Cancelled Comics Commentary for 2013
January-March 2013
Nothing to see here. And no surprise when story quality is so bad
these days either.
April 2013
I, Vampire #19 (DC): Featuring a character who appeared in
the House of Mystery anthology during the early 1980s,
originally co-created by J.M. deMatties and Tom Sutton, this was
just a pathetic attempt to remake the concept for the sake of having
vampire thrillers around, all as part of the ultra-violent angles
the DiDio staff was going for during the "New 52". In the original
take, Lord Andrew Bennett was a guy living 1591 who'd been turned
into a vampire, and turned his lover Mary Seward into one as well,
and she decided to take up the title Queen of Blood and form an army
of more vampires operating under the name Blood Red Moon for world
conquest. The story shifted into the modern era as Bennett tried to
fix the mistakes he led to, aided by Deborah Dancer and a Russia guy
named Dmitri Mishkin, whom Bennett had once saved from the Moon
army.
In the new take, the setup is much more forced, as writer Joshua
Fialkov had to haul Batman into the mess, in a story where a vampire
hunter named Tig winds up killing Bennett and releasing an older
vampire named Cain from extra-dimensional captivity, who proceeds to
take over command of the monster movement from Mary, and this all
leads to the formation of Justice League Dark. Because that's all we
need; darkness for the sake of it. Indeed, one could argue that with
titles and directions like those, that's all the New 52 approach was
about.
May 2013
Empty for now.
June 2013
DC Universe Presents #19 (DC): Hmm, it appears we have here
an otherwise unsuccessful attempt by a company fallen from grace to
duplicate the success of the old DC Comics Presents
semi-anthology from 1978-86, which usually starred Superman and
fill-in-the-blank, and was in turn meant to capitalize on the
success of the Brave and the Bold with Batman. It was one of the
last pre-Crisis concepts they produced back then. This new series
did not follow that same idea of one main host and various guests,
but was rather a title that could star a whole random lineup. And
two of the guests in this new rendition included messed up takes on
Black Lightning and Blue Devil, who'd already been mishandled by
DiDio and the upper echelons of DC even before this galling junk was
produced, recalling that already back in the mid-90s, when the
Underworld Unleashed crossover was published, Dan Cassidy was thrown
into a most embarrassing storyline where, after his agent Marla
Bloom was killed in a helicopter crash (and the way the story was
written could easily make it look like she was at fault), made a
deal with Neron to become an actual devil! They don't get more
stupefying than that. Come to think of it, they don't get more
insulting and badly written than that either.
But that's the consecutive DC editorial boards for you, alas, who
have no respect or faith in many of the minor characters that all
they can think of doing is turning them into cannon fodder. The
story in DCUP's 13th story, featuring both Cassidy and Jeff Pierce,
seems written more as an excuse for them to get into a pointless
fight together. And that's reason enough for me to want to avoid
books like this new nonsense strenuously.
July 2013
The Darkness #116 vol. 3 (Top Cow/Image): Jackie Estacado,
wielder of the powers of darkness that were a variation on the
parent series Witchblade's own weapon, came to a bitter end with the
cancellation of this volume. I'm not sure if it was in this series
proper where it happened, but it most certainly was in Witchblade
itself, where Jackie wound up decapitated. Apparently all part of
Top Cow's decision to move away from some of their previous
approaches and instead deal with some politicized crud.
Sword of Sorcery #8, vol. 2 (DC): this title, originally used
for an anthology series that was even more of a failure in 1973, was
a definite botch. DC tried to use this as a means for remaking Amethyst,
Princess of Gemworld, the notable fantasy-adventure from the
mid-1980s by Dan Mishkin, which was originally about a 13-year-old
girl named Amy Winston who discovered she was actually a 20-year-old
princess from an alternate dimension/planet called Gemworld, after
the minions of the evil wizard Dark Opal abducted her back and tried
to murder her there, but she managed to escape and one of the
goodies in the story came to her aid against them. From there, she
embarked on a quest to unite several small kingdoms to give her
backing in the ensuing war against Dark Opal.
This new rendition, however, changed it all to a family feud, as the
rival was instead a wicked aunt named Lady Mordiel. Not very
creative, I'm afraid. It didn't help that the prequel issue numbered
0 (yes, there were actually nine issues published) featured at least
3 students setting up a girl to be raped, and while New 52 Amy
succeeded in rescuing her, the whole subplot was abandoned very
quickly as this new take on Amy and her mother, first appearing as
travelers on the road in the USA, decide to return to their own
dimension and deal with the aunt's own minions. It didn't even help
that the writer this time was a woman, namely Christy Marx, the
animator who conceived the original template for Marvel's Firestar
in the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends cartoon from the
early 80s. That she was willing to write up such a slapdash story
and even throw away any decent chance for character drama between
the fish out of water and the folks in a different dimension is just
what brought down a project that in a better time, would've been
something to look forward to. Now it's all in the dustbin of
history.
August-November 2013
There's nothing I can add here for now either. Not that it really
concerns me now though.
December 2013
Astonishing X-Men #68 (Marvel): a series that was launched
after Grant Morrison left the once sans-adjective title in 2004,
this was scripted by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer's movie and 1997-2003 TV series. The team reclaimed their
spandex costumes after the laughable editorial mandate to make them
wear outfits similar to the overrated 2000 movie at this time, and
Kitty Pryde was given a prominent role here. But was it really much
good in the long run? I can't say it was such a big deal, even if it
didn't get mired in company wide crossovers EIC Joe Quesada forced
upon the MCU by that time. Interestingly, after almost a year, the
series shifted to a mostly bimonthly format, something not too
common since the end of the 1980s, because Whedon had to busy
himself with more TV and film projects, including the Avengers movie
from 2014.
Today, it'll probably age even less well after the scandal that rose
when Whedon's
former wife wrote an article on The Wrap revealing that the
would-be feminist led a number of adulterous affairs, one of the
first being on the set of Buffy itself. Of course, anyone who
doubted Whedon was the true friend of women's causes he'd claim in
past years to be may know that, if you know where to look, there are
hints that he was two-faced. For example, he wrote
the introduction to the trade collections for Brad Meltzer's
repellent Identity Crisis miniseries at DC in the mid-2000s, and one
can only wonder what he thought of the notion that the story would
make light of a serious issue like sexual assault, not unlike how the
now disgraced comedian Bill Cosby did the same when he
testified in the original investigation into his abuse of Andrea
Constand in 2005.