Thunderbolts- First casualty of the Heroic Age

[humanbelly]

Yikes! There I was, on the phone w/ a nice young woman at Marvel, renewing my subscriptions (and starting a few new ones), and when I asked for Thunderbolts, she said, "Nope, I'm afraid that title's being discontinued." It's going to still appear in the LCS's for a couple of months. . . but it's definitely being cancelled. She said those subs are being replaced w/ Hawkeye & Mockingbird (which I took instead).

Boy, and here I was, all ready to take a chance. . .

HB

[bobc]

WHAT?!!!!! You have got to be kidding me. That is the best comic Marvel has on the shelves! In fact I was just about to start a thread about how good this new double sized issue is!!!

[Shiryu]

Apparently it's something others have experienced too, but it there doesn't seem to be a real threat. Here for example

forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=338917

someone was said the same after #146. Now we are at #150 and up to #153 Thunderbolts is confirmed in the solicitations with no mentioning of a closure.
May be it's to promote H&M?

[humanbelly]

Nov 19, 2010 14:51:30 GMT -5 Shiryu said:

Apparently it's something others have experienced too, but it there doesn't seem to be a real threat. Here for example

forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=338917

someone was said the same after #146. Now we are at #150 and up to #153 Thunderbolts is confirmed in the solicitations with no mentioning of a closure.
May be it's to promote H&M?

You know. . . I wonder if the young customer rep on the phone had her facts exactly backwards and was auto-piloting on that assumption? She was delightful-- kinda edgy-- but I daresay she didn't really have a whole lot of mental investment in what she was doing (as it were). Because she would not start me with Thunderbolts, and insisted that H & M was going to be the replacement book--- and then H & M's gone quicker than Thunderbolts. 'Course, then T-bolts should have been the replacement for H & M-- so I'm still betting they're both headed for the sunset.

(Heck, I'm still waiting for HBO to suck it up and bring Carnivale back for it's third season. . . or for Firefly to return. . . or Northern Exposure. . . or The Tick. . . )

HB

[humanbelly]

Okay, made a rare to trip to the LCS (Big Planet Comics in College Park, MD--- a worthy shout-out!), and the very helpful fellow there did some online checking and said that it didn't look like T-bolts was being cancelled as far as he can tell. #152, I think, is scheduled to ship on Jan 19th. And the idea seemed to take him mildly by surprise.

So, bobc, maybe it's a cruel mistake or hoax?

HB

[bobc]

God I hope so. The giant sized Tbolts vs The Avengers, which just came out, is really, really good. In fact I haven't seen characterization this good in years! The Ghost is creepy and freakish, Moonstone is manipulative and spoiled, Luke Cage has never been handled better--the whole book is just great and very imaginative. The only other comic out there, IMO, which is almost as good is Avengers Academy.

[Shiryu]

Thunderbolts has generally been a very consistently good title. Even during Dark Reign I found it to be a pretty enjoyable read, with a nice balanced cast. I don't like the current art (Songbird especially) but #150 was pretty good.

[humanbelly]

I do wonder what the criteria are for taking a title out of subscription availability? The obvious assumption would be that the sales figures are low- or expected to be low- and that it's deemed necessary to eake every penny of profit out of the book by making sure that the full cover price is being paid for practically every issue. 'Course, that just keeps folks like me (who need to limit that kind of spending where possible) to not pick up the book at all. Thus the overall number of issues sold is diminished, regardless of profitability.
I just have trouble picturing a scenario where making a title less readily available to the reader is going to improve its overall circulation and financial health. . .

I was still glad to hear it wasn't cancelled, though, bobc. This would just be heaping cruelty upon cruelty on you after the demise of the Black Panther's title.

HB

[bobc]

Didn't you hear yet, HB? The Black Panther is now replacing Daredevil as "The Man Without Fear." I am not kidding. As if there wasn't enough identity confusion going on already. There is also a "Klaws of the Panther" featuring the female BP, and it's just mediocre.

[humanbelly]

Really?? I mean. . . REALLY???
That's just. . . it's just a. . .
It's SUCH a horrible idea---

Granted, I haven't followed DD at all, really, for many, many, many years. There was a long, incomprehensible run w/ JRjr as artist and, I believe, Ann Nocenti writing it, and it finally just lost me after being a very good book for a very long time. But it took a turn for "deep" and "heavily metaphorical" and "symbolic", and gave us overdoses of Mephisto, Kingpin, Typhoid Mary, Ultron (believe it or not), and Karnak & Triton (lord knows why) as supporting characters.

But this kind of switch is just stupid. What's with this trend in super-entities completely taking over the costumed identity of other super-entities? Geeze, BP was a much higher roller in his own identity. And if Matt Murdock isn't DD, what the heck makes the character unique anymore?? It's staggering to me that Marvel has latched onto this idea that the costumed identity seems to be the primary draw, and that the real face behind it is just an extraneous detail to be manipulated or changed on a whim.

RRRGHH!

HB

[bobc]

I'm with you. How in the H do you form an emotional attachment to a character who changes identities like underwear? I was thinking the other day that the main reason I never read Thunderbolts (until recently) is because I didn't feel any ties to any of the main characters. That is really important to keep a fan reading.

Is Marvel just out of ideas? Are people losing that creative spark?

Now it is possible that this new book might work, but it sounds like a really, really bad idea.

[Shiryu]

The idea is certainly strange, but HB's post in itself sort of shows why Marvel decided to go with such a sharp change of direction. Daredevil has always been a second-tier, left out of pretty much every main event and generally at the corner of the MU. He has had some good runs but in recent years seemed to rely on the occasional guest star all the time. I assume Matt Murdock will somehow die at the end of Shadowland and be resurrected in a few years, hopefully by a good creative cast, like they did with Thor. BP is an odd choice to replace him, but with his own title being cancelled better to have him here than nowhere at all.

[goldenfist]

Was anyone expecting Moon Knight to replace Daredevil as the Man without Fear.