While its long-term survival was a long shot, I'm really sorry to see this one go. I don't think it necessarily got off on the right foot, both with its marketing (pitting it against the Green Team) and an opening issue the kept a lot of readers at arm's length. But I really enjoyed it -- both as a new concept for the New 52, and the variety of new characters it introduced. I'll enjoy these last few issues, and hope to see the characters or the group guest in other books.
Here's some of what Gail Simone had to say on her Tumblr. There's more at the link.
Unfortunately, this book just never found a big enough audience. The people who loved it, loved it hard, but that number was too small.
I am bummed about it, we wanted to do a book that didn’t read or look like anything else out there, and I think we accomplished that. I take the responsibility, I think it took a little while for people to really adopt the characters, which was a conscious choice but also a risky one in this very cautious market where people have to be extra careful of which books they choose.
Whenever a book is cancelled, people often get mad at the publisher—it’s understandable, but in this case, we received nothing but support from DC. They knew it was a dicey prospect, a book not set in Gotham or Metropolis with no known heroes, and an unusual core theme. They knew it was a bit risky commercially and they did it anyway, and they let us run out to twelve issues to finish it properly, when almost any other publisher would have cut it earlier on.
Replies
I was one of the ones who was put off by the initial marketing. Despite what Gail said it sounded preachy to me and I really didn't read anything in the first few issues that showed me anything different.
Yeah, Green Team didn't have nearly the charm I expected from Art and Franco, that's for sure. I suspect there were a few too many editorial cooks in that one, but who knows?
The Movement was stuck in a tough position. The marketing set it up as a "rah-rah, 99%" book, but it wasn't that -- it was very concerned with the practicalities and the limits of the effectiveness of extremism. Not everything the Movement did was good, and certainly they didn't all agree with each other. But that initial marketing suggested it was only for a readership that would be completely behind a revolution. So at least some of the audience that might have enjoyed it never picked it up in the first place.
I also think a problem with The Movement were those damn metal masks from the first issue. Were they ever explained? How they have the resources to give everyone one, how everyone in the neighborhood keeps them on their person, etc... none of that has made any sort of sense to me, and it's all really peripheral, anyway. (The I.C.U. cell-phone images were much more explicable, and much more effective.) But I like the central characters a lot, especially Virtue and Vengeance Moth, and I want to see more of them, wherever they appear.
I think you are right, if you were in favor of the occupy wallstreet movement then the marketing for the movement promised a lot of that, despite what Gail tried to say later that it wouldn't be preachy, but if you weren't in favor of the occupy crowd you weren't really listening by that point. I wasn't but tried a few issues anyway, but I definitely got political vibes from it and I've come to despise most politics.
Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod) said:
If DC hadn't totally alienated me with virtually everything else it has been doing lately, I would have given this one a shot. Gail Simone will be getting my money via her Red Sonja comics going forward.
I wonder. Simone mentions how buyers have to carefully decide on their purchases these days. Comixology pricing their comics the same as comic shops kind of limits their customer base to people who go to comic shops anyway. Maybe there should be a line of comics that are mainly available on Comixology, but at a much lower price. It'd work if there were economies of scale involved and more take-up, selling 100,000 comics would cost the same as selling 10,000, but with much higher returns! But that won't happen whilst the comic shops have the clout they now have...
Randy Jackson said:
I think the Green Team only appeared in one issue of First Issue Special. There were a couple of partially completed stories in the photocopied Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, but ti's still not much of a trade.
If you look, though, you can probably find that issue of First Issue Special for only a couple bucks.
Wandering Sensei: Moderator Man said:
I think that if Art and Franco had stuck with the original characters, it might have worked better. I've long had ideas for what I might do with the Green Team if I were writing comics, but it was nowhere near what they gave us. I'm sure there were pressures from the suits to do certain things like replace two of the members with an Arab and a girl, but I don' think that helped the stories at all.
...Let's alienate the , um , " Luddites " who can't/can only minimally do online st/tell them to " go die !!!!!!! " , ya mean , Figs ?????????
SURE you're not an Ayn Rand fan living in the Valley , mate:-)?????????
Figserello said:
Yes, it's hard to use Comixology without basic keyboard skills. I'm sorry EKJD.
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