Combing the previews for clews, CBR deduces that GHOST RIDER has also been canceled:
Launched during the “Fear Itself” event under the guiding hand of writer Rob Williams, “Ghost Rider” provided a new female version of the long-standing hero while keeping original rider Johnny Blaze on as co-star. The character has a new movie — “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” from Columbia Pictures — set to hit theaters this February, though beyond an incoming special re-presenting classic tales of Blaze, the publisher appears to have no plans for a major media tie-in push.
Of course yesterday people were jumping up and down to point to the sex-swapped GHOST RIDER as an example of a Marvel book with a female lead character.
They can all sit down now.
Ghost Rider will appear in next year’s Venom event, however.
Meanwhile, BLACK PANTHER is ending with issue #529 according to cover artist Francesco Francavilla:
It’s not cancelled, but it’s ending with issue 529 – 4 more issue will be still coming out.
iFanboy has been all over this with
a “Cancelocalypse” logo and all.
The solicitation for Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive #529 states that that issue is the “series finale,” which could mean, like Punisher MAX that the story came to it’s planned ending or that the book is canceled. I’m betting on the latter since we just read this week in Avengers #19 where Black Panther turned down Captain America’s offer to join the Avengers, because he still had work to do in Hell’s Kitchen. I guess that work took less time than than he thought.
Black Panther is “naturally ending, not cancelled” on issue #529? Right…
Ah, what will become of poor Daredevil’s numbering now?
The Mighty Marvel Implosion
They kind of NEED this, lots of crap worth chopping (though what they’re chopping isn’t necessarily crap, or the crap they need to be chopping.) But sadly it’ll only result in more X/Avenger/Spiderman titles, and lots of double shipping (which obviously kills quality.)
CANCElpocalypse now!!
The way I see it, the series-es were on a short string anyways. It’s great that c-listers had their own run for a while.
I really hope Thunderbolts escapes this carnage unscathed — it’s an very fun, very well executed series that deserves support.
The new Ghost Rider book was one of the most poorly written disappointments I’ve read in a long time. It never should have existed to begin with. Hopefully its demise will clear the way for a relaunch by a more suitable creative team, admitting this mistake and moving on.
Joe Q needs to return to publishing and save Marvel from the greasy hands of Brevoor and Alonso.
To be honest, my first thought at the Black Panther news? Finally. The character has gotten more chances than Spider-Girl by now. I want to say I haven’t heard anything good about Ghost Rider, but… I don’t think I’ve heard ANYTHING about it since its launch.
A quick look at the last sales analysis tells me: the next lowest uncancelled Marvel U books are Generation Hope (which might be getting a Regenesis boost) and Daken (which launched the same as X-23, but has been dropping harder.)
Above that is X-Factor, but I refuse to entertain thoughts about its theoretical cancellation.
“Joe Q needs to return to publishing and save Marvel from the greasy hands of Brevoor and Alonso.”
I don’t think either is responsible for the new mandates regarding profitability.
The Ghost Rider back-ups in Amazing Spider-Man were dire. They ensured I’d steer clear of the ongoing series.
What does Marvel have going these days? Amazing Spider-Man and Daredevil are both a lot of fun, Brubaker’s Captain America is still compelling… Hickman finally lost me on FF. I can’t say it’s not good, but it was just too damn slow.
Too many brands, like the Hulk and the X-Men, have become so completely diluted and unspecial. Wolverine has a clone and a son and is on a ton of teams; the end result being I have completely lost interest in Wolverine. There are what, seven Hulks now? Who gives a shit?
Ugh.
(Red) Hulk is an EXCELLENT, well written title that (shockingly) has had an amazingly strong artist line-up so far! Ignore all your preconceived notions about the Red Hulk (because I had them too) and give that book a chance. You will NOT be disappointed. :)
I do have to say, I’m a die-hard Marvel zombie, and my interest in Marvel’s books is at the lowest ebb I think it’s ever been. I fell hard for Civil War and at one point was getting 75% or so of the MU titles, but after Siege my interest in most of the titles just plummeted. I’m getting (and loving!) Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil, and X-Factor, as well as getting (and tolerating!) Cap & Bucky. Oh, and I’ll probably get Journey Into Mystery in trades.
But that’s pretty much it. Nothing else they’re doing interests me in the slightest (I skipped Fear Itself entirely and don’t feel like I missed a thing), every time they do find something to get me interested they blow it (Marc Silvestri doing less than an issue and a half of Hulk, Joe Mad doing only 3 issues of Avenging Spider-Man). The only new title on the horizon that interests me in the slightest is Defenders, and I’m only cautiously optimistic there as each book I’ve read by Fraction I liked a little bit less than the one before it. I really hope they can get everything sorted out.
Adam brings up a good point. Alot of Marvel listers are over exposed and look at the lack of interest in their titles. Wolverine and Spider-Man are on every team out there! While I am a Hulk fan and enjoy Red Hulk, the made Hulk (the strongest Marvel Character) just average with his Son and all the other Hulks. Really, DC is in the same kind of boat with all the related Bat-title, but they seem to take better longterm decisions I am not saying they are all good, but some have had success. Marvel needs to take a step back and assess its strategy, right now it looks more like a tragedy. At this rate they will cancel half their line….to think this was DC’s position not all that long ago (before Blackest Night). Oh and the $4 comics suck! I cut back lot of Marvel for this. $3 is fit worst case $3.50 but $4 n way!
Hey Disney how about using your powerful branding and Networks and come up with a bright idea?!!! I mean you ‘only’ spent $4 Billions on this acquisition and it is crashing and burning.
I don’t think Marvel’s crashing and burning by any stretch; I think they’ve become complacent and the relative success of the New DCU is shining some serious light on Marvel’s spotty lineup and way of doing business. I mean, DC is selling great for the moment, but 85% of their relaunches are dreadful, so I expect that we’ll be seeing the two companies with equal market share as soon as six months from now.
There just doesn’t seem to be a sense at Marvel that while having seven Avengers titles is great business in the short term, it’s suicide in the long term. Every series needs to have something special about it that you can’t get anywhere else. They’ve absolutely lost sight of that.
Why is MArvel publishing a David MAzzuchelli Batman book?
“Marvel needs to take a step back and assess its strategy,” You’re making Marvel’s problems appear more complicated than they are in reality. The situation is that Marvel is adapting to a new reality. When Marvel had a larger market share, and sold more copies of their major comics, they could afford to publish ongoing series of b-list and c-list characters. Now, they cannot.
“right now it looks more like a tragedy. At this rate they will cancel half their line…”
If sales across the board have gone down fifty percent, then they will reduce their line by fifty percent. If they reduced their line by fifty percent as it would not be tragedy. It would show a return to valuing quality and not quantity and would free enough cash for them to pour money into initiatives outside the Direct Market.
“Hey Disney how about using your powerful branding and Networks and come up with a bright idea?!!!”
This is going to be Earth-shattering news to you, but here goes: no one outside the comics industry likes or cares about comic books. Disney didn’t buy Marvel for its publishing division. It bought Marvel because Marvel’s media properties can help them connect with an elusive demographic for them–boys.
@Saber Tooth Tiger Mike:
his is going to be Earth-shattering news to you, but here goes (a bit heavy on your sarcasm there!)
Even though they dont care about the comics and bought Marvel for the Movies pipeline, if Marvel keeps losing market share or money (in the long run) Disney would do what every giant Corporate entity would: Pull the plug on printing comics. I mean they hardly make any profit on it (less than 1% of Disney profits). I dont want Marvel to go away that is for sure, just saying they have takken a turn for the worst since they were acquired.
I mean look at their line, it is as weak as it has ever been and FEAR ITSELF was one of the worst events I have read in my 23 years as a collector. (Flashpoint was just as bad)
“There just doesn’t seem to be a sense at Marvel that while having seven Avengers titles is great business in the short term, it’s suicide in the long term.” That’s not a Marvel problem, that’s a problem inherent in capitalism. For a while, there was a demand for more Avengers comics but now that demand is shrinking. So, some comics will be canceled and some people will be laid off. But sooner or later Marvel will try to build interest around another brand so they can launch a number of spin-offs, because their investors expect Marvel’s sales to increase every quarter and because that is a component of their business model.
Journey Into Mystery is hands-down my favorite title right now. I highly recommend checking it out, esp. if it is in danger — it has a real Vertigo feel to it.
“(a bit heavy on your sarcasm there!)” What can I say? I shoot for the stars.
“I don’t want Marvel to go away that is for sure, just saying they have taken a turn for the worst since they were acquired.” Their current performance probably has nothing to do with them having been bought by Disney and everything to do with how DC is taking customers away from Marvel right now.
Journey into Mystery is actually above any of the books that have been cancelled so far – though not by an enormous margin.
Generation Hope shows every appearance of being below the water line, but it’s part of the Regenesis relaunch of the X-books, so presumably it’s getting at least one more arc to turn things around.
Mike, DC aren’t taking customers away from Marvel. Their relaunch has simply generated extra sales that previously weren’t going to anyone.
I’ll certainly miss David Liss’s literate, entertaining scripts on Black Panther. I could never figure out why people don’t want to read a comic about this character. I’ve loved him since I discovered him in the 70s. What chance do comics have when something so good won’t sell, despite chance after chance? Disappointing.
DC cancelled a quarter of its line of ongoing titles over the six-month period leading up to the “New 52” relaunch.
Maybe Marvel is just starting to clear the decks for a response to the DC relaunch.
Marc, any speculation what that response may be? Marvel has restarted, renumbered and renamed their titles so many times a company-wide reboot would be useless. Unless they just put a #1 on every book they publish every month (which I don’t put past them), I’m not sure how they can retaliate.
On the story side, didn’t Marvel feature a “Hunter Blackboard” in Avengers #5 a few months ago?
Could Marvel institute an “Amazing Fantasy #15” policy? Once an issue sinks below the poverty line, the editor and creators are free to write a four-issue arc of whatever they want. If sales or word-of-mouth increases, then you spin it off into another series. Or continue the series.
I really don’t see Marvel doing a DC-style relaunch of the line, if only because it would be so obviously a copycat move.
Plus Marvel have never officially done the ‘reboot’ thing before. They’ve always been able to boast that unlike DC’s constant rewriting of history, all those old Marvel comics of the past fifty years really did still ‘happen’. Of course, they’ve stretched that a bit lately with the magic-wand removal of surplus mutants, Spidey’s marriage etc, but they’ve still got that basic principle there.
The question is, how do they turn that into a profitable publicity stunt?
““There just doesn’t seem to be a sense at Marvel that while having seven Avengers titles is great business in the short term, it’s suicide in the long term.” That’s not a Marvel problem, that’s a problem inherent in capitalism.”
But it’s a problem that Marvel avoided for a long time. There’s been mulitple Spider-titles for a while, but we only got a second X-book and Avengers title in the early to mid 80s and got a Wolverine ongoing in 1988. The grotesque overgrowth of the mutant books only really took off in the 90s and, since Marvel can see where that ended up, it’s hard to excuse them repeating the pattern.
Mike
it’s funny, there was a time when marvel put out twenty books or less and still kicked the crap out of the competition. at this point the big two are a bloated mess. trim the fat, become leaner and meaner, better writing, great art, and tight editing may be the direction marvel is going in. then again maybe not. a reboot at this point for marvel would be a wasted effort, they already rebooted the marvel universe, it’s called the ultimate universe and unlike the last two or three dc reboots, marvel’s reboot has lasted. in the next six to eight months (if not less) we’ll be seeing the “new car smell” of the dc reboot start to fade along with sales. i’ve actually been digging (most of) the current crop of marvel stuff, so glad all the civil war/disassemble/secret invasion/sentry/dark avengers,seige, crap finally came to an end. if i wanted to read depressing, grim, cynical, “no hope” type comics, i’ll score some image comic books. i (like everyone else) would love to have books released featuring less popular characters, but i guess at this time (tough times for sure) marvel has decided to concentrate on their top tier characters. eventually as things ease up , we’ll be seeing the second tier characters get mini’s or maybe ongoing titles. it’s just a matter of time. thanks for letting me rant.
“Marc, any speculation what that response may be?”
As Paul says, it’d be hard for Marvel to convince people that a line-wide relaunch would be a big deal for them, now that DC has done it first.
Then again, they’ll have to replace those cancelled books with something. And they’re probably under pressure right now to figure out some way of reacting to the “New 52” thing. And if the U.S. comics industry is good as anything, it’s doing the same thing over and over again, only slightly different.
For that matter, it’s not like Marvel has shied away from doing hugely derivative things in the past, if they thought there was some way they might get away with it.
So who knows. In any case, thanks to DC, the direct market got a lot more interesting to watch this year.
“Of course yesterday people were jumping up and down to point to the sex-swapped GHOST RIDER as an example of a Marvel book with a female lead character.
They can all sit down now.”
Hey, you guys (and several other sites that reported this story) were the ones that were guilty of flawed reporting when you claimed that X-23 was the last Marvel solo title to feature a female lead. I suspect that people like me that pointed out your mistake just want accuracy from you.
Marvel is double-shipping it’s top-tier and mid-tier books. At $3.99 a book, the policy is squeezing the mid-to-low range books out of the market. It looks like Marvel is sacrificing diversity in its material for higher sales of its best sellers. Still still doesn’t attest to the quality of the material.
But I did buckle and started willingly to pick up Uncanny X-Force. The book is phenomenal. I’m only getting FF, Daredevil, and Cap & Bucky now. Journey into Mystery is post Fear Itself so I’ll be waiting for the reviewers to chime in.
Marvel is canceling books/shortening runs so quickly, positive reviews don’t even help. The pendulum swings, and so do the days of our lives…
It’s about time Black Panther was ended. The only people that got it were those that were reserving Daredevil when the title changed and I’ve been selling a whole 3 copies of Ghost Rider avery month.
Marvel needs to stop playing games with splitting one title into two and shipping so many titles twice a month.
Marvel has the perfect way to reboot their library of titles already in place – Avengers: Childrens Crusade. They’re already taking forever to finish this book, so let’s hold off a little longer on the last issue.
In the last issue everyone decides it is safest to lock Wanda away forever and Wanda says “I wish things were the way they used to be.” and reboot.
Marvel can even claim that this was the original idea behind the series and grab credit for the reboot idea.
Marvel had well over one hundred titles for sale while DC had less than 70 with the New 52, and DC sold over 5 million comics in 6 weeks so I guess simple is better. It is about time Marvel cut the fat and the price of comics.
Micah: It’s so rare for sales on a comic to actually go up that I’m not sure positive reviews or word of mouth can EVER help, no matter how long a publisher waits. I think a whole generation of readers has been trained to know that there’s no point jumping aboard once the story is under way. At best they make a mental note to wait for the trade, and by the time it comes out, they’ve forgotten.. (Easier availability of earlier issues through digital MIGHT change that.)
As near as I can make out, positive buzz no longer helps the title itself – it just helps to build anticipation for the creators’ next work.
“As near as I can make out, positive buzz no longer helps the title itself”
Generally, I’d agree. In some cases, word of mouth still seems to be doing the trick, though — see ANIMAL MAN and SWAMP THING on the October chart.
“Marvel is canceling books/shortening runs so quickly, positive reviews don’t even help. The pendulum swings, and so do the days of our lives…”
They gave titles like Daken, X23, Ghost Rider, Man Without Fear QUITE a while to catch on. But they didn’t really catch on.
Herc was canceled after only a few issues, but it had the whole Incredible Hercules series before that. The character never really caught on like wild fire. It lasted quite a while, though.
Many of the titles had decent runs. Did anyone really expect titles like Daken or X23 to reach 100 issues? Titles have always gotten canceled. Marvel isn’t being knee-jerk with this stuff.
Alpha Flight didn’t last very many issues. But does any sane person actually think there was a big demand for an Alpha Flight ongoing?
This isn’t like canceling a title after a handful of issues. Quite often people bring up series like S.W.O.R.D. or Thor The Mighty Avenger, and they lump them in with series like Captain Britain & The MI13. The Captain Britain title lasted a year and a half and had an Annual. That’s plenty long enough. And most of the recently canceled titles lasted longer than Captain Britain did. By and large, this isn’t a case of Marvel canceling something after only seeing sales of the first couple issues. A year and a half or longer is PLENTY of time. Would you stay in a relationship for over a year and a half if it just wasn’t working out?
It wouldn’t be an awful thing if X-Factor was canceled. Peter David is a good writer, but he’s had to rely on a lot of shock value and renumberings to drum up sales lately.
An X-Factor book that lasted like 6-8 years? How can we say that it would be canceled “too soon”? If it does get canceled, it will have had a good long run.
@adfa:
“It wouldn’t be an awful thing if X-Factor was canceled. Peter David is a good writer, but he’s had to rely on a lot of shock value and renumberings to drum up sales lately.”
One could argue “shock value,” but renumberings? The book was renumbered once, and that was two years ago.
“An X-Factor book that lasted like 6-8 years? How can we say that it would be canceled “too soon”? If it does get canceled, it will have had a good long run.”
That IS a good long run, but it would be too soon only because it’s (in my opinion) one of Marvel’s most consistently entertaining books, and one of their most consistent sellers. (Thought it has never sold like gangbusters, it has been hanging on to its small, dedicated readership for several years now.)