The Four Color Media Monitor

The Star Wars series Marvel's been publishing since reacquiring the license from Dark Horse, who retained it for many years prior, is now being canceled, possibly another victim of their relaunch for sake of sales boost mentality:

One of the most popular ongoing series at Marvel Comics—whose debut issue still holds the title as the only comic book this century to sell over one million copies—is coming to a surprise end. But it may not be that surprising, and it’s likely not the actual end.

Actually, depending on one's POV, it is. If it's really successful (though 40,000 copies a month is peanuts), they would surely want to keep it going, and the original SW comic they published for nearly a decade was never relaunched like they're doing now.

We reached to Marvel Comics to clarify the details of the solicit, and a spokesperson for the publisher confirmed that Star Wars #75 is indeed the final issue of the series and that fans can expect to learn more about the future of the title next month. [...]

So the question becomes, is Marvel Comics ending Star Wars just to re-launch it after The Rise of Skywalker’s release? Given the publisher’s...fondness, diplomatically speaking, for relaunching series with new #1s at a pretty regular clip to capitalize on the extra draw seeing that number on shelves has among casual comics reading audiences, it’d be no surprise if Marvel thinks it can boost the already decent sales of the series even further with an eventual refresh. It did much the same for the Darth Vader series that launched shortly after Star Wars did in 2015, a first volume with the creative team of Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca giving way to another by Charles Soule and Giuseppe Camuncoli in 2017, each telling their own separate story arcs about the titular dark lord of the Sith.

Whether this is meant to keep in step with movie releases, it's supremely silly, because again, the original series they published under license kept on with its original numbering for at least 107 issues (and at least 3 annuals), and nobody was relying on the desperate stunts so common today.

Still, seeing how the franchise is bound to end with a sputter if the social justice and Mary Sue pandering aren't stopped, it probably doesn't make much difference, and I wouldn't be shocked if the comics already injected some of those elements too. Disney already caved to feminists who didn't appreciate princess Leia turning the tables on Jabba the Hut and throttling him with the chains he put on her in the 3rd movie. For all we know, the SW franchise is not bound to end well, and Disney's continued mishandling will see to that.

Labels: licensed products, marvel comics, msm propaganda, sales