear readers? Did you not pick up these books because of the high price of the first issue? Let me know in the comment section.

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