Last Issue Memories

[Red Oak Kid]

I was thinking back to the days when I was buying comics off the stands and following my favorite titles. This was before the days of the internet and you really had no idea what each new issue would look like until you discovered it on the stands. Unless you saw an ad for an upcoming issue in the comic itself.

And there were those sad days when you rushed home to read the latest issue of your favorite mag only to learn on the letters page or perhaps by a brief blurb in the final panel, that it was the last issue of that title. It was always quite shocking to learn that a title you liked had been cancelled.

And sometimes the last issue didn't even say it was the last issue. You just never saw it on the stands anymore. You might go for months searching the stands for that next issue that didn't exist.

Just wondering what vivid memories you may have of discovering your favorite title had been cancelled.

[rick]

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/5306/doompatrol98rt0.jpg


In 1968 I was six years old and read just about every comic being published.

One of the comics I really enjoyed, but would never have called a favorite, was DC’s, Doom Patrol.

Compared to the bright adventures of DC’s other heroes of the time, Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Jerry Lewis, the Doom Patrol was sort of creepy.

None of the team were all that happy with their powers, but considering that one of them was trapped in a robot body and another was a radioactive skeleton wrapped in bandages, that really made sense.

But as weird as they were, and as strange as their stories could be, I wasn’t ready for what happened in the #121, the final of the series.

In what was an almost unimaginable scene for a comicbook of the era, during the course of the adventure, the team agrees to sacrifice their lives to save a bunch of innocent people in a fishing village, and the entire team is killed.

Now 40 years later, everyone’s back and healthy, and superheroes dropping dead for awhile is a dime a dozen sort of thing. But in 1968 this sort of event just did not happen. The very idea of a hero actually dying was revolutionary.

This story was my first exposure to death, and it really had a profound effect on me.

In my opinion, the most memorable last issue ever.

[shaxper]

Only a few years ago, I was desperately searching for a comic that my wife and I could enjoy together. We discovered DC's Harley Quinn. It was surprisingly brilliant, though the covers almost always undersold it. What looked like a stupid kid's comic on the outside contained some dense character development and introspection within. The comic was really heating up as it hit the mid 30s, with Harley gradually becoming more unstable as an imaginary little girl kept visiting her. Just as the book was really hitting its stride, the book just stopped. No final issue. No announcement on the letter page. There just wasn't a #39.

Sadly, I went to the GCBD looking for a cover scan, and they don't even provide one. It seems like no one ever cared about this comic.

[Red Oak Kid]

WOW. Both of those memories are great.

SAD, but great.

Thanks for posting.

[MWGallaher]

One cancellation announcement was so painfully blunt that it hit me like a pink slip:
"The 'Mister Miracle' series will not be continued. Its thrilling successor will be on sale soon!"
Ouch! No fond farewell, no encouraging hints that Scott Free would still be popping up here and there in some of our favorite DC comics...just that chilling, matter-of-fact death notice. I loved this comic, and I really needed to be let down easy.
Then there are the series that departed leaving tantalizing promises (to be broken) about the next issue: I wanted that issue where THE JOKER battled the JLA! I wanted the one where SWAMP THING teamed up with Hawkman--they told me Portland, Oregon was never going to be the same (and maybe it's not...I've never been)!
Another cruelty was the stealth one-shot. I was very taken with Simon and Kirby's SANDMAN in 1974, but DC never told me that this heavily promoted comic was never intended to proceed to a second issue. I waited a year before they finally gave in, treating me to--yechh!--Ernie Chua's version. Nor did I appreciate them stopping after a single issue of SHERLOCK HOLMES, apparently satisfied with preventing Marvel from using the title.

[JKCarrier]

Not a particular book, but a format: I was hugely bummed out when DC stopped doing "100 Page Super Spectaculars". Those were awesome.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Green Goblin #13. Its the 1st time I ever saw a series I love end due to stupidity with a company. Urich made a fun would be hero who tried....and pff....it was over. Marvel had annouced it a month or 2 earlier and it irked me.

[shaxper]

On the flip side, I remember that satisfied feeling I had when I read the final issue of the Champions, not because it was done well, but because I was glad it was being put out of its misery. The letter page promised the story would continue in the pages of the Avengers, but it got side-lined into a bad 2 parter in Spectacular Spider-Man instead. If ever a comic deserved it's death, this was it.

[Polar Bear]

For me, it was Freedom Fighters and Secret Society of Super Villains. I loved those books, and when they got cancelled, they said that the stories would be continued elsewhere . . .

And I looked and looked, and they never were . . .

[MDG]

Couple from me, both examples of cancelling good books and shoe-horning the characters into anthologies:

When All-Star was cancelled and stories--including the death of Eath-2 Batman--were crammed into Adventure.

When DC cancelled Green Lantern's book to put him in Action Comics Weekly.

Another sad ending--though a little sappy--was B C Boyer saying goodbye to the Masked Man characters because--IIRC--he couldn;t aford to keep drawing them and had to go back to a real job.

MDG

[The Confessor]

Nor did I appreciate them stopping after a single issue of SHERLOCK HOLMES, apparently satisfied with preventing Marvel from using the title.

Yeah, I came across that single, solitary Sherlock Holmes issue from DC much more recently but it always puzzled me as to why the series didn't go on any further. :confused:

As far as series that ended abruptly, I was pretty upset about Marvel's New Universe series Justice ending after the 32nd issue. There was no hint of it's demise until I picked up issue #32 and emblazoned across the front cover was the legend "Number 32 in a 32-Part Limited Series". Gee, thanks then Marvel.:(

I imagine I'll have a similar reaction when DC finally get around to cancelling the current Jonah Hex series. It's bound to happen sooner or later. I just know it.

[mrc1214]

On the flip side, I remember that satisfied feeling I had when I read the final issue of the Champions, not because it was done well, but because I was glad it was being put out of its misery. The letter page promised the story would continue in the pages of the Avengers, but it got side-lined into a bad 2 parter in Spectacular Spider-Man instead. If ever a comic deserved it's death, this was it.

Thats funny and so true. I just read that run and it was horrid. Im was going to give them to my little cousins as a Christmas gift but I actually want them to like comics.

[spoon_jenkins]

When DC cancelled Green Lantern's book to put him in Action Comics Weekly.
The cancellation of Green Lantern Corps made me really sad. It was probably my favorite comic at the time. And they didn't just end the book, they really smashed up the Corps. I didn't realize that Green Lantern moved over to Action Comics Weekly until a few months later when my brother brought home an issue.

I don't have many last issues memories, because I tend to jump ship a few issues beforehand. I left Wonder Man 4 issues from the end because when the series changed tone and changed artists. I also dropped The Legion 4 issues from the end. Abnett and Lanning got me into the books and I tried to stick through the Gail Simone arc, but it just wasn't the same.

[MWGallaher]

How about those Unresolved Cliffhanger final issues? The most notable is probably the last in the original run of Silver Surfer, promising the new, Savage Silver Surfer (supposedly to be drawn by Herb Trimpe, it is sometimes rumored). But Metamorpho also ended on a cliffhanger, as did (I seem to recall) Metal Men. I don't think any of those storylines were addressed in a reasonable amount of time; next time we saw Metamorpho, he'd been in a chemical bath for several years (Brave and Bold #103). Swamp Thing, which I mentioned before, also ended on a cliffhanger, with the once-again-human Alec Holland in dire peril from a pathetic excuse for a villain. That one was hardly as frustrating as Metamorpho and the Surfer, and I'm sure most of the readers viewed Swampy's cancellation as a mercy killing (but darn it, I still want to see that Hawkman team-up!).

[Paradox]

http://image.milehighcomics.com/istore/images/fullsize/45164652656.16.GIF

The '70s Ka-Zar series. In '77, it ended right in the middle of an interesting arc, with excellent Mayerik art. Had to wait a year (an ungodly long amount of time for teen me) for the story to be resolved in X-Men #116, and got a basic "a wizard did it" solution. BAH!

[Buried Alien]

I never forgave MOON KNIGHT for getting SHOGUN WARRIORS cancelled in 1980. :mad:

To this day, I hate on all things MOON KNIGHT just for that reason. :evilsmile

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[berk]

http://image.milehighcomics.com/istore/images/fullsize/45164652656.16.GIF

The '70s Ka-Zar series. In '77, it ended right in the middle of an interesting arc, with excellent Mayerik art. Had to wait a year (an ungodly long amount of time for teen me) for the story to be resolved in X-Men #116, and got a basic "a wizard did it" solution. BAH!
Hah - I'm still waiting to see the end of that epic - had no idea it was officially tied up in the X-Men. I'd long stopped reading that thing by then. I think the Moench-Mayerick Ka-Zar was one of the best things Myerick did.

Whatever happened to him? He did a good job with Void Indigo in the 80s, but has he kept in the profession since then?

[Paradox]

From Val's Wiki:

"Mayerik continued to draw for comics through the 1980s and early 1990s, working on series for Eclipse Comics, First Comics, Now Comics, and Pacific Comics in addition to Marvel, but was seguing toward more of a career in advertising art and in illustration for the games industry, including the roleplaying game companies TSR and Wizards of the Coast. (See "Bibliography", below). As a spinoff of this, he drew the four-issue Acclaim Comics miniseries Magic: The Gathering — The Shadow Mage (July-Oct. 1995)

Mayerick has done storyboards and other art for clients ranging from Coca-Cola and Microsoft to the American Indian College Fund and the Oregon Historical Society."

[JKCarrier]

But Metamorpho also ended on a cliffhanger, as did (I seem to recall) Metal Men. I don't think any of those storylines were addressed in a reasonable amount of time

When the Metal Men book was revived in '76, they did take a couple of panels to explain that the MM had rescued Doc from that evil dictator, and that he was undergoing therapy to counteract the brainwashing he'd received.

[MartinRedmond]

Cloak and Dagger vol2. The artwork was so awesome. I saw last issue warning and I couldn't fathom why that book didn't sell.

[Scott Shaw!]

"B'wana Beast's" mysterious disappearance from the pages of SHOWCASE was a big surprise, at least to a few of us. The character debuted in SHOWCASE No. 66 (Jan. - Feb., 1967), continued in No. 67, and although that issue ended in a cliffhanger, SHOWCASE No. 68 didn't feature B'wana Beast at all, but instead another tryout strip also drawn by Mike Sekowsky, "The Maniaks". I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but no such luck. (By this time, SHOWCASE obviously was having trouble filling its pages with new material; there were quite a few fill-in issues with reprints of old material, some disguised as new stuff.) It was like B'wana Beast never existed!

B'wana Beast wasn't seen again (excepting SHOWCASE No. 100) until DECADES later, in the pages of Grant Morrison's ANIMAL MAN!

When we worked together at Hanna-Barbera, Mike Sekowsky told me that he felt that the storyline of "B'wana Beast" was SO racist, he refused to draw it and that editor George Kashdan couldn't find another cartoonist willing to draw the strip, either!

Aloha,

Scott!

[dan bailey]

Regular readers here are all too familiar with the trauma that 8-year-old me experienced when Brother Power the Geek #3 failed to arrive at the local (or any other spinner racks, of course) back in late summer or early fall of '68.

Adding agony to injury, a "friend" & fellow comics-reader told me back then that he'd actually espied a copy of the issue while on a trip out of town with his parents. In the absence of the internet or even access to any fanzines as a kid, I have no idea how many years (& years, & years ...) it took me to realize that I was the victim of a cruel lie.

[MartinRedmond]

That's sad.

I remember all the reprints in Quebec ended on a downer. X-Men ended with Wolverine as a Brood swearing he'd kill all the X-Men. Transformers ended with them all in a pit. Defenders ended with someone getting eaten. Etc...

[Rob Allen]

Skywald magazines never had as good distribution as Warren and Marvel did, and the end of their magazines was not mentioned in the mags themselves. Quite the contrary; they advertised upcoming stories and on-sale dates for magazines that were never published.

But all I knew was, the new issues were supposed to be out, and I couldn't find them. I haunted all the newsstands I knew and found some stores I'd never been inside before, but of course I never found the "missing" Skywald mags.

For the next year or so, I had a recurring dream of finding an out-of-the-way store that had all kinds of comics and magazines that I'd never seen in any of my regular newsstands. I can still picture the store in my mind - it was the same store in all the dreams. If I ever find a store that looks like it, I may have to buy the store.

[Red Oak Kid]

Regular readers here are all too familiar with the trauma that 8-year-old me experienced when Brother Power the Geek #3 failed to arrive at the local (or any other spinner racks, of course) back in late summer or early fall of '68.

Adding agony to injury, a "friend" & fellow comics-reader told me back then that he'd actually espied a copy of the issue while on a trip out of town with his parents. In the absence of the internet or even access to any fanzines as a kid, I have no idea how many years (& years, & years ...) it took me to realize that I was the victim of a cruel lie.

Well this is the first time I've heard your story. Lucky for the world that your bitterness with the human race didn't result in you becoming a Supervillain.

These are great memories, everyone!!!

I remember being pissed off when Rima the Jungle Girl was cancelled, but I don't recall if it was announced in the last issue or not. I fired off a really nasty letter to the editor. I think it was Joe Orlando.

[Sir Tim Drake]

Skywald magazines never had as good distribution as Warren and Marvel did, and the end of their magazines was not mentioned in the mags themselves. Quite the contrary; they advertised upcoming stories and on-sale dates for magazines that were never published.

But all I knew was, the new issues were supposed to be out, and I couldn't find them. I haunted all the newsstands I knew and found some stores I'd never been inside before, but of course I never found the "missing" Skywald mags.

For the next year or so, I had a recurring dream of finding an out-of-the-way store that had all kinds of comics and magazines that I'd never seen in any of my regular newsstands. I can still picture the store in my mind - it was the same store in all the dreams. If I ever find a store that looks like it, I may have to buy the store.

That store actually does exist, only you have to be a member of the secret comics secret society to learn about it... uh, actually I wasn't supposed to say that.

[dan bailey]

That store actually does exist, only you have to be a member of the secret comics secret society to learn about it... uh, actually I wasn't supposed to say that.

And now you'll have to kill us all. Crap.

[Adaptoid]

I can recall walking to a magazine store for about three months looking for the third issue of "Spectacular Spider Man" magazine. This was the 1968 large 35 cent magazine. I was hoping to find out what exactly the "Mystery of the TV Terror" was. As far as I know, the story was never published anywhere. I even asked Stan Lee about it at a convention and he said he did not remember what the plot was going to be.

The first two issues were incredible. I really wish it would have caught on.

[Roquefort Raider]

That's sad.

I remember all the reprints in Quebec ended on a downer. X-Men ended with Wolverine as a Brood swearing he'd kill all the X-Men. Transformers ended with them all in a pit. Defenders ended with someone getting eaten. Etc...

Were those the French reprints published by Heritage?

[GreatLakesAvengers]

I never forgave MOON KNIGHT for getting SHOGUN WARRIORS cancelled in 1980. :mad:

To this day, I hate on all things MOON KNIGHT just for that reason. :evilsmile

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

Huh? How did Moon Knight lead to the cancellation of Shogun Warriors?

[prince hal]

Haven't had much time to post, but I've been wnating to at least second Rick's post, which contained the first last issue that came to my mind: Doom Patrol 121.

That one would have made my list of favorite 10 comics two years ago except that I never had time to finish my posts (Doh!).

Still holds up as a fine story (emphasis on the word "story") and was notable not only for its realism and poignancy, but also because it was so perfectly in line with the "ethos" of the series. Dropped on DP fans like a bomb, and may have been all the better for it.

A couple of others come to mind...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the final issues of Action and Superman, graced by Alan Moore's loving farewell to the Silver Age whose title need not even be mentioned.

The last two issues of the original Blackhawk, with the "Magnificent 7" allowed to go out in the glory of their Black Knight uniforms, fighting Nazis, facing the War Wheel, ironically gaining a little bit of characterization after years of resembling an ethnic stereotype convention, and working like a team of seasoned fighting men again rather than like rejects from Mighty Comics.

The bizarre last issue of Marvel's Combat Kelly series, which looked like the classic rush job and teetered on the edge of reality and parody as Kelly's commandos, the bastard offspring of the Howlers and the Dirty Dozen, were slaughtered in what seemed a one-character-per-panel ratio until, IIRC, all of them or all but one or two, were dead.

The end of The Brave and the Bold, which had been a DC mainstay for 200 issues and 18 years. It went out on a high note, with a teamup of sorts between the Batmen of Earths 1 and 2.

The end of the Silver Age Legion in Adventure ("The Legion's Space Odyssey"). It just faded away without notice, to be replaced by Supergirl. Sic transit gloria.

I'd also like to add a variation: last issues within a series that signalled a (usually less preferable) change in direction or in an artist-writer team that had established a certain tone and quality, e.g. the last issue of Detective by Rogers and Englehart; Barry Smith's finale with Conan; Wein and Wrightson's last Swamp Thing; and Simonson and Goodwin's Manhunter, which ended within the pages of Detective.

[Paradox]

Ha! Methinks Buried just has Giant Robot bitterness. Shogun Warriors weren't hot. Moon Knight was. Shogun Warriors got their book canceled. Two months later we get a new Moon Knight book. I don't know for sure that Moonie's popularity had anything to do with Shogun Warriors getting canceled. But, if I'm not mistaken, that was Buried's first comic love, so he'll blame Moonie anyway. :)

[benday-dot]

Another cruelty was the stealth one-shot. I was very taken with Simon and Kirby's SANDMAN in 1974, but DC never told me that this heavily promoted comic was never intended to proceed to a second issue. I waited a year before they finally gave in, treating me to--yechh!--Ernie Chua's version.


I hear you on this MWG. I own only the issues of Sandman with Kirby/Royer and Kirby/Wood (in #6) artwork. This means I have issues 1,4,5 and 6.

It's not that I despise Erniw Chua/Chan. I actually like some of his inking, especially on John Buscema's Conan and brother Sal's Hulk. Sometimes Chua gets a bit carried away with his sense of musculature... just too damn many ripples... not 6 packs but 24 packs.

But I digress. Have you read the Kirby/Royer Sandman issue from Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2, reprinted in Best of DC (digest)#22?

A propos this time of the year its a fun Christmas piece called "The Seal Men's War On Santa Claus." As usual the fine Michael Fleiser pens the script, and the tale is pretty much as per the title. We get to see Kirby draw a festive Santa Claus, and receive as gift a plot with lots of goofy fun.

Maybe not the best way to end the Sandman series, but not half bad either.

[MichikoS]

Doctor Strange #183 (formerly Strange Tales), November 1969. Roy Thomas, Gene Colan, Tom Palmer. "Beware the Undying Ones," aka "They Walk by Night."

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i221/elbert_coalwell/0c9533b7.jpg

Bang! The last issue of my favorite magical master! The cancellation decision was made suddenly, I understand now, and there wasn't even a "goodbye" message in the letters page! Quite the opposite, in fact. Here's the editorial reply to the final letter:

...for the past few issues we've been proud and happy to receive more fan mail on our mystical master than at anytime previous in his career. Virtually the only major complaint voiced in any of these recent missives has been that some readers don't dig Dr. Strange's new costume and secret identity. However, these changes were made with an eye toward giving Doc a larger audience and a wider acceptance. Has it worked? Well, we're up to our 14th solo issue of Dr. Strange -- so we must be doing something right!

O, bitter words indeed, considering the undecorous, unheralded cancellation this title suffered! In fact, it was the abrupt cancellation of this title that led to my seeking out the fan press, and publications like THE COMICS READER, of which I had been largely ignorant. I just had to have the story on why DOCTOR STRANGE was dumped! Remember, this was just after Marvel's explosion in popularity at the end of the '60s. I couldn't conceive of a MAINLINE Marvel title being canceled due to poor sales.

Sadly, it was a double whammy: NICK FURY, AGENT OF SHIELD, Doc's Strange Tales bunkmate, was canceled at the exact same time, though it limped along another year or so in reprints. What a sad, sad turn of events for a longtime devotee of Strange Tales! I was crushed. I had to wait three whole years before Doc was once again a headliner (Marvel Premiere #3).

Michi

[Buried Alien]

Ha! Methinks Buried just has Giant Robot bitterness. Shogun Warriors weren't hot. Moon Knight was. Shogun Warriors got their book canceled. Two months later we get a new Moon Knight book. I don't know for sure that Moonie's popularity had anything to do with Shogun Warriors getting canceled. But, if I'm not mistaken, that was Buried's first comic love, so he'll blame Moonie anyway. :)

Doug Moench (writer of SHOGUN WARRIORS and, I believe, MOON KNIGHT as well) wrote in the final SHOGUN WARRIORS lettercol that SHOGUN WARRIORS was being swept off Marvel's decks specifically to make way for MOON KNIGHT, so I've hated MOON KNIGHT ever since. :evilsmile

This was back during an era when anime in the United States was rare, and manga unknown, so this was as close to a Japanese giant robot fix I was going to get for a half decade until VOLTRON and ROBOTECH arrived, and Marvel was taking it away for freaking MOON KNIGHT. :evilangry

Marvel had already cancelled GODZILLA on me about a year earlier, so I wasn't about to forgive them cancelling SHOGUN WARRIORS as well. However, they somehow kept me mollified with a three-part Red Ronin story in AVENGERS 197-199, which was just long enough to keep me around to discover ROM.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Roquefort Raider]

Here's the two issues that come to mind:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y205/RoquefortRaider/CA6.jpg

and

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y205/RoquefortRaider/L.jpg.


Wait! are you gonna say. Neither of these is a last issue!

That's right, but for me they basically were. At the time, I was living in Germany and was completely cut off from the series I had been reading at home; I was biding my time, hoping to return some day and find out what had
happened in two of my favorite books: the rejuvenated Conan the barbarian with Roy Thomas, Mike Docherty and Vicente Alcazar, and the adult Legion of super-heroes of the Bierbaum-Giffen era.

Then I came across those two books in a German bookstore. After a flash of happiness, I realized how wrong things had turned: both books had been bloody rebooted while my back was turned.

I hadn't seen the final issues of the runs I had been reading, but these were nevertheless harbigers of the end. (Actually they were more like ghosts than harbingers, but there we are).

[Paradox]

Buried Alien tells his tale of horror:

Doug Moench (writer of SHOGUN WARRIORS and, I believe, MOON KNIGHT as well) wrote in the final SHOGUN WARRIORS lettercol that SHOGUN WARRIORS was being swept off Marvel's decks specifically to make way for MOON KNIGHT, so I've hated MOON KNIGHT ever since. :evilsmile

Heh, I didn't know that. And, yeah, Doug was both.

This was back during an era when anime in the United States was rare, and manga unknown, so this was as close to a Japanese giant robot fix I was going to get for a half decade until VOLTRON and ROBOTECH arrived, and Marvel was taking it away for freaking MOON KNIGHT. :evilangry

Well, you can't keep a book going with just you and my roommate. :p

[will_butler]

Steve Gerber's Hard Time has one of the best final issues I've ever read in my life. A damn shame it was canceled so prematurely, but Gerber softened the blow considerably with that issue. Just phenomenal.

Will

[Paradox]

Mention of Gerber reminds me of another, and oddly enough, Val Mayerik's name comes up again.

Void Indigo was very weird, but that's to be expected from Gerber. It was lush and somewhat perverse and seemed to be heading somewhere, but died after a Graphic Novel and 2 issues under the Epic imprint. Alas I have no idea if Steve continued it elsewhere.

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/2899/400/2899_4_2.jpg

[Cei-U!]

I'm with hal: the cancellation of The Brave and the Bold with #200 is right up there with the death of Walt Kelly and the breakup of the Beatles on my "Events That Left a Permanent Scar on My Psyche" list.

Cei-U!
I summon the trauma!

[MWGallaher]

Void Indigo was very weird, but that's to be expected from Gerber. It was lush and somewhat perverse and seemed to be heading somewhere, but died after a Graphic Novel and 2 issues under the Epic imprint. Alas I have no idea if Steve continued it elsewhere.

He didn't, but a little internet searching should bring up a synopsis of the Gerber's plans for the plots of the following issues.
I loved Void Indigo (and--on topic--was angry at its cancellation, which I blamed largely on CBG's Don Thompson, who decried the book loudly as one of the most offensive, disgusting comics imaginable...at least, that's the way I remember his rants against it. It felt like the book was being cancelled because of complaints by folks who just plain didn't get it, and that sure did rub me the wrong way).
I recently reread the two Epic issues and was shocked at another quality of the comic--it has the worst coloring of any comic book I can recall ever reading. The (apparent) watercolors looked sloppy to begin with, but then the printer compounded the problem by seemingly getting the plates off register. Man, these books are hideous!

[Kirk G]

Michi,
That broader audience had netted me in, but I too was derailed by the sudden end. Dr. Strange just never impressed me as a character or topic that could sustain a book by himself. (Split book, well, both interests might float it.)

I recall that that storyline lead over into a bizarre Submariner story about issue #34 or so, and that crossed over into the Hulk, and eventually lead to a pilot story or two in Marvel Premeire as the start of the Defenders...

Did you ever read the conclusion of the Dr. Strange Undieing Ones story?

[MichikoS]

Did you ever read the conclusion of the Dr. Strange Undieing Ones story?KG, if I did, I've long since forgotten it. Roy Thomas's final stories weren't so great, I admit, but the IDEA of putting Doctor Strange into mothballs just outraged me. Just look at how much mileage Bendis and Brubaker and Straczmxltypltkinski and the rest have gotten out of ol' Doc these days. Can't turn around without bumping into his astral self.

Michi

[Cei-U!]

I recall that that storyline lead over into a bizarre Submariner story about issue #34 or so, and that crossed over into the Hulk, and eventually lead to a pilot story or two in Marvel Premeire as the start of the Defenders...

Did you ever read the conclusion of the Dr. Strange Undieing Ones story?

The story begun in Dr. Strange #183 continues in Sub-Mariner #26 and Incredible Hulk #126. Strange swears off magic at the conclusion of the arc, not taking it up again until the back-up story in Marvel Feature* #1. Plotlines introduced in that trilogy wrap up (as much as anything is wrapped up in the Marvel Universe) in The Defenders #4.

Sub-Mariner #34-35 (I think) feature a proto-Defenders lineup of Subby, Hulk and Silver Surfer but no Strange.

Cei-U!
I summon the footnote!

* It was Marvel Feature #1-3, incidentally, that starred the Defenders. Marvel Premiere featured a new Dr.Strange solo series in #3-14.

[Paradox]

MWGallaher notes the flaw:

He didn't, but a little internet searching should bring up a synopsis of the Gerber's plans for the plots of the following issues.
I loved Void Indigo (and--on topic--was angry at its cancellation, which I blamed largely on CBG's Don Thompson, who decried the book loudly as one of the most offensive, disgusting comics imaginable...at least, that's the way I remember his rants against it. It felt like the book was being cancelled because of complaints by folks who just plain didn't get it, and that sure did rub me the wrong way).

Oh, it certainly had an offensive and disgusting quality. But it was SUPPOSED TO! I'm with ya with the "just didn't get it"s.

I recently reread the two Epic issues and was shocked at another quality of the comic--it has the worst coloring of any comic book I can recall ever reading. The (apparent) watercolors looked sloppy to begin with, but then the printer compounded the problem by seemingly getting the plates off register. Man, these books are hideous!

Ah, the early days of the paper price increases. "Well we might as well put it on this better paper if we're not going to save any money." They might have had some foresight to realize that things printed on newsprint aren't going to look the same as things printed on other papers.

No excuse for the off-register printing, though. That part was just sloppy work by the printers.