A Solemn Service

DC released their solicitations for May’s comics this week. Not only do these books mark the beginning of Flashpoint, but it sees the cancellation of five more books. That’s a total of eight regular monthly books that have been cancelled in 2011. This news must be treated with the upmost solmenity.

The five books that will end in May include Doom Patrol, Outsiders, Freedom Fighters, R.E.B.E.L.S. and JSA All-Stars, so DC is basically clearing house on team books. Of the books that got cancelled, Freedom Fighters and JSA All-Stars surprised us the most. While Freedom Fighters might have been focusing on some of the D-List heroes most people have never heard of, it was a fun little adventure story. While the individuals might not be well known, team dynamic that the Freedom Fighters created was a lot more fun and interesting than some of the other team books DC is currently doing (JLA comes to mind).

Here at Ret-Conned HQ, we found JSA All-Stars to be consistently more enjoyable than the main Justice Society of America book. Like Freedom Fighters, it felt like another team book that was just focusing on having fun and doing team adventuring stuff. It especially was a breath of fresh air as the main JSA title started this new city planning project, which has really slowed its momentum. We’re hoping that Matt Sturges gets to move over from All-Stars to the main book and bring some of the All-Star characters back with him.

You had to have a certain quirky sense of humor to understand and enjoy Doom Patrol, so it doesn’t surprise me that book had low readership. I could never get into R.E.B.E.L.S., but Kris really started to enjoy it late in its life after picking up a large chunk of its earliest issues and reading them all at one time. Unfortunately, Doom Patrol and R.E.B.E.L.S. characters will slip into obscurity once their respective books end. If the Doom Patrol survives the end of their book - as one blog pointed out, they are the Doom Patrol so having them go out in a blaze of glory is certainly a possibility - the chances of seeing those characters appear elsewhere are pretty thin. Lobo has his own story in Weird Tales and Starfire is a big enough character that she’ll probably pop back up somewhere, but the rest of the R.E.B.E.L.S. crew will probably disappear except for minor appearances in Bedard’s other book, Green Lantern Corps.

It was with a sigh of relief that we read that Outsiders has been cancelled. We’ve mentioned several times how disappointing the story has gotten under Didio’s pen, so we won’t reiterate that litany again. Kris and I were talking this weekend about all of the other characters that used to be members of the Outsiders, both in this series and the previous series when the Outsider’s was under Nightwing and Red Arrow’s leadership, not Geo Force and Black Lightning. Specifically, we discussed how awesome Thunder and Grace Choi were and how they’ve completely dropped off the planet after they left Outsiders. Oddly enough, Thunder is supposed to make her reappearance this week as Black Lightning has a mini family reunion with his two daughters, Thunder and Lightning. Hopefully, this is supposed to happen before the JSA city building story as in that Lightning is a little bit dead at the moment. Grace is on the cover of the final issue, so hopefully she’ll be returning along with Thunder. After Outsiders finishes, it would be awesome if they stick around and go somewhere else. Kris and I think they would fit great in Birds of Prey. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities as the last appearance of Grace Choi was in a single issue of Simone’s Secret Six, where she was working with the Birds. Add them and Cassandra Cain to fill out the current Birds roster and things would be pretty awesome indeed.