Marvel doesn't usually cancel books that are selling though. Want to be mad at someone, be mad at comic customers who clamor for series featuring b-listers then don't buy them because the books don't "matter" in terms of being tied to big events or universe shaping stories. If Elektra and Invaders had managed to sell 25K copies a month, they wouldn't be cancelled, but the don't. Each has nearly 12 issues to create a sustainable audience and didn't. I read the first 6 issues of each, but both got dropped when I pared my pull list down and cut most of my big 2 books. Marvel would prefer to keep these series going if there was an audience, but there doesn't appear to be enough of one to keep the books profitable. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Also cancelled it appears will be Nightcrawler as Claremont hinted there would be no year two of stories after #12, and again people clamored for more Nightcrawler and Claremont on X-books and again, it didn't sell. Same with Peter David's X-Factor.

The market for big 2 super-heroes right now is too small to sustain periphery books for long periods of time and slapping the mini-series label on it is a kiss of death that will drive away sales before the first issue hits the stands, so the only thing they can do is try these books as ongoings knowing there will only be a short run for each and rotate through them to see if any catch fire.

I wish it were different, but if wishes were kisses, we would all be all be a lot happier. That is not what the current market is supporting today though. People don't put there money behind these books. There are lots of reasons why-cover price, content, other priorities, but bottom line is the smaller print runs of these books makes margins on them slim at best and in he corporate world you don't put good money after bad to keep marginal lines going. Trot them out, show use to keep trademarks active, make what money you can, and try something else if it doesn't catch fire within a year.

Just to give anecdote-Elektra in our shop only ever had 1 pull customer-me. Nightcrawler only has 1 and that was someone who got every X-book no matter what. And after we didn't sell any shelf copies of wither book after the first issue, we only ever ordered 1 for the shelf of either title. Invaders had 1 pull customer besides me who dropped it after issue 3, and we didn't sell a shelf copy after #3 either. Not even during the Original Sins tie ins. We were contemplating not carrying these beyond pulls anyways because it was just dead money on the shelf for us. Cancelling them just did us a favor of freeing up that money and shelf space to try something else. As much as a handful of fans want and enjoy these books, they don't make anyone in the food chain enough money to continue.

-M

So Axis looks unbelievably stupid.

I still going back and forth trying to decide if I want to follow the King Comics mini series from Dynamite next year.

It features Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, Prince Valiant and Jungle Jim in five four issue series.

I'm sorry, especially the cancellation of All New X-Factor is a sore spot with me.
I thought that series was GREAT.

But, apparently, not enough people did.
It's all this awful, dark Hickman crap now on the Avengers side.
And on the X-Men side, it's all this awkward Bendis crap.
I cannot believe they're even putting out books still.  It's awful.

I don't buy digital...but I sometimes buy more than 1 copy of a book I like especially if there's a neat variant cover.

I like the current Flash Gordon book. I also liked the King's Watch series from last year. If Jeff Parker was writing the whole thing, this would be a slam dunk. What's helping is that DC will be taking a brief vacation next spring and my usual pull list of 30-35 DC titles will go down for two months. I haven't bought a Marvel title in years, but that streak will end with the three upcoming Star Wars titles. IDW has Godzilla and hopefully more Rocketeer. Dynamite has already been mentioned.

I'm almost out when it comes to Image. I've got one more issue of Super Dinosaur, the ultra sporadic Age of Bronze and whatever is left of Jupiter's Legacy. Invincible is the only ongoing I get and its going to be coming out in the "we'll do six issues straight when its ready" schedule. UGH! Issue #116 will hopefully be out by 2016. My independent peak at Image and other companies was around 2010 and it's been all downhill since.

I hope this works, heres the book. Peter David and Sal Velluto.