The End of Exiles or We Can’t Have Nice Things!
Posted by Caroline
This Thursday marked the beginning of San Diego Comic-Con, which is sure to have many cool announcements of awesome geeky things to keep the nerd-Internet buzzing for months to come. Or at least until the next big geeky announcement!
Unfortunately, though, the comics news flash that hit me the hardest on Thursday was not an SDCC announcement but a post on Jeff Parker’s blog in which he announced that the current Exiles series is ending with issue 6.
Pause while I throw back my head in the style of whazzisname in that Wolverine movie and yell “NO-O-O-O-O-O!”
All right, I feel better. The post isn’t all bad news. It promises a future for Parker’s other Marvel ongoing series, Agents of Atlas and hints that another Parker title will be announced at an upcoming con. But still! Exiles! Take a look at this cover:
It’s Polaris and the Scarlet Witch! Teenaged Black Panther and feral Beast! Forge, for some reason! And that pink girl! They teleport from dimension to dimension and they meet alternate versions of themselves (and fight, sometimes in their underwear), and they fix timestreams, and –
All right, my sales pitch sucks, but I promise the first four issues of this book are some of the most fun I’ve had reading comics for a long time. When I saw the announcement, I admit I had a little fit of fannish entitlement. WHY CAN’T I HAVE NICE THINGS???? Gotham Central, Cable & Deadpool, The Order, X-Men: First Class? I give my heart to these little books in their interesting corners of these great big universes, and they disappear on me. It gets to the point where I’m reluctant to even say, “That’s my favorite book!” because I’m afraid it’s going away.
And yeah, of course, I know it’s illogical. I have a friend who, in the ’90s, religiously rooted for whoever was playing against the Chicago Bulls in the NBA playoffs. Once she looked at me and sighed, in all earnestness, “I don’t know why my teams always lose!”
When I make a habit of loving these books, the ones that don’t have blockbuster characters or tie-ins to Big Events, of course I’m setting myself up for heartbreak. Not all the time, of course. One of the intriguing niche-books I picked up after Marvel’s Civil War was The Order, which only lasted 10 issues. But the other was Warren Ellis’s weird, dark take on Thunderbolts, with sometime supervillain Norman Osborn leading a government-sponsored team of ne’er-do-wells. These days, Brian Bendis is writing pretty much the same story in the hit Dark Avengers.
But most of the time, taking a risk on these niche books is going to be its own reward. This week, Marvel readers lost cult hit Captain Britain & MI:13, and soon we’re losing the wit and fun and promise of Jeff Parker’s Exiles. All fans have to show for it is that we got to read some comics we loved. In the end, I guess that’s all that matters.
So what about you? Do you have tales of comic books you’ve loved and lost — Marvel and DC books, or otherwise? What’s the hardest part? Do you blame yourself or someone else? Let us know in the comments, or ask a question in email to mail@fantasticfangirls.org
By Caroline Pruett
E-mail: Caroline@fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: madmarvelgirl
Exiles! *SOBS* Seriously, favorite book! Blink (The pink one) is awesome and I cannot believe we’re losing this book.
Most of the books I loved and lost had decent runs. Generation X, Young Justice, PAD’s Supergirl, Impulse… all of them went for at least four years, or close to it. And Manhunter and Blue Beetle both got backup stories. (Excuse me, co-features.) Even Spider-Girl is still continuing in some form. But this one is harder! It only got 6 issues! That isn’t nearly long enough!
*sulk*
The thing that makes me feel better about it is that comics go in cycles. If you wait long enough, someone who loved that book or that character will pitch a mini series, and maybe you’ll get another look at the character. You just need to be patient. Which I’m totally not. *sigh*
I literally just complained about this in my blog. I agree. The first 4 issues of Exiles have been great, and I’ve had a lot of fun with the characters and enjoyed the story thus far. I’m really bummed out. I don’t read Agents of Atlas, so there’s really no consolation for me. Blah.
I haven’t been following comics regularly enough to have experiences a loss in the middle like this before. Usually I find something after it’s already done (like Young Justice).
Yeah, this type of thing is always frustrating, but I suppose it’s understandable; if the thing doesn’t sell, what can one do? I guess change it into a webcomic, particularly in Marvel’s case, as they have a solid digital comics section, but I don’t know how feasible that would be.
Anyway, I’ve had a fair share of disappointments, like Excalibur, and more recently, Captain Britain and Iron Fist. Particularly this last one, which I love, and is now relegated to 2nd feature in Immortal Weapons. Oh, well.
Oh, I certainly can empathize with you a lot, Caroline. Even though I actually stopped reading Exiles before the last relaunch, I’m ashamed to admit. But I certainly know the feeling when it seems that a publisher keeps cancelling my favourite titles on me…
The ones that come to my mind first:
DC:
Hawk & Dove (Armageddon 2001 still smarts)
Impulse
Young Justice
PAD’s Supergirl
DC-Milestone:
Icon
Marvel:
Defenders
Power Pack
Generation X
Amazing Spider-Girl
and (of course)
Amazing Spider-Man
@Margot I’m really glad that DC is using the ‘cofeature’ idea to keep some titles going that might not be able to sustain on their own. That might happen for a book like ‘Captain Britain,’ though unfortunately ‘Exiles’ probably never got enough of a footing. Still, it’s cool outside-the-box thinking and I like it!
@Sam If you like Parker’s writing, I’d definitely suggest checking out the trade of the AoA miniseries!
@euthanatos Yeah, I totally get that it’s a business decision; there are a few cases like ‘Cable & Deadpool,’ which veered from its original premise just at the time that Civil War could have given it a new audience, and I find that frustrating. But for the most part, I just have to shrug and be glad these books got a chance in the first place. I’m totally with you on ‘Iron Fist’ (I was featured in the Newsarama Marvel panel wrap-up as “a fan in an Iron Fist T-shirt asking about the future of the book). I hear buzz that the ongoing is supposed to be back after the mini, but there’s also talk of Danny being involved in Dark Reign stuff, somehow, so who knows? But that’s exactly the kind of book I’m talking about. I’m bummed that its numbers fell off sharply after Brubaker left; I feel like too many people just didn’t give the new team a chance, because the quality has been as good or better since Swierczy took over!
@Menshevik Great list! Parker’s post says there will probably be a trade of his Exiles run, so I definitely recommend checking it out. I heard a lot of people say it was closer to the original spirit of the series (albeit with mostly different characters, aside from Blink).
[...] The End of Exiles or We Can’t Have Nice Things! document.write(”); Share and Enjoy: [...]
I was fond of Chuck Dixon’s Marvel Knights book, which ended after 15 issues. It was a fun book with a wide cast of Marvel’s street level characters (Daredevil, Black Widow, Dagger, Shang-Chi, Moon Knight, Luke Cage), but I guess it didn’t sell.
It had a nice 73-issue run, but I only started reading it the last year, so I was sorry to see Batgirl go. The subsequent (mostly poor, in my opinion) uses of Cassandra Cain have only made me miss the series more.
Cable/Deadpool, even without Cable was a fun romp (except when T-Ray showed up. Him I could do without). Heck, it’s the first book to ever make me care about Cable (even when i was a dumb kid reading X-Force, I can’t remember really being interested in him and his massive firearms), which is enough by itself to make it a book to mourn.
[...] already wrote eloquently about that book’s cancellation, but for me the absence still stings. The book took an old [...]