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Posted
on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 12:07 pm in Honesty In Comic Book Covers, Comic Remixes, Photoshopp'd, Bad Comedy, Comics.
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January 29th, 2008 la 12:46 pm
This is the most depressingly accurate one yet.
January 29th, 2008 la 12:50 pm
It’s funny because it’s true.
January 29th, 2008 la 12:51 pm
Sad but true. I swear, Marvel is trying to drive me away by canceling all the books I read. First Irredeemable Ant-Man, then Cable/Deadpool, and now The Order. At least I still have Criminal and Avengers: Initiative.
January 29th, 2008 la 12:55 pm
I think the in-house demand is for original characters that sell like Wolverine… in six issues or less, apparently.
January 29th, 2008 la 12:59 pm
I wholeheartedly agree - but judging by the most recent issue - Fraction should be on a Namor book, TOMORROW
January 29th, 2008 la 1:06 pm
Dave O’Neill-
I concur.
January 29th, 2008 la 2:10 pm
*single tear*
January 29th, 2008 la 2:13 pm
Which reminds me, what’s your take on the upcoming ‘Old Man Logan’ story by Millar & McNiven? I know you’re not much of a Millar fan, but I like the general concept…
January 29th, 2008 la 2:39 pm
Eh. I like new characters, I just wasn’t interesting in reading poster boys and girls for Tony Stark and the SHRA, no matter how well written.
January 29th, 2008 la 2:52 pm
Did you notice in #7 Namor says to Henry “You think you’ll last? Come back to me in forty — in four — years and tell me I’m wrong. But you won’t.”
That… strikes me as a little too pointed to be unintentional. Looks like Fraction saw the cancellation coming a few months ago.
January 29th, 2008 la 3:13 pm
While I disagree with Tavella that they are posterboys for the SHRA (Hellrung, despite being friends with Stark is almost constantly irritated with him poking his nose into the team’s business, as an example), I do think that a semi-original idea (normals are given superpowers for a year at a time in order to perform civic duties and not dying at the end, unlike Strikeforce: Morituri) with some great writing and characterization was badly hamstrung by several problems. First, and this is easily the biggest problem, it was tied to the mostly fan-hated Civil War, in particular the dislike of the winning side. Second, it had a name change after the book was announced because Marvel’s IP lawyers and/or editorial staff are apparently morons that don’t cross their t’s and dot their i’s before making announcements. Third, it made some smart writing choices that fly in the face of what fans like; one example is that the most rebellious character on the team also being the most ineffective, instead of the Wolverine-style badass. Another is that the most popular girl on the team is also the sweet one, instead of being the closet bitch. Anything that goes away from those high school stereotypes that the average comic book fan loves can work to doom a book, even if it is better written than just about anything else on the stands, which this one is.
Take all of that together, and it’s sadly not much of a surprise that it had a short life. Maybe when if we’re lucky, after all the CW fallout crap is over, they’ll take another stab at the book, but I’m not holding my breath. Marvel’s editorial staff lacks a certain far-sightedness these days.
January 29th, 2008 la 4:04 pm
The thing is, I never really heard enough about this book to give it a try. And the same was true of NEXTWAVE. There just isn’t much effort being put into promoting and boosting offbeat titles like this, I think- they’re just thrown out there and expected to find an audience.
January 29th, 2008 la 5:37 pm
What’s sad is this book was #78 on the charts. … #78. selling over 25K copies a month. I swear I recall other Marvel books lower than this that are continuing, but I can’t recall them at the moment.
This makes me worry for my precious Blue Beetle which is much much lower. Different company, but similar mentality.
January 29th, 2008 la 6:51 pm
Hmph. I was looking forward to checking this out in trades. I wonder how unlikely that will be now.
January 29th, 2008 la 7:00 pm
I’ll miss The Order, though I have to wonder how much that title was a factor in the book’s fate. The quasi-fascist tone of a team name like The Order worked for the original “evil Defenders” comic (which was also great,) but between that name and the fact that the new team was by its nature on Iron Man’s side, some people may have thought the tone was more “fall in line” and less “good people doing the right thing.”
January 29th, 2008 la 8:07 pm
The Order was cancelled?
When?
I never heard about it…
January 29th, 2008 la 8:31 pm
@ Sam Rauch: I sincerely hope that’s not the case, because it’s especially fucking moronic. In this information rich age of previews easily available on all kinds of news sites, wikipedia, and torrents, there’s -no- valid reason for that kind of ass-grabbing fucktardery.
January 29th, 2008 la 9:14 pm
Well, consider me an ass-grabbing fucktard, because the title put me off and didn’t give me cause to investigate further — not until I heard about it from other sources. The title DOES have a quasi-fascist (or possibly quasi-mystical)… and I don’t know about you, but I have better things to do with my time than investigate titles that don’t appeal to me.
January 29th, 2008 la 9:30 pm
Now “Ass-Grabbing Fucktard Quarterly”: THAT’S a title I can get into!
January 29th, 2008 la 10:56 pm
Evan, I’d argue that you didn’t miss anything with NextWave, but it’s definitely true that Marvel will pump promotion after promotion into its big-selling titles (FF, anything with a Spider or Wolverine) and just ignore half of it’s second-tier titles. Is it any wonder that they don’t sell well?
January 29th, 2008 la 11:29 pm
I never picked up the book because to this point, Matt Fraction was far too “hit and miss” for my taste. When other readers ask my opinion of the man’s work, I tell them “Matt Fraction owes me twenty bucks.”
This is mostly because of Five Fists of Science, a work that I felt was ultimately mediocre and the five or six issues of Punisher: War Journal I picked up, which showed me the fun, playful side of Frank Castle. Maybe it’s just me, but while there are certainly psychopaths out there who quip like Spider-Man in their manifestos, The Punisher probably shouldn’t be one of them.
Casanova was alright, but there’s always been something about the book that just doesn’t click for me… Absolutely love Gabriel Ba’s artwork though.
Anyway, maybe his writing style fits well with this group of all original characters, so I’d be willing to check it out, but I’m VERY hesitant to ever purchase the man’s work again without giving it a full read first. Yet another example of why I should start bit torrenting comics and only buy the ones I really dig.
January 30th, 2008 la 1:12 am
The title DOES have a quasi-fascist
It certainly didn’t help with me, given that “The Order” was the name of a real life murderous white supremacist gang back in the 80s. Based and named after a group in William Pierce’s eliminationist novel The Turner Diaries.
January 30th, 2008 la 2:22 am
This book did have a messy development history. As I understand it, this mutated from a Mark Millar pitch for the Champions as an all-god team of superheroes, which would certainly explain the redundant pantheon concept. Going for a while as Title To Be Determined wasn’t much help either.
Which is not to say that people shouldn’t have *checked it out*. Good lord, what the hell is friggin’ New Warriors doing still around when this book accomplished more in a single issue than that comic has in its whole run so far?
The Order has giant turtles! Lesbians! Zombies! Bears! Russian midgets! Lesbians! The Nintendo Wii! A blonde pop princess who is actually likable! Government conspiracies! Talking swords! An entire gang of lesbians! What more do you people want?
January 30th, 2008 la 3:49 am
Sorry, wacky bear punching fails to charm me when it’s propaganda for a system I despise.
January 30th, 2008 la 4:00 am
[…] Marvel: Always what you want. And by you, we mean […]
January 30th, 2008 la 4:37 am
It’s a system that doesn’t exist, though! I mean, okay, it’s got huge dollops of confused real world allegory, but it’s not like buying THE ORDER would help fund Gitmo.
January 30th, 2008 la 5:10 am
[…] [Snark] Honesty in comic-book covers. […]
January 30th, 2008 la 9:58 am
The Order would’ve made it to my pull list if it hadn’t been a spin-off of Civil War.
January 30th, 2008 la 10:44 am
[…] UPDATE: This parody cover pretty much says it all. […]
January 30th, 2008 la 12:01 pm
It’s a system that doesn’t exist, though! I mean, okay, it’s got huge dollops of confused real world allegory, but it’s not like buying THE ORDER would help fund Gitmo.
But that’s just it; they used real world stuff as allegory and then said in the end “people who lock people up in hell prisons without trial are heroes! People who fake terrorist attacks to stampede the populace into doing what they want are wonderful!”, and so on.
It’s exactly the same as if you used all the tropes and metaphors from the civil rights struggle — police dogs, firehoses, teenagers lynched for registering people to vote, leaders shot down, people oppressed because of their color — and then said “Martin Luther King was wrong” and launched a brand new title where the CCC sponsors a group as poster kids for their victory. Said kids may not be personally racist, said book might be full of adorable wackiness, but it’s still celebrating and promoting something vile, and I would say “Fuck you and all your works.”
Which is what I’ve done to Marvel, with the exception of Thor and Iron Fist, which are currently managing to remain separate from the whole mess (Iron Fist is probably doomed once it gets back to Earth, sadly.)
February 23rd, 2008 la 5:52 pm
I read it, expecting for something fresh and new. And I didn’t like it, unafortunately. A bit of superheroics on this title could make very good for this title. Do you remember? Villains, combat, adventure…