Gone Before Their Time: Series That Were Cancelled Too Soon

This past week, DC Comics announced it would be cancelling a group of comics, many of which barely made it six issues, leading to a good deal of head-shaking among fandom; also this week marked the sadly premature end of Secret Identities, Jay Faerber and Brian Joines's excellent super-hero title from Image (but more on that come Monday). I'm not going to talk about the pros and cons (mostly cons, I admit) of cancelling low selling titles before they get a chance to get their feet under them, because it's not a new phenomenon. What I am going to do is talk about some of my favorite comics that ended before their time. I went back and forth on what constituted "before its time"; whether it was a plot thing, where the book felt incomplete, or a number of issues thing. I settled on an admittedly arbitrary number: no comic that lasted more than twenty four issues would make this particular list. So without further ado, here are ten series that I feel should have been given more time, presented in alphabetical order.

Captain Britian and MI-13
Ran: 15 issues and 1 annual

I wrote a whole recommended reading for this series a few years ago, but when it comes to short-lived series, it's one of the ones I miss the most. Captain Britain and MI-13 was a supernatural superhero book starring a group of British characters, including Captain Britain, Spitfire, Black Knight, Blade, a new character who was named Excalibur, and my favorite British Marvel character, Pete Wisdom. Over the course of its short run, written by Paul Cornell, the team fought Skrulls, demons, and vampires, and has the distinction of being the final appearance of what I like to think of as the real Marvel Dracula, the classy cape wearing one from Tomb of Dracula. Cornell captured Wisdom's voice just right, and did interesting things with Blade and Spitfire, pairing off the two daywalkers in a way no one had thought to before. In a time before Marvel's push for diversity, Excalibur was Faiza Hussain, a British Muslim doctor, and is more than just those things, but a fully formed character in her own right. Sadly, the introduction during Marvel's Secret Invasion crossover and the tangential ties to the X-Men family of titles didn't get enough attention to the title, though Cornell was able to wrap the book up in the exciting "Vampire Nation" story. The trades for the series are sadly out of print, but with some digging you should be able to find them, or the original single issues.

Chase
Ran: (9 issues and an issue 1,000,000 as part of a crossover)

Chase is a case of unfortunately bad timing. A superhero adjacent procedural, about a government agent who dislikes superheroes but is forced to investigate and work with them, is a great pitch, but the industry wasn't quite ready for it in the late 90s. Writer D. Curtis Johnson built a hardass yet multi-dimensional character in Cameron Chase, one who had an elaborate backstory that the series only scratched the surface of. Factor in early work from now superstar J.H. Williams III and you have a book that a few years later, at the height of popularity for titles like Powers, Alias, and Gotham Central, would have gotten more attention and would have lasted a few years. Instead, we got ten issues, counting a crossover with DC One Million. Still those nine issues included Chase having to work with the Suicide Squad, investigating Batman's secret identity, and a glimpse into her father's time as a member of a 70s superhero team called The Justice Experience. Johnson and Williams were able to co-write a series of Chase shorts that appeared in various DC Secret Files issues (these sort of primer issues that gave readers backgrounds and lost stories of different major characters and teams), and Chase went on to appear in a good number of other series, including John Ostrander's Martian Manhunter and a regular spot as a supporting character in Marc Andreyko's Manhunter (both series I would have liked to last longer, but they both ran well beyond the twenty four issues limit I set for this piece). Williams even brought her back as a character in his run on Batwoman as part of the New 52. But those first issues are outstanding, and should be read even if you have no intention of following the character. DC released a trade of the series a few years back, and it should still be in print.

Crossing Midnight
Ran: 19 issues

In between epic runs on Lucifer and The Unwritten, Mike Carey wrote another series for Vertigo. Crossing Midnight was a series that mixed Japanese mythology with a more Western fairy tale aesthetic. The tale of two twins, one born just before midnight, the other just after, they each have distinct abilities that attract the attention of supernatural forces. Carey mixes in some social commentary along with the mythology, and built an interesting take on many tropes. I wish I had a chance to reread it before I wrote this up, so I could lay out more details, but time is at a premium right now, and so I might have to do a fuller "Lost Legends" piece on it in the future. Jim Fern's art is luscious and he draws some excellent monsters throughout. Carey clearly had a long game planned on this series, and the last arc, and especially the last issue, are rushed, as he knew the series was ending, but there is at least a degree of closure. The trades are currently out of print.

Loveless
Ran: 24 issues

For this title, I pushed the issue limit of this piece from eighteen to twenty four. Loveless was a western from 100 Bullets auteur Brian Azzarello and initially his previous Hellblazer collaborator Marcelo Frusin (and later with Danijel Zezelj and Werther Dell'edera) that is in the traditions of the darkest of tales of the old west. Wes Cutter arrives home from his time in a prison camp after the Civil War to find his home occupied by carpetbaggers, and the people of the town, Blackwater, hating him. The series follows Wes's reunion with his wife, Ruth, and their plans to revenge themselves against the people of the town for all the ills that occurred during the war. As with much of Azzarello's work, pretty much every character exists in varying shades of grey, no one being a purely good character, and frankly the characters here are even greyer than those in 100 Bullets. Wes and Ruth both have their reasons to be as angry as they are, and in many cases rightly so. The series moved forward in time shortly before the series ended, after a final conflagration at Blackwater that saw one of our main protagonists dead, to a series of stories that dealt more deeply with racial and social issues in America. Azzarello had a four year plan for the title, but with the end after just two, there were a lot of plot threads left dangling. The trades are currently out of print.

The Movement
Ran: 12 issues

Here's an example of how even a big name creator can have a title that ends too soon. The Movement was a noble experiment by Gail Simone to create a team of brand new young heroes set in the DC Universe. Set in a new city, Coral City, the team was fighting against a city that is even more corrupt than Gotham City. The series had a slow build, and it gradually revealed more and more about the characters, who worked outside the law to try to defend the people of the city who had no other respite from the corrupt establishment. As with much of Simone's work,the cast is diverse in all respects, and I enjoyed the simple fact that all but two of the cast were brand new characters (of those two, one, Katharsis, was introduced by Simone in her run on Batgirl, so was practically new as it was; the other, Rainmaker, was a member of the Wildstorm team Gen13). Part of the title's problems was in how it was marketed; lumped in with another title, Green Team, it seemed to be DC trying to catch the rising tide of the then very relevant Occupy movement. Simone had to explain in interviews it wasn't just Occupy DC, but was a book about power and disenfranchisement, with more of an appeal than the particular pigeonhole it seemed to be set in, but from responses I got when working at the comic shop, most people didn't get past that initial advertising to try it out, which is a shame. Simone has also said DC stood behind the book, and it did last considerably longer than Green Team. The entire series is collected in two trades, both of which are still in print.

Near Death
Ran: 11 issues

Near Death was a title I reviewed on my very first week writing this blog. A crime comic out of Image, Jay Faerber and Simone Guglielmini tell the story of Markham, a cold as ice hitman who has a near death experience and sees what is waiting for him on the other side. With that in mind, he decides to clean up his act, not only not killing anymore, but defending those who other professional killers are after. Through a series of crime stories, we see Markham's progression from someone who views other people as a means to an end into someone who can make the right choice for the right reason. He's a layered and morally grey character, which is something I always like in my crime story protagonists. Add in Guglielmini's great art, and you had a crime comic that I would have loved to read more of. Faerber has indicated on Twitter that he's working on another Near Death story now, so in a few year's time, adding the series together, this book might fall off this list, and I would be pleased to see that. The original series is available in two trades that are available at finer comic shops and on-line.

Saucer Country
Ran: 14 issues

Paul Cornell makes a return to this list, this time with his Vertigo series, Saucer Country. A mix of politics and modern UFO legends, the title was often addressed as a combination of The X-Files and The West Wing, which are two of my favorite TV series of all time, so I was sold from the moment it started. The series focuses on Gov. Arcadia Alvarado, who is running to become the first Latina president of the United States when she is abducted by aliens. Or is she? She and her campaign team, along with a scientist who is studying UFOlogy, begin to dig deep into a web of conspiracies that may or may not involve aliens, but certainly involves the US government, to find out exactly what happened to Arcadia. Was she abducted? Is this part of a decades long project? Is it just her opponents trying to discredit her? And what do the visions Professor Kidd, the scientist, has been having of the couple inscribed on the gold disc from the Voyager space probe have to do with anything? Filled with interesting characters and more twists and turns in one issue than most series have in a year's worth, Saucer Country was a great series for those of us who love a good conspiracy story. The series is currently unavailable, but Cornell has stated he would love to do more when the rights revert to him.

She-Hulk 
Ran: 12 issues

She-Hulk, the gamma powered lawyer Jen Walters, has had plenty of series over the years (four ongoings at least). And this most recent volume, from Charles Soule and Javier Pulido isn't the first to focus on her career as a lawyer as much as her superheroic one (that goes to the Dan Slott series from the early 00s). But this series impressed the heck out of me. Soule, who is a practicing lawyer as well as a comics writer, balanced Jen's two lifestyles beautifully, and wrote some great courtroom cases for Jen, including an asylum request from Dr. Doom's son, someone seeking to sell his patent for knock-off Pym Particles, and a suit for wrongful death against Captain America. All of this was set against the backdrop of a mysterious Blue File that names Jen and a group of other superpeople as defendants in a case no one can remember. I love how he portrays Jen, as someone trying to make it in a world that isn't cooperating, and her supporting cast, her investigator Patsy Walker (that's Hellcat) and her mysterious paralegal Angie Huang are delightful. And Pulido is one of the most capable artists in comics, doing great things with She-Hulk and her... it's not really a transformation, but bulking up (Ron Wemberly, who pinch hits for a couple issues, also does an able job). Soule was able to wrap up his plotlines before the book ended, but I hope to see She-Hulk show up in his upcoming run on Daredevil. Oh, and the series created a phenomenal new character who I hope we see again somewhere: Matt Rocks, an unabsorbed duplictae of Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man who is now and entertainment lawyer. Comics, everybody! The whole series is available in two trades, and if you want to see more about the series, check out my reviews here.

Star Wars: Agent of the Empire
Ran: 10 issues over two mini-series

Dark Horse Comics losing the Star Wars license saw quite a few books come to a premature end. Both Dawn of the Jedi and Invasion could have been on this list as well. But the title I felt got the most disservice was the excellent Agent of the Empire. John Ostrander, Matt Signal favorite creator, created Jahan Cross, an Imperial Intelligence agent who is the James Bond of the Star Wars Universe. The two mini-series, Iron Eclipse and Hard Targets, had very different feels, the former a techno thriller and the latter a tale of political intrigue, but both featured Cross as a slick operator with complex morality; this wasn't a goatee stroking villain like Grand Moff Tarkin or Cross's boss, head of Imperial Intelligence Armand Isard. No, Cross was doing what he was doing because he thought he was making the galaxy a better place; he is one of the tradition of Noble Imperials, a trope I love that includes characters like Thrawn, Admiral Pellaeon, and Baron Fel. Over the course of the two adventures we saw, Cross crossed paths with such characters as Han Solo, Boba Fett, and Bail Organa, putting Cross firmly in the thick of the Star Wars universe. The second mini-series ended with Cross starting to question some of the Empire's methods, and I would have been curious to see where his story went (and what would have happened if he had a run in with Armand Isard's daughter, the notorious Rogue Squadron villain, Ysanne Isard). None of the Dark Horse Star Wars material is available to order any longer, but many stores still have it in stock, so you can find it with some industrious searching.

SWORD
Ran: 5 issues

By far the shortest lived title on this list, SWORD was a series dedicated to the alien fighting military organization of the Marvel Universe. Starring Abigail Brand, thee head of SWORD, her boyfriend Hank McCoy, the Beast, her lieutenant, the alien Sydren, and Lockheed the alien dragon, SWORD only got one story before it was cancelled, written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Steve Sanders, has Henry Peter Gyrich, described as the Marvel Universe's answer to Ghostbuster's Walter Peck, gets all aliens banned from Earth, and SWORD must do its best to balance obeying their duty with finding a way to get the law overturned. It's a great story, and introduces the strange villainous android UNIT, who Gillen would use to great effect in his run on Uncanny X-Men. The five issues of SWORD were collected in a trade, which was recently on one of Diamond Comics Distributors clearance sales, so you should be able to find that at a lot of comics shops.


So those are ten series I wish had lasted longer. I would love to hear from you, readers, what series you wish had some more issues. Reply to this post, over on Facebook, or on Twitter (@mattlaz1013) with your suggestions.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 8/15

Daredevil #17
Story: Mark Waid
Art: Mike Allred

Mark Waid has done a great job of keeping Daredevil to relatively short arcs, two to three issues, but with plot lines that connect the whole series. But this issue is a done-in-one, a great flashback to a time not long after Matt Murdock took up the identity of Daredevil, and it's spectacular. I'm a sucker for done-in-ones to begin with, and Waid does a great job of not only telling a fun superhero story here, but really getting to the heart of Matt and what makes him tick. What starts out as Matt and Foggy Nelson, his law partner and best friend, having an argument over Foggy not pulling his weight quickly shifts into a battle as Stilt-Man breaks into the offices of Murdock and Nelson. Yes, you heard me, Stilt-Man, Q-list villain with the costume with the really long legs. As one might expect, Daredevil makes quick work of Stilt-Man, and returns to save Foggy from a hitman, and finds out what Foggy has been up to. It touches on the core of what drives Matt, what makes him tick, and shows exactly how well Foggy knows him, acting as a counterpoint to last issue, where Foggy kicked Matt out of the office. Waid is a writer who knows how to play to an artists strength, and he does a great job of letting Mike Allred run wild in his guest issue. Allred gets lots of panels of Matt swinging his way through the city, showing off his superhero chops, and still pulls off the touching scene between Matt and Foggy beautifully. Daredevil is my favorite book coming out from Marvel right now, and as long as each issue is as fun as this one, it will be for a long time coming.

Nightwing #12
Story: Kyle Higgins
Art: Andres Guinaldo

There are some comics that are very good month in and month out. They might not jump out at you and scream, "This is AMAZING!" but you know you're going to be in for a good ride every time you pick up an issue. Nightwing has been a book that has been quietly moving along, telling solid stories, since the New 52. There were a couple of OH WOW issues early in the run, leading into "Night of Owls" and even after the event, things have been interesting. I like the way writer Kyle Higgins portrays Dick, not denying all the growth he went through in the old DC Universe and his time as Batman, but telling stories about Dick continuing to grow. Nightwing confronts Paragon this issue, who framed him for murder, and has been trying to destroy the "false idols" of vigilantes in Gotham. But more interesting was Dick talking to Sofia Branch, the daughter of Tony Zucco, the man who killed his parents. Sofia was introduced during "The Black Mirror," Scott Snyder's arc on Detective Comics, and returns here, still as the head of a Gotham bank Dick is trying to do business with. The issue ends with it looking like the two of them are going to be working together, and unsure of where they stand in terms of each other. With Dick's mostly catastrophic relationship history, and just how well it's been going for him since the reboot, I can only imagine how this this is going to work out, and none of those imaginings are good.

Revival #2
Story: Tim Seeley
Art: Mike Norton

I didn't grab the first issue of Revival until two weeks back, since I had a light week and wanted to try out something new. I was pleasantly surprised at the first issue, and snagged the second. One day in rural Wasau, Wisconsin, all the recently deceased just sat up and went back to living their lives. They aren't shambling zombies, but just people. There's definitely a mystery of how they came back, and whether it's a mystical or biological cause, but this isn't a zombie comic. It's a supernatural comic, no doubt, but it's main character is Officer Dana Cypress, so there's a crime element to it as well. And more than crime or horror, the comic is about people. Dana's family are deeply a part of the story, her father the sheriff and her sister, Martha, who is one of the "revived." This issue sees the introduction of a new cast member as well, an "exorcist" who is a con man and playing on the fears in the town after Revival Day. I've seen the book described as farmland noir, and it has a creepy feel you don't get in normal noirs. Noir is a city genre, and moving it out into the country sends an extra shiver, making it more gothic. Seeley and Norton do an excellent job of building their cast and their setting, and I look forward to seeing what payoffs, and what other mysteries, are coming down the pike.

Saga #6
Story: Brian K. Vaughan
Art: Fiona Staples

Saga hits what seems to be a natural act break this issue, but it's not leaving its characters with any time to breathe. Brian K. Vaughan has been a favorite writer of mine for years, and I was hugely excited to see him returning to comics, and this series, a mixture of space opera, high fantasy, and the on-the-run road story is just excellent fun. Alana and Marko, our starcrossed lovers and protagonists, have found the rocketship forest and escape with Hazel, their daughter, but their pursuers aren't done yet. Prince Robot IV, pursuing Alana and Marko, has a conversation with freelance bounty hunter The Will, and it seems like things aren't going to end well for Robot. Vaughan's strengths as a writer are many, but it's his talent for dialogue that really pops in this book, with characters who are witty without sounding unnatural. The breakout character for me throughout this arc has been The Will, whose moral ambiguity sits him among a lot of the great sci-fi heroes and villains. There's a tow month gap in between issues now, but in November, Saga will be back with a trade of the fist six issues and a new one. Don't be surprised if you see a recommended reading on this book in time for that trade, but if you can't wait, hunt down the six issues. Trust me, it's worth it.

Saucer Country #6
Story: Paul Cornell
Art: Jimmy Broxton

Saucer Country wrapped up it's first full arc last month, and this issue is a one off that bridges the gap in between two arcs with, "A Field Guide to Flying Saucers." This is really a talking heads issue, with most of principle cast gathered round and hearing a history of UFO sightings and abduction lore, tied in with ancient myth that is strangely similar and connected to that more modern myth. This is the kind of thing that some writers would present and would come off as tremendously dull and didactic, but Paul Cornell handles it with a light touch and makes it interesting. It's interesting to look at this book in conjunction with Cornell's other title, last week's reviewed Demon Knights. Demon Knights is an action fantasy, with crazy fight scenes and over the top characters, while Saucer Country is much more thoughtful. While there's not a ton of forward plot of character development, it's an interesting detour, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the lore rears its head in future issues of the series.