As Gil mentioned last week, rumors were flying about the cancellation of Multiversity’s beloved series S.W.O.R.D.. This series released by Marvel, written by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by Steven Sanders quickly become one of our favorites with its highly entertaining stories and intelligent scripting (plus, Gillen and Sanders do a mean Lockheed), and the concept of it going away was incalculably terrible to all of us. Greg at NerderyBlog[dot]com even started a grassroots campaign to save the title before it was even cancelled. I of course assured Gil that it wouldn’t be cancelled, and sure enough, the axe fell today: S.W.O.R.D. is dead with issue #5.
I’m not going to try to elaborate on this because Jim at iFanboy said everything else as well as I ever could, but here’s my point: if the system in comics that is in place allows for exceptional titles like S.W.O.R.D. to die an ignoble death and Deadpool Corps is allowed to live on, then the system is broken. In the irony of ironies, Multiversity founder Matt Meylikhov featured S.W.O.R.D. writer Kieron Gillen as our top writer of December 2009 and featured Deadpool Corps scribe Victor Gischler as the worst of the same month (and it is drawn by Rob Liefeld! Ahhh!).
These are hugely disparate titles in terms of quality, but because of the paradigm “success” in comics is built around we’re given a fiercely original comic that is dying a death at all to young of an age. All the while we’re given the fourth series of a character who is looked at by Wolverine himself as oversaturated in the market. As Gillen said himself to CBR:
“Comics operate on a system of pre-ordering. As in, the first issue’s orders were in before anyone had even read a single page of the book. The numbers which people are reporting are low enough that the inevitable second issue dip — also ordered before anyone had read Issue 1 — would move it into a clearly dangerously low sales for a book in the X-family.”
Sigh.
Well, this just confirms it – if there is a less known title you are excited about, pre-order it at your local comic book store. Without that pre-order Marvel (or whomever is releasing that title) will not know that demand is high and that title could die an untimely death as well.
As for S.W.O.R.D., send in the letter that Greg from NerderyBlog created. It can’t hurt, and perhaps a grassroots campaign will give the title another life like Marc Andreyko’s Manhunter got.
That is, until it got cancelled again.
Sigh…
