Some of you may have heard that X-23 has been canceled.
This is sad news, as X-23 is one of the only (the only? I’ll have to double check) female led titles over at Marvel. While the art teams on the book have not worked for me consistently, Marjorie Liu has been delivering a very well-written book throughout the run, and when she was doing it with phenomenal artist Phil Noto, it was one of the best books I was reading, so this is a real shame.
I can’t help but wonder if a better and clearer artistic vision for the book and covers that better reflected the story inside might have helped this title, but I guess we’ll never know. I’ll be sad to see it go, thanks Liu for some great work with a character I never expected to have such affection for, X-23.
And here, in an exceptional example of a horrible costume being nicely reworked, is a commission of X-23 from Peter Nguyen:
Tags: comics!
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Marvel seems to be systematically axing anything that isn’t a core Avengers, Spider-Man, or X-Men title, so I don’t think anything could have helped it. I don’t think a book like this will ever set the charts on fire, but I enjoyed it, and I’m sad that it’s being canceled despite pretty respectable sales (I think).
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I was sad to see this. Since I dropped so many DC titles I was looking to pick up something new, and X-23 was top of the list. Total bummer.
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I found this cancellation pretty unfortunate. Sales on the book were just looking to stabilise at ~24K when the cancellation occured. Not the best, but not that bad especially when you consider how little publicity X-23’s had, and that it’s been excluded from events such as fear itself and and schism.
It’s certainly not the worst selling x-book: it did far better than generation hope, and was ironically slightly higher than avengers academy when the cancellation was announced (ironic as X-23 is being shipped off to join avengers academy now the ongoing is cancelled).
I made a plot of x-23’s sales alongside some other similarly selling books – avengers academy, x-factor, and generation hope. Here’s a link to it.
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/8990/x23generationhopeavenge.png
Note the big spike in generation hope is due to the first issue of the schism tie-in. Several spikes toward the end of avenger’s academy result from fear itself. I’d guess the reason the solo series (X-23, Daken) were targeted for cancellation was that you can easily integrate a solo character into another ongoing and get some sales boost to said title. The characters in the team titles don’t individually have much pull, and you can’t integrate an entire team into another ongoing.
I’d end by noting Kelly is correct that there are now no other solo female ongoing series: there was ghost rider (the one you knew was a woman because of the hair :p) but it’s been cancelled too. Marvel has some pretty strong female characters in teams – often actually leading said teams. Never the less, it’s pretty dumb PR to hand the line “Marvel has no solo female ongoings” to DC. Epsecially when DC has a fair number of prominent titles (eg Batwoman, Batgirl, Supergirl, Wonder Woman)
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Well, another solo book with a female lead was Ghost Rider, but that ended too sadly.
At least X-23 will be a regular in Avengers Academy.
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@Nat & Daniel C. Agreed.
@Herring – that chart is rather fascinating. Makes me wonder if it’s in part the drop off that panics Marvel – since X-23 experienced such a drop off. Ironically, I would blame that largely on the art and a lack of cohesive and consistent vision. Art that wasn’t a good fit (to me) from go, then a switch to a heavy manga influence, then to a clean lined tight Phil Noto run (obviously my preference) and now back to heavy manga influence…all the while with covers that in no way reflected what was inside.
So frustrating.
Thanks for linking!
@Packie: Yes, Ghost Rider would have qualified. Don’t get too comfortable with AA – there are rumors that Avengers Academy is on the chopping block as well!
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The costume is better, but I still wouldn’t want that belt buckle (or whatever it is) placed right there if I was liable to get hit there. Ow. And I’m honestly not sure how the pants they’re drawing on a lot of the Marvel women stay on their bodies at all.
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@1979semifinalist
Well, Christos Gage says that the book is set to tie in to an upcoming even, so AA is probably safe for now.
He also mentioned that the book is safe because it’s stable sales wise(Same reason why PAD’s X-factor is still going). But i do worry.
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Judging by the fact that Liu is on Astonishing now, i guess X-23 just ended because she was moving to a new book?
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