DC Comics Epic Synergy Fail

That Blue Beetle? Canceled.


This Blue Beetle? Just got major exposure in the debut episode of the latest Batman cartoon.

You know, it isn't like the Blue Beetle series was kid-unfriendly. They couldn't just wait a few months more?

Blue Beetle Canceled

Thought I'd share a quick bit regarding Didio's announcement regarding Blue Beetle:

One of the books that I’m most disappointed about in that regard is a book like Blue Beetle, which we are cancelling. That’s a book that we started with very high expectations, but it lost its audience along the way. Recently, we felt that it was standing on firmer ground, and was getting a more positive response. The problem is that the firmer ground and positive response is not enough to keep the book afloat. So unfortunately, we had to cancel that series.

You put Matt Sturges on the book and pretty much immediately had an arc about illegal immigration/border-crossing. When that happens right after a writer change, it feels a little dubious. If it happened in the middle of Rogers' run, I wouldn't have raised a brow. If it happened after a half year of the new team, maybe I'd be fine with it. But it turned me off immediately to where I dropped it quickly.

I can deal with message books, but not when they're heavy-handed. Blame Winick, but I've been made very wary of the overall quality of a story in a message book. Having it be about the first thing of an announced new direction (right after the Spanish language gimmick issue), didn't send signals that would leave me hopeful.

Much Ado About Nothing

The canceling of Nightwing, Robin & Birds of Prey seems to have a lot of fans in a tizzy.

If you've paid attention to the rumors or even the list of characters battling for the cowl, you'd realize that two of the canceled titles are only seeing this fate for the purposes of an event.

Did you think the sky was falling when the X-titles were canceled and replaced by the Age of Apocalypse books? If you did, were you feeling foolish when AoA ended and things returned more or less to what they had been?

I'm a little iffy on whether Birds of Prey will eventually be back. Given how chaotic things have been at DC as far as Tony Bedard's assignments, I'd almost be prone to think it won't be. Bedard just seems to be getting the short end of the stick there.