Looking for more Marvel Misfits or Wolverine: Prodigal Son? Unfortunately, MoCCA resulted in some saddening news: Del Rey Manga has cancelled the two titles, leaving an uncertain future for Marvel’s manga lineup.
Deb Aoki had the scoop, after a fan let her know that Raina Telgemeier told her that she might not see a follow-up to the X-Men Misfits story anytime soon. Aoki did some digging, and got a surprising reply.
“Wow! News travels fast! @goraina and I super disappointed since it was written as a 2-part story and it will be unfair to readers,” Misfits’ Dave Roman confirmed on Twitter. ”We only found out last week. We still don’t have a lot of the details beyond it being a cost of licensing vs. profits issue.”
Meanwhile, Anthony Johnston — writer of Wolverine: Prodigal Son — said on his blog that his series was also cancelled.
“It’s a great shame. I was very pleased with the second volume, and Wilson’s work for it was even better than for the first… Unfortunately, the simple truth is that not enough people bought them.” Johnston said. “Despite WOLVERINE being praised by readers and selected for two library YA lists, despite MISFITS making it onto the New York Times bestseller list, and not least despite all the efforts of Del Rey themselves and our editors there, there just weren’t enough readers to justify the costs. This is, sadly, more common than you might think in comics.”
No word yet as to what might happen in terms of any other manga titles, whether this line is slated for a Marvel Adventures-style soft relaunch, an Ultimates-style rejiggering, or if it’s simply going the way of the now-defunct Tsunami line. What say you, Rama readers? Are you going to miss these books?
April 12th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
That’s too bad. I wasn’t reading them myself but I know they have their fans, and that sucks.
April 12th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
That sucks I really like the two titles they were a lot of fun to read. Hopefully they can do something to keep them coming out.
April 12th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Trying to jump into the Manga scene without really popular manga creators or direction is never a good thing. It just proves that you can’t put an X-men on a comic, put on the manga makeup and call it a good manga.
Its the same with DC Comics CMX line, half of it looked like off the shelf managa but most of time they read like too much pop than art.
The big two can’t actually make good manga as for the most part its not the original style those comic characters or reference where as well as you can’t force manga to be manga. If anything DC or Marvel shoudl have taken the big manga approach and made a monthly manga with all their story chapters in one affordable book. Using the pricing scheme of single issues just seems more about the breaking into the manga genre without making the effort to let manga be sampled. Even if there were manga creators on the book, it still doesn’t feel like a manga in the traditional sense.
At leat there is other manga avenues for the manga fan.
April 12th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Good riddance!!!
April 12th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
The DC/CMX line was all reprints, so no use discussing them.
The Marvel manga line actually wasn’t bad. In particular, the Wolverine book was pretty descent stuff that should have been given a chance.
What I’d like to see, is Marvel print more of their international stuff – such as stuff from Asia, Italy, Britain, wherever – as some of it is pretty descent stuff. Not only is a lot of it well-drawn, but the stories are usually self-contained, which in my opinion is something the market needs more of.
April 12th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Manga as a whole is in bad shape right now especially in the West as many publishers are getting their licenses pulled by the Japanese owners and domestic sales in Japan are tanking from what they used to be as well.
It sucks as many people around the world are being deprived of reading many great series and books.
April 12th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Also does this mean that Volume 2 of Wolverine is not coming out now?
I hate it when companies have a finished item sitting ready to go and then call it back or never release it!
April 12th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I loved Wolverine: Prodigal Son and was looking forward to volume 2…I only recently heard about X-Men: Misfits and plan on buying it as well.
What a bummer that the volume 2′s won’t see the light of day!!
April 12th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
When did this came out? (the ones released)
April 13th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Toyota and Japan’s diminishing quality scared them off!
April 14th, 2010 at 4:39 am
Aw! I enjoyed X-Men: Misfits!
January 17th, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Your own skills will determine what you can do.