Tom, I’m a huge fan of ANAD Marvel but it seems like a bunch of titles are either cancelled or on the chopping block. I understand that sales drives this and titles come and go, my question is more concerning when a title’s cancellation is announced. I know Bleeding Cool loves to speculate on what they term ‘stealth cancellations’ but they are correct that titles sometimes just drop out of solicitations well before their official cancellation is announced. Is there a specific reason for this? It seems like once the decision is made, why is it a bad thing to let people know that a title they’ve been reading is coming to an end? I know I would appreciate knowing whether something I’m enjoying is no longer going to be published. Any insight you can provide on this?
Does anybody announce when something is cancelled? Not to the best of my knowledge–because there is no upside to doing so. What Bleeding Cool likes to call “Stealth Cancellations” are simply cancellations.@superdweebs Well….that’s not very good.
This response confuses me. Creators announce when stuff is cancelled literally all the time. This is literally the first time in my decades as a geek that I have ever seen so much silence about cancellations. Of course, these recent three years are also the first time I’ve been heavily involved in reading comics versus other mediums, so maybe what’s extremely common in other mediums isn’t common in this one.
Since I would have thought the upsides should be obvious?
One, just plain old showing respect to the fans who’ve become invested in various characters and titles. We’d like to not be stuck in limbo unsure whether to expect new issues after the stealth stopping point, or to move on.
Two, it helps avert negative publicity. The lack of firm information about sales has led to near-constant armchair quarterbacking in the Marvel fandom about said sales, which frequently results in derogatory commentary towards the lower-selling titles and can create a hostile atmosphere towards both the titles and fans of those titles.
Even when people aren’t being derogatory, the constant expectant pessimism creates a pall over the proceedings that makes it hard to generate positive buzz about titles.
Three, it can help generate positive publicity. The fuss around Frank Tieri announcing Black Knight’s cancellation is practically the only marketing attention that title received during its entire run. And it rallied a lot of people who were previously unaware that it even existed, or that it wasn’t selling well.
And with Tieri specifically, the silence first resulted in a negative situation where people were asking him why there was no solicit for a sixth issue and he was forced to ignore them until he got to make a formal announcement. It was frustrating to the fans, and clear from his eventual response that it was frustrating to him as well. It was also clear that he was happy to rally fans to support the book… but most likely was too little too late because of how long he was forced to wait before getting to do so.
And he’s not the only ANAD writer who’s prolific on social media… nor the only writer used to rallying fans around cancellations *cough*Weisman*cough*.
I’m one of the MCU and other A/V superhero media fans whom you’ve been trying to entice into buying the comics. And at first I was really happy with ANAD’s offerings; I have seven ongoings I liked enough to sub and a few more that seem potentially interesting, when I previously only cared about subbing to one ongoing (and that one was in Transformers, not superheroes). But between the negative/pessimistic attitudes of the fandom and now Marvel asserting a policy of keeping fans in the dark, I’m quickly becoming disillusioned.
I feel like in the future I might as well just go back to reading only old stuff sometimes and generally trade-waiting, if one, every comic series I enjoy will just get cancelled after one story arc anyway, and two, I won’t even be told when that happens. :( With the lack of marketing/news, and the negativity from the fandom, it’s not like there’s much of a social benefit nowadays to staying current on series, either.
(via maxmarvel123)
