Young Allies

[Tron Bonne]

http://blog.newsarama.com/2010/10/14/young-allies-ending-with-issue-6/

It pays to monitor Diamond’s weekly “Product Changes” list — some big news often slips in there, like today’s announcement that Marvel Comics series Young Allies has been canceled with issue #6.

That means that issue #7, previously solicited and scheduled for December, isn’t happening. It also means that the Young Allies annual — announced earlier this month as part of the Paul Tobin-written “Game On” crossover between Spider-Girl and Avengers Academy — will actually ship two months after the last issue of the series. (And that story may have changed names — it was called “Arcade: Death Game” at NYCC.)
Sean McKeever is the writer of Young Allies, and it was revealed at New York Comic Con past this weekend that he’s working on something for Marvel called “Onslaught Unleashed,” starting in February. As Comics Alliance pointed out, Young Ally Nomad/Rikki Barnes is tied to the whole original Onslaught deal — she’s from the same Heroes Reborn Earth created by Franklin Richards in the Onslaught: Marvel Universe one-shot — so maybe McKeever is picking up on Young Allies plot threads in that books.

Well, at least it escaped the done in five club...

 

[hippie_hunter]

I am so shocked that this happened

Spoiler

NOT!

 

[Manic]

Young Allies was still being published?

That sounds like a joke, but I seriously lost track of this comic after #3.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Eh, it wasn't all that great. I dropped it after #2. Kind of a shame that it's another new series that's dead within a year, but I won't miss it.

 

[RockSP]

Enjoyed it while it lasted. Hopefully we'll get a new Wolverine or Deadpool book in it's place...they deserve a shot at an ongoing.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I'm hoping for a Thor series. He's got a movie on the way, you know?

 

[Dread]

It is a shame. I did enjoy YOUNG ALLIES, but the sales were ghastly. As in, ATLAS ghastly. I was stunned the book made it this long without a cancellation announcement; Marvel isn't usually willing to eat sales for this long on a book.

If anything, issue seven seems more relevant than issue six. Issue six is just a confrontation between Firestar and Emma Frost. Seven was going to have Toro's rival from the experimentation camp, "the Dragon" arrive. When the crossover annual thing was addressed, I thought, "YOUNG ALLIES will last long enough to get an annual?" I mean, I'm not surprised, but still saddened. I enjoyed the book.

ONSLAUGHT UNLEASHED sounds stupid. He's a complete victim of the 90's who isn't terribly interesting at all besides being big, spikey, armored, and shoulder-padded. And evil. He's so shallow that I am stunned Jeph Loeb didn't have Rulk fight him. I really don't need to see him return.

It is possible that Baldeon could return to regular art for the NOMAD strips in CAPTAIN AMERICA and McKeever can basically edit YOUNG ALLIES stories to fit there. Arana/Spider-Girl has been a reoccurring character there for a while.

FYI, this isn't the first time an issue of a canceled series was solicited but never shipped. A 10th issue of the X-MEN EVOLUTION comic by Devin Grayson and UDON never shipped. Instead it ended on issue 9, which had a terrible fill in artist and an even worse story.

 

[Jennifer Walters]

I enjoyed it, and it even got me to like Arana to a degree.

 

[Dread]

I enjoyed it, and it even got me to like Arana to a degree.

I can attest to that, too. It was through there and her appearances elsewhere, such as in the NOMAD back-up strips and even her small cameo in DR. STRANGE: THE OATH that helped convince me that once you remove her from her awkward origin, that involved fighting a magical wasp society, she's actually a fun character. Unfortunately, Marvel took that too literally, and has all but remade her except for her civilian name. Her powers are gone, her costume isn't hers (it's Julia Carpenter's), and she's using Mayday's codename from another universe. Being Anya Sofia and being Latina is literally all she has left, besides an arm tattoo (that you barely see anymore since her costume has sleeves now). That wasn't McKeever's doing; that ball started rolling from Brian Reed in MS. MARVEL and in THE GAUNTLET in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

It is, perhaps, a sign of Marvel backing off from the JMS era. Arana was originally a bit of a spin-off of JMS' Totem story, and the character was created and written originally by his protege at the time. It is funny how Marvel will sometimes make a big stink about a writer on a franchise and use them to generate sales for years and years and years. The moment they leave, they do everything possible to pull apart what they'd written. Happened like that to Grant Morrison's X-Men run (all that remains is Scott/Frost, cat Beast and some spare characters who aren't dead yet), after all. Hell, Morrison's Marvel Boy is now NOTHING like he was intended to be. And JMS' THOR run is being disassembled and likely reverted back to a status quo of Asgard not on earth and the gods doing their cycles again. So perhaps Arana/Spider-Girl getting revamped is par for the course. JMS is DC Exclusive now, so Marvel will pretend he never existed. After all, when McKeever was gone, Marvel sure did a lot of wonky stuff to Gravity, one of his characters; it was only by the mercy of Dwayne McDuffie and his Fan Four editor that Gravity was even salvageable.

Given how Robert Kirkman is gone from Marvel and has all but called out the Big Two as being lame on occasion for budding creators, I am amazed that some of his characters, such as Eric O'Grady, are still so close to how he intended them. Although it is worth noting that Crusader is dead, and you don't see a lot of those Damage Control guys he made like Monstro anymore.