As anyone who has read the DC solicits knows, issue #20 is slated to be the last one for DC. At this point, DC has no plans to do trade collections of the remaining books in the run.
We are not, however, quite dead yet.
Watch this space for further updates.
PAD
Posted by Peter David at February 17, 2005 02:07 PM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingPAD,
Is that, perhaps, supposed to be _not_ quite dead yet?
In any event, that's too bad about "Fallen Angel." Hopefully, however, since it's creator-owned, you'll be able to take it elsewhere.
Rick
I hope to see more on Fallen Angel in another form at some point. Perhaps novels?
How about some info on the Starpoint Academy project? I love to hear about your upcoming stuff.
Fallen Angel and Gotham Central are my two favorite DC books (excluding Vertigo titles) and now FA is going away, hopefully not forever, and some of GC's talent has left for Marvel. I truly hope you've got an ace up your sleeve, Peter, because I want to see this character continue.
that middle line does disturb me. i hope it was a typo
I was just commenting to my wife how sad it was that FALLEN ANGEL was about to leave this mortal coil.
I'm glad there's a glimmer of hope left . . . Lee & company deserve a better fate than to be cancelled due to a percieved "lack of interest."
Hey... how bout ICON?
Any chance there? You been gettin some love from Marvel lately, haven`t you??? With Hulk and Madrox being so critically well received...
Maybe a exclusivity with Fallen Angel moving to ICON... Since there was no SOLID link to the DCU so far...
It's sad that DC feels that a book as good as this needs to be cancelled.
How much profit does a book actually have to make before it is considered "profitable"?
Obviously I don't know any of the business implications, or whether Fallen Angel regained more in sales than it cost to produce. Even if it makes even a small amount, surely that's better than nothing.
Let's hope that the glimmer of hope comes good.
Obviously I don't know any of the business implications, or whether Fallen Angel regained more in sales than it cost to produce. Even if it makes even a small amount, surely that's better than nothing.
Not necessarilly; if something is only marginally profitable but the resources to create it could be used instead to make something very profitable, then it isn't better than nothing.
Not to say I don't love PAD's work, I'm just saying, businesswise...
I'll follow this book whatever publisher it goes to.
I'm sad to hear that Fallen Angel is having os much trouble surviving. I think it is far and away DC's best title right now, and Ultimate Spider-man is the only other title I enjoy nearly as much. Perhaps if they marketed the book better, it would become more "profitable". Good luck finding a new distributor.
A glimmer of hope.
Whatever form it comes in, I'll definitely be reading. I'd prefer comics to novels (I just really dig great visuals, especially the visuals in Fallen Angel), but I'll take whatever I can get, and be thrilled!
Well, I'll follow the book where it goes. But....I will have to say that the book was a hard read; you had to work at the characters did and said (and what they did NOT say) to figure them out. Moreover, the characters were hard, controlled and not especially warm. That's not conducive for sales in this market, even though it makes for satisfying reading; too many folks want the familiar and the easily digestible---you COULD take five minutes and read the book...but to understand what's REALLY going on took longer (which is hard to sell in this market).
Peter:
As long as you are writing the book, comic whatever, I will buy it. Even if Liefield is the artist. :-)
PAD,
When you know where "Fallen Angel" lands, let us know. Wherever it is, I'll be there buying it. Period.
I am hoping as well that there will be a future for Fallen Angel. If it is not a comic, I am hoping for novels.
The decision to not even collect the last issues into a trade says volumes to me, about how DC views this book. Particularly as a source of income.
But I remain (in the words of Patrick Stewart) "ever optimistic".
It simply saddens me that good comics are being cancelled while the crap continues to be produced.
First I heard that Human Target is being cancelled.
Then I heard that Sleeper:Season Two will be the last Sleeper comic.
And now, at last, the ax falls on Fallen Angel.
It simply makes me lose faith in the comic industry as a whole.
Of course, PAD, wherever Fallen Angel shows up, I will be there. Till then, let's all have a round for Lee and Jude.
To paraphrase Oz circa Season Three of Buffy:
"As Lee goes, so goes my nation."
Mr. David,
I'm glad to hear that Fallen Angel is entirely beyond hope. You and the whole FA team have my hopes that, like Wesley in The Princess Bride, it's only mostly dead. I hope for a miracle and happy continuance.
Arrrrrrgh!!!!
Tbat first senctence in my above post should have read, "I'm glad to hear that Fallen Angel is not entirely beyond hope
PAD,
Let me just say that I tried the series, but it was never my "cup of tea". It just didn't work for me. Somehow, though, I could see this as a novel. Why not? After all, PAD's done novels on other comic-related characters.
I'd be very surprised if Fallen Angel didn't get picked up by another publisher.
This announcement reminds me of the interview I did with Peter in October. It focused exclusively on FA. If anyone missed it, it's up at http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/features/109676989895936.htm
"Arrrrrrgh!!!!
Tbat first senctence in my above post should have read, "I'm glad to hear that Fallen Angel is not entirely beyond hope"
Eh. Given how Peter's post originally looked, it fits.
Don't know why everyone's worried about that second paragraph. Take out the "however" adverb in there and it does say "We are not quite dead yet."
That said: I'm kinda hoping for novels, but I think I'd miss the style it has had in periodical format, and the awe-inspiring art of David Lopez and Fernando Blanco.
Not that it'd happen, but wouldn't it be funny if FA volume 2 came out under Marvel's Icon imprint? And weirder still, succeed and thrive while there?
Nah, if it comes back, it'll be as a total indie, or as novels.
Best of luck, PAD. Keep us posted (as if I hadda tell you).
Speaking of angels...that Angel season 5 set o' dvds released this week sure is nifty....you got yours, PAD?;-)
~G.
Arrrgh, I meant FA volume 2, the series, not a trade paperback. Although that'd be nice, too!
~G.
I just realized; George Perez was supposed to do the covers for both #19 and #20, but #20 has a David Lopez cover. What happened?
Yeah, I saw that thing and it pissed me off. I really thought the book would get some more chance. But, way I see it, DC just eliminated 20% of product that I buy from them. Their problem.
Will very much miss the book, though. Hope 'this space' will announce its return shortly.
While I understand the need for a product to be profitable, I'm really disappointed that entertainment mediums keep looking for the Next Big Thing, and let well made, challenging entertainment fall away. But if the product isn't selling, if it doesn't turn a profit (or a high enough profit) then you can't really blame the publisher.
I think the biggest sense of frustration I see is that we don't know what sales level a comic from DC has to have in order to succeed. The way the series was handled was like your favorite (yet low on the Nielson ratings chart) show gets moved around to Friday with almost no warning, and then the network stops airing ads about the show. Almost like someone wants it to fail (see Fox's The Tick, and Firefly).
How DC expected 2 extra issues of a low-visibility series to garner enough extra sales to determine whether to extend the run beyond 20 is a mystery to me. Almost like these last 2 issues are a pacifier to FA's fan base. I guess something is better than nothing. But in a way, I feel that the story ended with 18. How much PAD is going to be able to advance anything in 2 issues is certainly a challenge I'm looking forward to reading.
FA is the only comic I collect these days. I'd follow it to another publisher, or even to another format (movies, TV, novels). The only thing I WON'T do is buy it if Leifeld is the "artist." I've scanned his recent stuff, and it seems he's not changed at all since the last time I saw his stuff....which was in X-Force issues as I was tossing them down the trash.
"Don't know why everyone's worried about that second paragraph. Take out the "however" adverb in there and it does say "We are not quite dead yet.""
PAD's post originally said, "We are _now_, however, quite dead yet."
Rick
interesting, issue 20 is NOT listed as being "mature readers," according to dccomics.com.
Peter,
The message below is something I posted in an earlier thread and on another board (Millarworld) while participating in a discussion about attracting more women and girls to comics. I wanted to share it with you. No more Fallen Angel would be a crime -- especially after finally finding something in the comics world I can share with my wife. Please read on to learn more:
You know, I witnessed something interesting this week along these lines.
My wife, Leticia, who never reads comics, has no interest whatsoever, etc., comes out of the bathroom the other day (a.k.a. Tom's reading room) and informs me that she really likes the comic I have in there -- "The one with that red angel girl," she says.
She was talking about Peter David's "Fallen Angel" TPB. Now, look, to hear my wife say she was reading a comic, let alone that she LIKED it, nearly floored me, but to find out it was this one that she liked was a real eye opener.
David's "Fallen Angel" is great, and if they cancel it, it's a crime. But I also had Oni's "Love as a Foreign Language Vol 1" sitting in the bathroom, too. "Love..." is a fantastic little comic, and it's the kind of romantic story I thought might pursuade my non-comic reading wife (a girl) to take a chance on the medium. I was wrong.
"The one about the guy in Korea is okay," she told me. "But the one with the angel is really good. I really like that girl in the story. The one with the red robes. She's tough."
What did I learn? I learned that my wife doesn't want the "Let's get even with our ex-boyfriend" type story that was mentioned in an earlier post, nor was she smitten with J. Torres/E. Kim's manga-style book from Oni (which, personally, I highly recommmend) -- no, my wife wanted to read a story about a strong woman/avenging angel with a haunted past who, for most of the story, was covered with flowing garbs, not skintight spandex.
Perhaps my wife is the kind of person this industry needs to take a closer look at -- a woman/girl who can be convinced to read comics if given the kind of story SHE likes, NOT what a bunch of dudes in suits THINKS she will like.
I know I'm paying attention.
Tom Waltz
Writer: CHILDREN OF THE GRAVE
www.shootingstarcomics.com
Peter:
Probably doesn't need to be explicitly asked... but is there anything we can do to help with that 'glimmer of hope' you've left us?
Again, probably doesn't need to be explicitly said... but just say the word and i'm sure most here would be happy to do whatever they could.
I don't want to be a long, dissenting jerk, but I think DC did quite well by the book. It has been selling poorly for a while, and probably has been below their "cancellation line" for a while. They did a special promo and it didn't help sales (and in some charts, it shows the sales kept going down even with the free #1).
It's the marketplace. The direct sales comics market has become a nightmare for people wanting to get new characters and ideas out there. Look at the top 25 comics in any given month, and how many of them are characters or books that started fresh in the last 20 years? Don't count re-launches, and you'll see that most fans don't WANT to read about new characters. They want more Batman, more Spider-Man, more X-Men, and if it's a new character, they aren't even willing to try it.
The shop I buy from has the last 12 issues of Fallen Angel on the stands...the same ones they've had there since the week after they came in. This Is Not PAD's fault or DC's fault...it's the market. Most fans don't want to try something new, and read comics as a nostalgia wallow.
It's a damn shame, since I think that Fallen Angel is PAD's best book in a decade, and shows he still has the chops.
That is part of the problem but it is just part one of a vicious circle. The other half is, because so many new titles get cancelled quickly, people wonder why they should start reading such books in the first place. As soon as they get really emotionally involved with a story, it is already over.
I had the same uneasy feeling when starting Fallen Angel but bought the book anyway because someone has to try to break this circle and even if Fallen Angel should be over now, I can at least enjoy it as a kind of maxi series.
Many of my favorite comics of the past ten years were lost causes going in and I pretty much knew it. Young Heroes In Love, Vext, Fallen Angel, and don't forget Space Circus. I didn't stop me from enjoying them. I keep trying. I keep saying to myself, maybe this will be the one. Maybe this one will be the little book that could. Sometimes these little books do last a long time. I remember one a few years back that went for 80 issues, which in today's market is incredible. :0)
It doesn't matter how long a book last, or what publisher it is at. What matters is, is it a good book? Do I enjoy it? In the case of Fallen Angel, the answer is hell yeah. If it continues, I'm there. If it doesn't, well, Lee can go partying with Junior and Zip-Kid.
The effort to save Fallen Angel continues:
http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=705162#post705162
Well, not sure whether to be disappointed or hopeful. I'll go for the glass-half-full, I guess.
For what it's worth, my expeiences with finding Fallen Angel, in the Central New York area, indicate more interest than Corey!!Strode found. I bought the last copy my former comic book store had of several issues of the book. I would have missed issue #18 if I hadn't had it on the pull list at my current shop - we went a day or two after it came out, and there wasn't a copy left for my brother (just visiting, so he didn't have a pull box) to buy. Anyway, like many others here, I'll follow the book wherever it ends up.
(By the way, I got _Sir Apropos of Nothing_ for Christmas, from the aforementioned brother - VERY good read, PAD!)
PAD- I just got back from Wonder Con, where I was hoping to complete my Fallen Angel collection. I was able to find only one issue (#6) out of the 9 I need. The 6 vendors that I went to all said the same thing. Fallen Angel is a hot item right now and back issues are hard to find. It's a good thing that DC cancelled it. Hopefully one of these days I'll be able to find the other 8 issues.
Hi Peter
Just to add my thanks for the series so far, and to hope that it continues at another publisher. It has been my favourite DC book practically since #1, and I feel sorrow that quality is not enough to make it succeed. I hope that DC's loss is your gain, with a more viable run elsewhere.
Just get the info out to us so that we can get our orders in on time!!
Mike
I am dissapointed that the series is being canceled. I think DC gave it a fair shot sales-wise, they just didn't market it very well. It seems that unless its a superhero title or written by one of the brits, DC just can't find the cash and ad space to put into selling the book. I've pointed out the title to 4 or 5 different comic shop owners as a heck of a good read, but they never read it themselves, thus couldn't sell it very effectively. Thank goodness for the direct market and independent publishers, eh?
Just out of curiosity, Does anyone know if this is what happened to the old Wolfman/Colan helmed Nightforce series back in the 80s? I got all fourteen issues on Ebay and couldn't understand why the series didn't last longer. I thought it was a very well written/drawn title.
Nightforce failed due to low sales, both times.
Matter of fact, as Mark Evanier so wisely said years ago, the only reason a comic book fails is due to low sales. It could have been not selling up to expectations like some X-Men books that were selling well for average comics, but not as well as an X-Men book is expected to sell.
I hope if Fallen Angel does move to another publisher, it keeps the sales it has...
And on the sales front, I have a question for PAD he may be able to give some insight into:
When Dreadstar moved from Epic to First, there were some articles at the time that the move would show if there were people who were just buying it because it was a Marvel book, and sales could drop when it moved. Was there a sales drap, and was it signifigant?
If I'm reading teh subtext of this discussion correctly, it seems clear that PAD's next move should be to start writing Uncanny X-Men. That's about as far from cancellation as you can really get in this business. Alternately, you could also try writing some political books. I hear they can be a rather lucrative career.
Most fans don't want to try something new, and read comics as a nostalgia wallow.
I have heard that sentiment expressed a few times here, but am not sure it is true. It seems like, from stats others have posted, that the total audience for buying comic books has shrunk. If so, then that is obviously the bigger problem.
I tried FA #1 and did not care for it, but I do try new comics. In fact, I like the more obscure ones (Dark Hawk, PAD's Captain Mar-Vel (sp? I have already forgotten!), Speedball, Quasar, to name a few). I have no idea if I am typical, but I like a good story that has thought and direction and originality (though I tend to not like the "anti-hero" comics as well).
Does anyone know where there are decent stats on all of this? I would be very curious to see them.
Iowa Jim
www.icv2.com has sales figures for the past few years, and seem pretty accurate.
I've been looking them over for a long time and making snarky comments on my website for ages, but I'm trying to figure out the "Cancellation line" where, if a book sells below a certain number, the publisher cancels it. Problem is, there are a lot of variables like trade paperback sales, contracts with creators and licensing concerns.
Please continue this title, as it is, even with another publisher. I will find and get it regardless. The tease of 'not quite dead yet' is heartening.... moving to Image? Marvel? Dark Horse?
Fallen Angel is a great book. With respect to the comment about not liking issue 1, I really feel the first arc needs to be read as a whole to appreciate it. If anyone is looking for back issues, I have had a lot of luck with midtowncomics.com and mycomicshop.com for Fallen Angel. I truly hope this series continues in some capacity. I will follow it to another publisher if need be. I think it is really unique with a great cast of characters.
Sean
With respect to the comment about not liking issue 1, I really feel the first arc needs to be read as a whole to appreciate it.
It depends on *why* I didn't like the first issue. The writing was as good as PAD ever gets. But the content/direction of the story was not one I had any desire to follow. And I have kept in touch enough with the following issues to know my reasons were valid.
If you like fantasy novels, and your favorite author writes a mystery, then you may not get his mystery novel. If you think Bush is stupid and harmful to America, and your favorite author writes a story with a fictional substitute that clearly portrays him as good, you may choose to pass on that particular story. My not liking FA was a matter of taste and personal opinion, not a criticism of PAD's skill as a writer.
Iowa Jim
Iowa Jim:
I think you should reconsider your decision. I know it means nothing in regards to the book's cancellation, but I think that you might be singing a different tune after reading a number of issues.
Your comparison to an author who writes mysteries and fantasy might be a better comparison with regards to some of Peter's fans who only read his novels or watch the tv shows that Peter has written.
Or perhaps if you were only a fan of Peter's excellent SOULSEARCHERS AND COMPANY and only wanted to read Peter when he writes humor and parody. Peter did not write a new style when he wrote FALLEN ANGEL. The series does seem darker, but it is not as dark as some of the stories that Peter wrote in INCREDIBLE HULK.
Give it another try, I think you might be surprised. I think that a lot of Peter's fans who ended up disliking the book were upset that this was not really a sequel to SUPERGIRL.
J. Alexander,
"Give it another try. I think you might be surprised. I think that a lot of Peter's fans who ended up disliking the book were upset that this was not really a sequel to SUPERGIRL."
While I commend you for liking the book enough to recommend it, I feel your statement here is a bit inaccurate.
I initially disliked the book because I found it depressing. It was like "what was the purpose of THAT?"
In fact, despite my love all work by PAD, I stopped reading the book from about issue #4-11.
In fact, if it weren't for the passion that PAD displayed for the book on this very website, I probably would not have picked up another issue.
As it was, I picked up issues #12-18, and will probably pick up the last two.
But I still don't LOVE the series. And I can see why those who don't love PAD's work to begin with and/or get as many comics a month as I do might prefer something else.