Keep On Dancing, Right As the Curtain Is Closing

I wrote this listening to the new Felix Culpa record, available January 24th (also my birthday) from Youth Conspiracy Records. It's pretty long (out of the 66 minutes, they could have cut anywhere from seven to 10 minutes), but it's all an intense ride. I suggest you buy it.

The title comes from the Bane song End With An Ellipsis, a song about the vocalist seeing the end coming for his band, but not wanting to go sadly. Anyway, the meat of this is about S.W.O.R.D., an ongoing from Marvel that just this week made its way to the "buy me" pile, got cancelled. At least it's in good company, though, with Doctor Voodoo, Captain Britain and MI:13 and the Immortal Iron Fist.

S.W.O.R.D. got cancelled at issue #5 (cover left) due to poor sales, which everyone with a functioning brain saw coming. Everyone on the series saw that coming and it was even written as if it would end at issue #5, according to writer Kieron Gillen, (lover of obscure British pop) known also for Phonogram, a comic I enjoy quite a bit.

It's a shame, because it's a neat little spinoff comic focusing on different characters in the Marvel Universe with a tangential relation to established franchises (X-Men). I picked up issue #3 last week and while I found Beast a little bit too whip-smart and it took getting used seeing Beast look more like a horse, I warmed up to it quickly.

Gillen posits two explanations:

1. New ongoings in a shitty economy are extremely risky. (true)

2. The first two issues are ordered before anyone has read the first one so the new series might be on grounds to be cancelled before anyone has the opportunity to buy a single issue. A crazy systemic problem with comics. (true)

Quoted by CBR's Robot 6, Gillen said "It was already on unsteady ground before anyone had even read the thing."

And as soon as I read that, my mind goes to another recent launch: Batwoman. Both are spinoffs of established series (S.W.O.R.D. has X-Men and Batwoman has Batman) but their launches couldn't be more different.

Consider: Batwoman's stories have appeared in Detective Comics, 52 and Final Crisis (52 and Final Crisis being DC events) and the talk only now is coming to her own ongoing. S.W.O.R.D. (created by Joss Whedon during his Astonishing X-Men run in 2004) was thrown into its own ongoing with no lead up or introduction to the characters outside of Secret Invasion, an event from two years ago before the launch of S.W.O.R.D.

The artist on Batwoman is the stupid talented J.H. Williams III, narrowly losing to the guy drawing Blackest Night (46% to 54%) as the artist of the year in a Newsarama poll, but winning the cover of the year with his work on Detective 855 (see right). J.H. also did Promethea with Alan Moore, which also had amazing layouts. Also! Take a look at those colors. Dave Stewart (the colorist) deserves some serious kudos. Suffice to say the art team on S.W.O.R.D. doesn't have that pedigree.

I'm not sure Gillen is in the same league as Rucka, but I buy Gillen's books more frequently than I do Rucka's, so the kangaroo court of my mind has a sizable pro-Gillen bias.

The connection to the X-Men is Beast, which could have been reinforced a little bit more. What's Nightcrawler doing these days? He would fit note-perfect in an ongoing about aliens, earth and alienation. It's Beast, Abagail Brand and "everyone's favorite paper pusher" as the front and center players from the Marvel Universe.

The short version of all this is: based on this criteria, my guess is S.W.O.R.D. just didn't have the editorial backing that Batwoman did. If you want people to buy another new book, then you have to have Things Happen in the book, but also, you have to put your top-tier people on it. The new book needs to be a must-read. S.W.O.R.D. wasn't positioned as a book that's must-read. It's cool if it is read.

I want to come back to Gillen McKelvie's quote: "It was on unsteady ground before anyone had even read the thing." Marvel, I think, didn't take enough steps to compensate for the unsteadiness of the new ground and combine that with the viciousness of a market that's already hurting from an economic collapse and S.W.O.R.D.'s numbers were limited, in this case, from the start.

Of course, that's not to say S.W.O.R.D. was boring. Far from it. The first issue I picked up, ,#3, had a spectacular visual for a cover (see below), Beast being an incorrigible badass, a firebreathing dragon and xenophobia.

You've got a tiny dragon pointing guns with three barrels at you and not just that, but a shotgun and an assault rifle strapped to his back. Awwwww! S.W.O.R.D. will be missed for that reason, for its ability to blend being cute and intelligent. But hey. It's fun and it's got two issues left.

Like Conan, S.W.O.R.D. got screwed, but at least there's a trade in the future. That said, there's a fun feeling to buying the remaining issues of a cult-classic series that's walking dead. You were in before people realized it was so cool, so even if it's gonna end, pick up the issues.

Like many of Mr. Gillen's favorite artists, his work was under-appreciated the first time around and would gain significance only after the band's finished. For his first unique Marvel ongoing, it seems appropriate S.W.O.R.D. ends the same way.