Acccording to CBR, Marvel has canceled the X-23 ongoing. This leaves them with zero female solo ongoing titles( I don't count Ghost Rider as a solo title, even though a woman is wielding the power right now. It does still co-star Johnny Blaze.), and will leave the building story thread of her series hanging. Another brilliant move from the house of ideas. They are citing budgetary reasons, but are keeping titles that have underperformed far worse in comparison to her title.
X-23 will carry on in Avengers Academy and the upcoming Venom arc, but this is a blow to readers everywhere as the upcoming issue 17 in stores tomorrow is a perfect jumping on point for those curious about the title. You'd think Marvel would have at least waited until issue 23 to give the title a chance to wrap up properly, but what do you expect from the people that bat the character around repeatedly and change the personality of the character on whims without ever including storycentric reasoning until Marjorie Liu was writing her. Sadly I had anticipated this happening with how they shuffled the character off to a team book that seemed rather like a shoe-horned in addition with how they said they were going to do it. An odd choice for her considering she had already 'graduated' from a school once, but I had thought they might hold out to let X-23 end on issue 23. Instead, according to CBR it looks like issue 20 will be her last, which is the same number on her Marvel Universe figure's stand. Issue 20 being potentially where she deals with Surge's hypocrisy(seriously, they kick her off the New X-Men for killing and then side with those wanting to kill people? Hypocrite much?), sees Jubilee again, and has to endure further mistreatment by Cyclops who was using her just as the Facility did. That's not to say Wolverine's school would have been any better of a fit with Hellion there, and the fact she had already graduated once. Plus there's the fact the character has been better trained and taught than any other character in the Marvel Universe anyway already. Which will hopefully lead to some fun scenes in Avengers Academy if they've bothered to read up on the history of the character they are about to use.
Here's hoping Avengers Academy uses X-23 well, because other than the Venom arc it will be the only regular fix her fans will be able to get. As for the dangling plot threads of who the mystery woman was, and what'll happen with the soul mark/uni-power mark? They will forever remain a mystery.
Chalk this up to another misfire from Marvel, and show them your displeasure by picking up the remaining four issues. Let X-23 go out with a bang on the top 300 chart! You can also write to Marvel, and tell how unhappy you are about this rather arbitrary decision that can't be rationalized in comparison to what they've kept. Like Daken that is losing readers left and right and is performing worse than X-23 did. This is especially weird as the numbers were on the rise for X-23 while Daken's were falling.
KP will be covering the X-23 appearances in Avengers Academy, so let us all hope they don't screw the character up.
We would like to give a special thank you to Marjorie Liu for her hard work on this title though, and her work will be missed as she was one of the first writers to take the character forward in the public eye without being vague about the character's origins. Finally proving to the fandom at large X-23 is more akin to a daughter, and that Sarah Kinney shares some genes with Laura too.
That's not to say the series was perfect. There were some mis-steps along the way, but also some utterly amazing issues. The same could be said of Yost/Kyle who had done an amazing job on the minis, and Academy X until they completely unraveled the character and destroyed their own work via X-Force at times. The solo title lacked action as a whole, but the X-Force title pushed too much glee in destroying the character at times that borderlined on painful to read. Here's hoping Avengers Academy finds a happy middle ground between the two with their usage.
When the final issue hits, I'll do a follow up entry on this that covers the mistakes and problems from past to present from all the writers. For now, a moment of silence for another fallen solo female title.
*Update*
Thanks to afgoosett of Toyark for making me aware of some articles via Comicvine about this.
Marvel Cancels X-23
Should Marvel have Canceled X-23?
Bleeding Cool has also chimed in with their utter displeasure at Marvel for this move.
So yeah Marvel, that's 4 outlets already that are reacting with shock and pissed off about it. Care to rethink it yet?
I don't know how to feel. I just hope it's not being cancelled. Even though I know it is.. It was one of the biggest reasons I started collecting comics. In turn helped me meet even more cool characters around the spectrum. Like Cassandra Cain from DC.
ReplyDeleteI just feel horrible about this... I know I'm going to get the venom event now... How do you go about writing a letter to marvel about this? Would twitter and email be good too?
E-mail would work. Every issue has an address both old school letters and the X-Office E-mail.
ReplyDeleteTwitter might work, but it's easier to ignore tweets than a well thought out plea/discontent to the X-office about why your sad and how the comic brought you to reading comics.
I'm really curious what these "budgetary reasons" are though. Something smells fishy about that in comparison to how other titles are doing and there shouldn't be any creator royalties at all. I also don't get why Daken gets to last longer when its sales are worse with many fans pissed about no Daken/Bucky Barnes confrontation. Instead it's opting to do another Daken vs Wolverine story which by now everyone is tired of.
It does really suck. This character is what brought me back to buying physical comics again myself over just trades. I might have to go back to that, but I'm not sure. I'm really digging avengers academy and a few others, but with how the X-23 comic was treated, I'm not sure how long those will last either. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm starting to agree with Tabby about how Marvel treats their comics and how they just nix them willy nilly. Granted X-23's comic needed some edges sanded still, but it was getting there. The next arc looked like it was going to bring the fun back to the title and the ongoing did finally fill in some needed spots to make her backstory more coherent with why they needed trigger scent and there being other acts of her saving children instead of how Yost/Kyle left that one as a facility caused fluke that her mother overlooked. I'm also glad the comic finally at least slowly started dealing with what the entire cloned daughter angle really means instead of how other writers seem to dissmiss X-23 as just some female Wolverine. It may have needed a bit more action (action doesn't mean death/killing there is a difference) and focus on her strategic sides of being a chess player never beaten, but it was working towards it. Especially with what looked a build up to a story about X-23 facing an opponent her equal in every way but with more power(sometimes the only way to beat someone at chess is let them play themself).
A lot of fans are saying it was because of this last arc, but that doesn't make sense. Many comics have had much worse arcs and don't get canceled. Plus this past arc was a setup arc for a much bigger future one. It really doesn't make sense with how sales were starting to turn around too. From the looks of it overall though, it looks like all the X-Titles are suffering right now and Marvel is trying to figure some way to bring them back, going biweekly with the team books now to push more product. It just sucks X-23 is stuck in the crossfire of that when they have so many great stories that could be told in the comic that would draw in more fans and readers like the babysitting one I'm sure will.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of hoping if Avengers academy does end up cut, they wrap up the last of the X-23 stories in two minis. One mini to wrap up the mystery woman and uni-power/engima force/soul mark stuff, and another to wrap up the Kimura and telepathic entity story, then spin out a new X-23 ongoing with just her and Jubilee with a bit more fun to it, and maybe even a backup mini comicstrip spin of Laura and Megan or Jubilee in a muppet babies type fashion to end every issue on a humorous note. I kind of really like the idea of them as a freelance PI team like X-Factor but more lowkey, human interest, and focused on the female perspective with Jubilee the loud boastful one and X-23 the quiet reserved but brains of the outfit. At least that's what I'm hoping for when this entire schism stuff finally ends(barring a real solo title return again that has all the edges sanded off so it plays off perfectly with all the past stories). With X-23's ten year anniversary just around the corner too in 2013, it'd make sense to relaunch some focused stories before that, for trades that year followed by a new ongoing that august-october. They really need to get around to wrapping up these plot threads though. They've got darkhawk just sitting in a coma with raptor amulets coming awake, X-23 with leftover stories that need wrapping up including the remnants of the target X mini, and they've got heaven knows what other stories out there just waiting to be told from other comics that are just spinning around doing nothing. They seem to be pushing so much for events to bolster sales, but the events are starting to fatigue people and drive them away instead. Marvel's essentially dying in the comic biz, only being saved by toy sales, tv, video games, and movies capitalizing on the characters. I don't know, a lot of that is stuff that may become another entry in itself about marvel and what they need to do to fix some stuff to keep sales going and not keep shooting themselves in the foot.
Sorry for the long windedness of this. xD
@Alt-Tab, I deleted your comment. We'll talk about that later. I'm not sure on that, but I'm thinking it over.
I just realized that Jubilee has no blood source on team Cyclops. Could she be joining X-men? I'm not sure if Jubilee could take the time to travel to the academy each time she needs blood.
ReplyDeleteAnother Marvel goof, though she may have a stockpile too. It might be covered in an upcoming story in X-Men about Jubilee's vampire heritage, but somehow I doubt it. I was kind of hoping X-23 was a solution to that problem and it provided a bunch of interesting ideas to boot, but who knows. That stockpile does have to run out at some point and it's definitely a better alternative than X-23's self-harm/blood letting though maybe still too close to it.
ReplyDelete