Screwed by the Network/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Comic Books that were Screwed by the Network include:

  • Several X-Men books have suffered this over the year[when?]:
    • "Mutant X" was never supposed to replace X-Factor; it was supposed to run for 12 issues before going away and being replaced with a relaunched X-Factor comic. But early sales for Mutant X were far better than X-Factor's sales at the time, so the book lasted for 32 issues before being cancelled.
    • Deadpool and X-Force (under Peter Milligan and Mike Allred) were cancelled and relaunched as "Agent X" and "X-Statix" as part of a scam to screw Rob Liefeld of royalties from the book. The relaunches for both books failed and while Agent X was thankfully mercy-killed, X-Statix rebounded from a god-awful first year with an arc involving the resurrection of a vain, self-righteous pop musician. Unfortunately, the singer was SUPPOSED to be Princess Diana but was changed at the last minute. As a result, Milligan and Allred became disillusioned and asked to leave the book, which was promptly cancelled with issue #26.
    • Though this page debunks the idea of renaming those titles to avoid royalties.
  • The early-1990s Justice Society of America series by Len Strazewski and Mike Parobeck was practically canceled before it started, despite selling well. Strazewski said in an interview that the decision to cancel was made personally by Mike Carlin because he didn't like Parobeck's artwork or Strazewski's writing and believed that senior-citizen super-heroes was not what DC should be publishing.
  • The Red Circle DCU revamp of the MLJ/Archie heroes has plenty of these: The original plan of using the original versions in The Brave and the Bold was scrapped in favor of launching them in a series of one-shots that immediately spun off into a pair of ongoings that debuted in the midst of Blackest Night and were the only two books to not tie in to that event, which crippled sales for them right out of the gate. It also had the $3.99 cover price with second feature format which also turned off readers. The only mainline DC book to give a major guest spot was when the Shield showed up in the low-selling Magog. DC is currently[when?] publishing a Mighty Crusaders mini-series to finish off the deal.
    • And DC has ended the Red Circle deal, and the rights are reverting back to Archie Comics!
    • And to make matters even worse, DC solicited the Mighty Crusaders mini-series (and the accompanying introductory special for the series) as a trade paperback, but cancelled it because it did not garnered enough pre-orders!
    • According to the Word of God, the Red Circle heroes (as well as most of the heroes) were barred from appearing in other titles due to the fact that DC would have to pay royalties for each guest-spot. So that's why save for Static, the Milestone and Red Circle heroes rarely got to appear in other, more popular titles.
    • Technically, DC's deal for the Red Circle heroes will end on January 2012!
    • Archie themselves are reviving the heroes in 2012 as The New Crusaders... as part of a web-only subscription service where the new stories are six pages each!
      • To make it less annoying, the six-page installments of The New Crusaders are going to be weekly, which means 24-30 pages a month for the series, at a subscription fee of $2.99-$3.99 a month, plus thousands of pages of classic stories, as well!
      • At least Archie is offering a free print preview of The New Crusaders as part of the upcoming Free Comic Book Day version of Mega Man #1!
      • And there is going to be a print version of The New Crusaders, which will debut in August, three months after the digital version will debut!
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